MAHONING COUNTY Lowellville band marches on

The band's original music has never been published.
By MARALINE KUBIK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
LOWELLVILLE -- Venanzio Iudiciani and John DePasquale have seen a lot of changes over the last 80 years, but one thing has always remained constant -- their love for Italian music unique to their village.
Now, the two remaining founding members of the Lowellville Mount Carmel Band are working to ensure the band marches on for another 77 years, drawing on love of the music and family tradition to attract young musicians.
Sitting in plastic lawn chairs on Iudiciani's front porch, the men reminisced about the band's early days and discussed its future.
"He doesn't have the memory that I have," Iudiciani said, motioning to his lifelong pal and jovially vying for the chance to speak first.
"He's right," DePasquale replied. "Mine's better."
Young dreams
Iudiciani came to America from Italy when he was 6 years old, DePasquale when he was 13. Neither learned to speak English before entering school in the United States.
At age 9, after watching the Mount Carmel Band parade through the streets on a religious feast day and seeing another young boy playing and marching, Iudiciani told his father that he wanted to join the band, too.
It was 1929, two years after Michael Lucente started the band.
Lucente, also an Italian immigrant, carried much of the band's music -- marches, operas and classics -- from his homeland; the rest he wrote himself. That original music has never been published or played by any other band.
As he did with almost all of the band members, Lucente taught Iudiciani to read the handwritten scores, then he taught him to play.
"I played the E flat alto -- it's a horn -- because that's what the band needed," Iudiciani said.
Years later, when playing the horn while parading through the streets became too much for him -- Iudiciani said he got too old -- the band needed a drummer, so he switched.
DePasquale, 88, who joined the band a year or so after Iudiciani, at age 15, said "I started on the trumpet, but my lips wouldn't hold up, so I had to switch to sax."
Dedication
As in Italy, the Mount Carmel Band played in church processions and paraded through the streets on religious feast days, continuing the celebrations into the evening with concerts. The band played throughout the region at various sites between Lake Erie and the Ohio River.
When Lucente moved back to Italy in 1932, band members bought the music from him so the band could play on.
During the Great Depression, members practiced three or four nights a week. "Nobody worked," Iudiciani said. "Sometimes we'd practice until midnight."
When World War II broke out, many of the band members were called to duty. The band broke up but was reorganized in 1946 under the direction of Dan Faraglia.
"Back then, all the members were from Lowellville," Iudiciani noted.
The band was always its members' top priority. Performances even superseded their work obligations, Iudiciani said.
Both he and DePasquale were laborers at Sharon Steel. "During my 73 years in the band, I only missed two jobs," DePasquale said. "Those were because of a death in the family."
Almost all of the band members were just as devoted, and continued playing with the group for decades, leaving only when death, frailty or poor health prevented them from continuing.
As years passed, musicians from throughout the region joined the band. Many had ties to Lowellville -- their parents or grandparents grew up in the village -- or had grown up watching the band perform.
"My mom and her parents are from Lowellville," said Bob Antonucci, who started playing tuba for the Mount Carmel Band a dozen or so years ago while he was a student at Youngstown State University.
Today he is the Mount Carmel Band's director. He's also the director of the Lowellville High School Band and choir.
"We always came to the Lowellville festival," he said, so he was familiar with the band. Someone suggested he join while pursuing his degree in music. "I was the youngest person in the band then," he chuckled. Now the age of members covers a much broader spectrum, from teens to octogenarians.
About 15 of Antonucci's high school students play in the Mount Carmel Band. "A lot of the kids are carrying on a family tradition, and we're really looking for them to carry it on," he said.
A handful of college students, a music teacher, retired band director and a collection of middle-age-and-older musicians, "who play for the fun of it," complete the 30- to 35-member band, the director said. "They like the settings we play in. They like the music. They like the camaraderie."
Leader's spirit
Iudiciani, who is the band manager, "is like a grandfather figure for the kids," Antonucci said. "He gets on them if they're messing up, always treats them to dinner and recognizes the kids at each performance."
Lauren Susany, 19, a Lowellville High School graduate and sophomore at Youngstown State University, joined the Mount Carmel Band four years ago.
"Bananas asked me to join," she said. Almost everyone in Lowellville calls Iudiciani "Bananas."
Schoolmates christened him with the nickname almost 70 years ago -- because they couldn't pronounce his Italian name, he explained -- and it stuck.
"She's a hell of a musician," Iudiciani said, explaining why he asked Susany to join.
Before Bananas asked, she never even thought about joining the band, Susany said. Now she can't imagine life any other way.
Susany describes the Mount Carmel Band to her friends and colleagues at the university as "an Italian marching band. But we don't march, we just kind of stroll down the road."
"They get confused," she said, "even when I play them some of the music, like the baby doll dance, which is a signature song." The music is "all original," she stressed, so if they haven't seen the Mount Carmel Band perform, they are completely unfamiliar with it.
Few women played in the Mount Carmel Band before Susany and her peers joined. But Susany doesn't think it will ever go back to being an all-male, all-Lowellville or all-one-age-group band again.
Love of the music is what draws musicians to the band, she explained, and that crosses all boundaries.
The Lowellville Mount Carmel Band will play at St. Anthony's in Brier Hill on Aug. 22 and at the Pacentrani Club, 2629 Craiger Ave., on Sept. 5.
kubik@vindy.com