Amanda Pascali’s Spotify profile includes a quote by Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyou reading, “too foreign for here, too foreign for home, and never enough for both.” For Pascali, the daughter of two immigrant parents, the quote resonates.
Pascali’s music revolves around preserving and translating Sicilian to English and making the sound her own. Growing up, she said she struggled to fit in because of her identity as a child of immigrants from two different countries. In response, she turned to music.
“I was the kid that got made fun of for bringing weird food to lunch, and I felt so out of place,” Pascali said. “That’s what led me to music. When I was 12 years old, I picked up a guitar and I started making music about my story and my family. That was my way of creating a space for myself where I didn’t find one already.”
Valerie McGuire, an associate professor of French and Italian studies, invited Pascali to speak to her classes and perform her music at UT, as she thought that Pascali’s music aligned well with her course themes. Pascali performed a short set, had a Q&A with McGuire and music professor Luisa Nardini and performed a long set with her husband.
“This is the first time I’ve ever invited a musician to be part of our events,” McGuire said. “I normally work with writers or filmmakers, but (Pascali) has such an interesting project that goes really well with what I’m teaching this semester.”
McGuire is teaching a course this semester called “Race and Migration in the Mediterranean,” which discusses how migration can create race and how the experience of regionalism in Italy mirrors the experience of regionalism in the U.S.
“I thought it was interesting that (Pascali) was taking some of these themes that have been explored in Italy and related it … to the freedom or sadness that comes with not belonging in her music,” McGuire said.
Tess Harmon, a history and Spanish senior, attended Pascali’s performance and said she enjoyed seeing the way Pascali did bilingual translations.
“I think it’s a valuable spotlight on Sicilian itself, which is an endangered language,” Harmon said. “Listening to her music gives you insight into that language, its unique culture, the traditional artists who sing in Sicilian, as well as her own experiences translating lyrics.”
Pascali’s upcoming single, “Mi Votu E Mi Rivotu,” is a rewritten version of an ancient Sicilian folk song. She sings half of the song in English and the other half in the original Sicilian. Pascali said she formatted the song in a “spaghetti Western” style reminiscent of movies made by Italian directors like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“The (movie’s) music was also composed by an Italian called Ennio Morricone,” Pascali said. “He basically defined what the sound of America was, despite the fact that he wasn’t American himself. It goes back to this idea of what is (it to be) American and also this construct of identity, where someone who’s not even from here could make something that everyone else considers, even over half a century later, to be the sound of America.”
