[Life in Italy]

Next time you get to Rome, buy a copy of Wanted in Rome, an entertaining and informative local weekly newsletter. Unlike the other English-language publications for sale at the newsstand, Wanted in Rome is really for residents, so it gives great insight into what it's like to actually live there, not just visit. You can also browse former articles online. One recent article caught our eye, so we reprint it for you here.

Roberto

Roberto Pucci was scarcely five in 1978 when the first subtle signals appeared. Walking had become a bit of a teetering struggle for the youngster. And then, after tests, the family doctor informed his parents: the chubby-cheeked tot had muscular dystrophy and faced an uncertain future of muscular atrophy and declining physical coordination. For almost a decade he gamely forced himself, with help, slowly to climb the staircase of the family flat in northern Rome and to lead as much of a normal life of the average schoolboy as possible, sweating over exams and completing his studies at a nearby liceo artistico. However, Pucci had a further agenda for himself as a young teenager. He loved the piano and made a deal with a classmate who attended a music school: if his chum would come in and teach him everything from that day's lesson, he in turn would help his friend with school homework. Thus began his first hesitant roots of a long love affair with music.

In the summer of 1989, the Italian Union for the Fight Against Muscular Dystrophy (UILDM) organized a summer holiday for young wheelchair-bound patients on the beach of Diamante in Calabria. Pucci went. On hand at this center was Paolo Falessi, 20, an animatore who was "responsible for everyone having fun". They mixed with other holidaymakers and in the course of the vacation the MD kids were swept into an evening join-in cabaret. Alessandro Tordeschi, Daniele Placidi, Massimiliano Sciacqua and the 16-year-old Pucci were wheeled up on stage and did their number. All amateurs, their song nonetheless "outshone all others that night," as Falessi recalls. Slightly stunned, the group got thinking: "Maybe we do have the germ of something going." Besides, they all got along well with one another.

Back home, they began meeting every Monday night. First in a parish hall, then in an old people's social center and then in an abandoned butchery. They grabbed and played music to while away the hours. "They were utterly normal," one friend remembers. But then, three years on, the music started crowding out everything else. A performance here, a performance there. The instruments weren't the everyday sort, because muscular dystrophy robs a person of the strength to play normal ivories or roll drum sticks with vigour. Their pianos were ultra-sensitive electronic keyboards, while drums came out looking, to the inexpert, like a flat black panel with six large "pads" to create different effects. The kids - by then there were 11 of them - reached into their families' pockets to buy the special instruments they needed. There were four drummers, two pianists, three vocalists and two guitarists not affected by MD. They borrowed vans to get themselves from one small venue to another. There were accidents, because there was still a lot of learning to do. Still, as Pucci points out, "We knew we had to give a polished performance in public. The crowds will come to hear you once. But if you're lousy they'll only clap out of pity and never come back." And pity was the last thing that this budding rock band wanted. Falessi put it this way: "It's far more rewarding to pull off a polished performance than to attend 1,000 conferences on the subject of this disease." The momentum grew and so did the message that this increasingly talented group wanted to get across: speak to your peers in their own language, add a sense of humour, talk and explain the disease, and if possible add a little irreverence to the mixture. For starters, they called their band Ladri di Carrozzelle**. Then they sat down and wrote what might be called their theme song, Distrofichetto,*** with the opening line "Chi va in carrozzina disturba anche te… digli di smettere!" **** Their homegrown repertoire is belted out by a winning trio of vocalists: the longhaired and broodingly handsome Tordeschi ("Saso" to his band mates), Manuela Gabarri, who seems to imbue her lines with smiles, and the pixieish Anna Di Stefano, who can torch-sing with the best of them.

Anna

Amedeo Piva, the former head of the city department of social affairs, was in the audience at one of the early concerts: "If any one of us felt a little uncomfortable about watching severely handicapped youths up on stage, listening to the lyrics of Distrofichetto immediately put us at ease. We were in for an evening of entertainment, pure and simple." But Pucci and his friends wanted to go even further. When they formed a cooperative in 1995, it enabled them to take further steps towards professionalism. Funds were now forthcoming to defray the costs of more sophisticated technology. They could travel, even buy four vans of their own, and play in other Italian cities. A sizeable number of faithful fan-volunteers traveled with them to help set up and dismantle their bulky paraphernalia. Once established as familiar faces on television programs and on the stages of the Festa dell'Unità and the May Day celebrations, they then decided it was time to help others. Today, the proceeds from their 80 public performances a year and their recordings go towards not only awarding themselves salaries but also raising funds for the work of UILDM, for the homeless, for day-care centers and for troubled children around Italy. "They may go up on stage in wheelchairs as handicapped people. But when they finish, they leave the stage as stars," one admirer summed it up. And what stars.

Published by Wanted in Rome, February, 2002

** - "Wheelchair Thieves" - a play on Ladri di biciclette, the Italian title of the film Bicycle Thieves
*** - "Little Dystrophy Stud"
**** - "People in wheelchairs disturb the peace, tell them to cut it out!"