Eight-Piece Traditional & Contemporary
Acoustic-Electric Italian Melody & Song 
Mebane, N.C.

Listen to Mebanesville in their seventh appearance at Festa Italiana at 5 p.m. Saturday, September 20, in Apex, N.C.

Mebanesville introduces and delights live audiences with the best in roots, rhythm, and worldwide roll, from the Mediterranean Basin to the British and Irish Isles, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.  

Mebanesville has brought musica italiana popolare e moderna (traditional and contemporary) to audiences at some of the most popular clubs, wineries, restaurants, and concert stages, as well as universities and community organizations, in the Triangle and Triad of North Carolina and beyond. The ensemble was a featured music guest on Frank Stasio’s syndicated radio program The State of Things on the PBS affiliate WUNC radio. 

The ensemble has also collaborated with filmmakers, cultural foundations, and theatre and dance companies, including PlayMakers Repertory Company at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Paul Green Foundation, the Murphey School Radio Program, Odyssey Stage, and The Dance Cure, all based in Chapel Hill, N.C.; the Gallery Players in Burlington, N.C.; the Open Road Theatre and The Raleigh Little Theatre in Raleigh, N.C.; the Playwrights’ Forum in Greensboro, N.C.;  Artauro Productions in Durham, N.C.; and the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music of New York City. . 

Of Mebanesville’s latest album, Town & Country, the (Burlington, N.C.) Times News’ long-time cultural critic Charity Apple said, “Like a typical Mebanesville performance, the album includes something ancient, something new, something borrowed, something brewed—but all thoroughly Mebanesville in the rendering.” North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green said of Mebanesville’s album: “All praises for Mebanesville, Town & Country … a potent mixed brew of cultural entanglements that remind us over and over again how music tenderly invites us across both geographical and spiritual borders. Drink these songs slowly and fully as they open our hearts and arms wider!”   

Mebanesville co-founder Loreins “Larry” Vellani is the immediate descendant of Reggio Emilian (Arşân ed Rèz) emigrants. Larry has performed with some of the most respected interpreters of social and narrative song and dance (in English, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian), including Guy and Candy Carawan, Barbara Dane, Mimi Fariña, Ronnie Gilbert, Rhiannon Giddens, Beverly Grant, Si Kahn, Fran McKendree, Natalie Marrone, Michela Musolino, Holly Near, Bruce Phillips, Fabio Turchetti, Baldemar Velasquez, and Salvatore Villani. He also has performed with some of the Southeast’s most renowned traditional Anglo and African American musicians, including Lonny Austin, Marvin Gaster, Tommy Jarrell, Lauchlin Shaw, Paul Taylor, and Joe Thompson. 

Larry and his Mebanesville co-founder and life-partner Peggy Boswell are citizens of the Republic of Italy as well as the United States. Larry is the recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Italian American in North Carolina for his contributions to the study and popular performance of Italian and Italian-American folk and contemporary music throughout North Carolina.

Learn more about Mebanesville here (and on Facebook)

Ahead of their Festa performance, listen to Mebanesville here (and here) (and here) (and here)!