A professional administrator, fundraiser, teacher-scholar, and performing artist, I have led private and public organizations, performed on theater and concert stages, and taught at research and liberal arts institutions in the Midwest and Southeast for more than forty years.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Ohio State University, with degrees from Ohio State and Indiana University in history, education, and public administration, I have built and led research, educational, policy development, direct service, and performing arts organizations in Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina, and have provided contractual service and consultation through VellaniAssociates℠ in fifteen U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, one Italian region, and one Mexican state.

I am the immediate descendant of Emilian emigrants, whose families have lived among the Reggio Emilia and Modena provincial border farming communities in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy since at least the late 1400s. My grandfather, Leonida Tranquillo Vellani, emigrated to Ohio in June 1913 aboard the SS Niagara, and his spouse, Virginia Aldina Reverberi, and my father’s four elder siblings, aboard the SS America, followed in September 1915, supported by my grandfather’s work on the steel foundry floor, where he helped guide the flow of molten metal into steel casting and transfer ladles.

My early interest in traditional Italian song was fueled by my relationship with Leonida and my aunts, Desolina Vellani DiNucci and Emma Vellani Soiu. The Reverberi and Vellani families were from the Po River plain in the traditional Emilia region, source of a rich tradition of community singing and the home of one of Italy's most famous traditional singers, Giovanna Daffini (Mantova Province), and her accompanist spouse, Vittorio Carpi (Reggio Emilia Province). Leonida was an avid community singer with a repertoire of traditional, as well as anti-clerical and syndicalist songs and aphorisms. As a teenager, I preserved some of Leonida’s and his daughters’ songs on audio tape. A chance meeting with world-renowned folklorist and scholar, Alessandro Portelli, at the Highlander School in New Market, Tennessee, in the early 1980s helped me to understand more fully the unique, rich legacy I had gained from my family, and inspired me to continue my study and performance of Italian traditional melody and song.

I continue to collect melodies and lyrics from family and friends reflective of the reality of the uprooted and resettled. Growing up in the Hilltop Community of Columbus, Ohio, I learned how to sing in Latin before I could read in English. A solo and ensemble musician, my musical performances draw upon source material from lands and peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the waters of the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico.

I am a co-founder of the acoustic-electric, roots, rhythm, and roll music ensemble, Mebanesville, performing “music without borders from the roads we travel” since spring 2000. In spring 2022, along with Peggy Boswell and Iryna Tkachenko of Mebanesville, and other musicians associated with North Carolina’s growing Ukrainian-American community, I helped co-found Червона Калина (Chervona Kalyna), performing a range of traditional and contemporary Ukrainian music.

I have shared my life and work with my collaborator and spouse, Margaret L. “Peggy” Boswell, a native of Alamance County, North Carolina, since we began our relationship in the spring of 1980. We have lived together in Mebane, North Carolina, since spring 1995, and are the proud parents of our son, Ben, resident in Raleigh, and our daughter Ginny and her husband George, and their son / our grandson, Ezra, resident in Greensboro. After my family, I could not be prouder to have been honored as the 2017 Outstanding Italian American in NC by OSIA Lodge 2817, Raleigh, in recognition of my contributions to the study, promotion, and popular performance of Italian and Italian-American folk and contemporary music throughout North Carolina. A co-founder of Festa Italiana Raleigh, Inc., I am a long-time, at-large member of the Order of the Sons and Daughters of Italy in America.

I envision Festa Italiana Raleigh’s annual celebrations and fundraising efforts growing to a weekend of cultural and philanthropic events, anchored in a “street fair” experience, while expanding into other forms of exhibition, including seminars, panels, film screenings, and quality art, craft, and cultural mercati, celebrating world-wide Italian culture and the values of creativity, quality, craft, beauty, family, and cultural humanism.

I envision our Festa operations as leading to the development of an ever-growing, community-based network of individuals and organizations committed to celebrating worldwide Italian culture.