Foreword

Art and Music in One Person – Giuseppe (Pino) Marelli

(excerpt)

“Pi-no! Pi-no! Pi-no!”

The crowd chanted rhythmically, making a ferocious noise at the Macomb County Italian Fest, on a warm but delightfully breezy summer night almost twenty years ago. “Who is it that this wild crowd is begging for?” I asked my fiancée Carole, questioning her with my eyes. “It must be somebody good, or they wouldn’t be making such a spectacle.”
We had ventured out that night for a taste of Italy — in both food and music — in anticipation of our own upcoming trip to the land whose sons and daughters had been our neighbors and friends for a long time in Detroit.
Onstage, a figure, who was destined to become familiar to us, nervously flitted about, checking a cable here, and adjusting a microphone there, as the crowd roared even louder. A few moments later, that figure — Pino Marelli himself — stepped up to a microphone, and in a commanding voice, said “Ciao, Ragazzi, Buonasera!” The chanting of the crowd turned into rhythmic clapping as the music began.

“Lasciatemi cantare . . .”

In no time at all, an empty dance floor filled with couples who swirled and swayed to engaging music, with smiles on their faces as the melody took hold. In a few seconds, we innately understood and joined the crowd ourselves, enchanted by what we heard.
“This is the Italy I was searching for” I realized.
My impression of Pino was formed and reinforced with each song he presented to his audience. I am not of Italian heritage, and I only had a rough knowledge of Italian music (i.e. I could hum ‘Volare’ or ‘Funiculi, Funicula’). That night, though, I experienced an earth-shattering change in how I perceived music, and the man who gave it to us so willingly on that summer evening.
Pino Marelli didn’t just ‘play’ or ‘sing’. Music, dwelling within this artist, leapt out of his soul like a soaring bird, unable be contained. Visually, the joy his face conveyed as he shared his artistry clearly reflected a lifetime of passion for the music he played and sang. His musicality had power, beauty, and an uncanny ability to seize the senses in such a way that I was changed on the spot. The music of Pino Marelli entered our souls that night, and neither of us could get enough of it afterwards.

Detroit, the city chosen by Joseph. L. Hudson in which to develop his business, was once America’s fifth-largest city; a dynamic center of industry that attained worldwide renown. The wealth produced by its factories and robust commerce was used by its leaders to forge and embellish a city that, from time to time, was known as “The Paris of America.” While this moniker may be an anomaly to those who also know Detroit as the largest American city to ever file for bankruptcy, the comparison between the two cities can be understood through a brief study of Detroit’s history. What’s more, Hudson’s home town, during the store’s heyday, was a bustling metropolis that, like the store itself, might be incomprehensible to someone familiar with Detroit’s physical state at the end of the twentieth century, even though the city is currently in the midst of a revival that, after all the devastation, has once again changed its face considerably.

The Parisian connection stems from three separate and distinct sources. To begin, Detroit was originally founded as a French outpost, and for many years housed a population that spoke the French language exclusively. It was inevitable that Detroit would participate in the joie de vivre for which French culture is widely known.

Secondly, by 1805, when the small settlement was, at least for the time being, a part of the young American Nation, it was re-planned from a haphazard town of wooden buildings, using a layout (the “Woodward Plan”) that envisioned a series of town squares and circuses linked by grand boulevards and wide, straight avenues. This plan, while never fully realized, resulted in a unique geometric layout for the center of Detroit that bears some resemblance to the nineteenth-century boulevards of Paris that give the beloved French capital its distinctive layout and elegant sense of space.

Thirdly, Detroit’s economic and cultural prowess inspired a sense of authority, in its day, that was reinforced by its many private and public institutions, and the monumental architecture required to house them. Pre-World War II photos of Detroit show a cohesive urban environment, enlivened by crowds of people on in its tree-lined streets and in its well-defined urban spaces, that has been all but lost in the modern era. The dynamism associated with Detroit in the past, in combination with its physical form, compared well to Paris, a city often noted for many of the same characteristics.