Original Owner Rocco Costello (Italian, 1879 – 1956)

Zampogna

early 20th century

Place madeSouthern Italy

Wood, including olive and possibly cherry, leather, string, yarn, metal, wax, bone, Arundo Donax (type of Mediterranean bamboo) reeds

Overall: 46 × 6 1/2 × 5 in. (116.8 × 16.5 × 12.7 cm)

Gift of the family of Rocco Costello

2018.1.1

Rocco Costello (1879−1956), the original owner of this zampogna, was known as New York’s last Italian bagpiper. Costello (neé Castelli) was born in Armento, Italy, where he lived until he immigrated to the United States in 1902. He and his family settled on Sullivan Street in New York’s Little Italy. Costello made his living as a mechanic, an electrician, and elevator operator, and played the zampogna, or Italian bagpipe, and ciaramella, similar to a recorder, to supplement his income. He played around Greenwich Village, at church and holiday festivals, and in concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also played with such venerable musicians such as Pete Seeger and John Cage, on the Ed Sullivan radio show, and with his own group “Costello and Co.” Zampogni are types of regional bagpipes native to rural Italy. Often played together with ciaramelli, zampogni are associated with southern Italian and Sicilian herders who typically played the bagpipes while tending their flocks. The instruments have been played for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and are said to have accompanied Hannibal’s army during their invasion of central Italy in 217 B.C. Several cultures (Polish, and most famously, Scottish, for example) have histories of similar bagpipe instruments associated with rural communities.

DescriptionFour turned wood chanters (pipes) and drones (smaller pipes) secured within a wood base stock; one chanter has six hand-bored holes; each chanter and drone joined by bone or reed tenons; two string and yarn tassels, used to mute sounds, secured to drones with leather cords.

ClassificationsENTERTAINMENT & RECREATION