BRONX PHONICS FOR SALE

One of my students from Portland, Oregon came to me before his audition in John Patrick Shanley's "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea."  This young actor needed a Bronx accent, and not just any Bronx accent, but a 1960's Zerega Avenue accent.  So he came to me.  I am from Zerega.  From the sixties.  This wasn't the first time this happened to me.  Actors had imitated me lots before.   One won a prize in Kentucky - being me.  My accent's on the endangered species list.  I like watching old Cagney movies and listening to that way the New York voice used to be portrayed, "Hell Doll, what's it to ya, seeeee?"   The vowel twirls in my father's speech -- you don't hear that anymore on the streets, the 'earl' in 'oil' -- is gone.  It got educated out of our speech.  I don't mind teaching the Bronx accent, or having actors mimic me, but I do mind when it rings untrue.  I hear it even in celebrated actors.  Nobody says "neighborhood" right anymore, right in the Bronx voice way. What went first?  The neighborhoods or the way to say it.  Actors may drop their voice, get the guttural tone, let the first syllable swallow back in their throat, but the midwestern 'or' always rears its ugly head in the middle of the word.  As if we bastardized that syllable too much for others to bear.  
/NAY-bah-huhd/  left when the butchers retired and the boutiques took their places.  The middle syllable suffers from youth watching Mr. Rogers too much.  

I think I know what I sound like.  I know what my friends sounded like.  All those tough girls sitting up in the tree.  DiMella, Spota, Cardascia, Colosimo, all of them.  To my softball buddies!  To how we used to tawlk!  To our Bronx Italian paesans!  Our lost tongues!  To our high school janitor Enrico Caruso!  To our uncensored selves for better or worse!  To 'playing' Italian American!  To 'playing' Bronx!  To teaching Bronx accents!  To being born into a sexy creamy culture!  Madonn!  So few ever know what I'm talking about.  To being imitated!  To imitations of imitations!  To making a career of authenticity!  To playing Italian American and to sell tickets to the show.  Come one Come all.  Hear the accent that's been captured in film and television.  Come see the real people first hand, who have been imitated for your entertainment pleasure.  Say neighborhood.  Say water.  Come learn how to sound authentic.  I'll give you a private lesson in authenticity but you better hit your syllables right.  Bronx phonics for sale.


copyright Annie Lanzillotto 2014