Elijah Leotaud
DARE Project: Performing Diaspora: Accordion Routes of Italian Immigrants to Toronto
Program(s) of Study: Urban Studies
Project Supervisor: Teresa Abbruzzese
Hopefully, this research will create more opportunities for scholars within urban studies to consider the importance that musical instruments have on place making. In addition, I hope this can allow for more research that focuses on Toronto's history of placemaking and instruments within other cultures.
Project Description:
This research project will investigate Toronto's Italian-Canadian music scene in the 1950s and 1960s through the lens of the accordion. The accordion in this research context is a transient musical instrument that expresses the trans-Atlantic passage of Italians through its sounds and rich tones, but it is also embodies social identities and immigrant stories. At the heart of this research project is the life history of professional accordion player and teacher, Joe Caringi, who founded Caringi Accordion House Ltd.—a small accordion shop and music school located on Dufferin Street in the heart of Toronto’s second Little Italy (Corso Italia) in 1958. The stories of first-generation Italian-Canadian immigrants who went to this music school will interweave with Caringi’s life history to present a performative intergenerational understanding of the Italian diaspora in the particular urban context of Toronto in relation to broader themes of transnational practices and linkages, place, identity, and belonging. The first objective of this research is to produce different understandings of the Italian-Canadian diaspora by focusing on the accordion not only as a cultural expression of their roots, but a performative expression of the material realities, struggles, and hopes of the immigrant routes embodied by the accordion players. The second objective is to investigate the relationship between the Italian-Canadian diasporic identity and Toronto’s soundscape in the post-World War II years, and how Italian immigrants shaped Toronto’s music scene.The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) – Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.