With the passing of Elaina Del Rossi, the Monadnock Region has suffered a grievous loss of cultural heritage.
Her contribution to the vitality of our region’s folk music scene cannot be overstated. Elaina was a true believer in a world of cynics, a woman who brought folk music to life in ways both profound and intimate. She never explained this conviction to me explicitly, but it was evident in her every movement in public life.
As an aspiring musician, you need to learn how, what, why and where to play, and you need instruments and dignified venues.
Elaina literally dedicated her life to addressing each of those needs. We’re talking about a woman who knew hundreds of songs, played multiple instruments, shared oral tradition and ancient folk songs with pre-literate children for affordable rates, owned a music venue — and not just any music venue, but an extremely classy place with incredible food and wonderful hospitality — owned a musical instrument store, taught herself the tedious and demanding trade of luthier work and traveled far and wide trading instruments and was a deeply legit working musician. It would be much more time-efficient to list the ways in which Elaina Del Rossi didn’t keep folk music alive.
I met Elaina when I was 4 years old. A curious lover of music with an early life-changing eye injury that denied me many of the joys and dignities of the visual world, I loved music and needed a way to bloom.
Elaina gently taught me not just how to hold chord shapes and read notes, but to value the deep history and spiritual power of American roots music. “Amazing Grace,” “Streets Of Laredo,” “Corrina,” “Danny Boy” — these are the songs that map the stories, beliefs and struggles of our people across the centuries, irreplaceable threads of the fabric of our collective culture.
As a teacher of young children, Elaina was intuitive to the point of genius. She taught me just enough to get me going, having fun with music, never threw too much at me at once but also pushed me, covered all the fundamentals with me, and literally taught me songs that I still play on stage 37 years later.
I have subsequently led the life of an itinerant folk musician. That’s who I am to this day, primarily paying my humble way in this world by strumming an acoustic guitar.
My first chord, my first guitar, my first song, my first time singing, my first stage experience, my first mentor — Elaina gave me all. God only knows how many people like me got put onto the love of folk music directly by Elaina.
To the rest of the community, the non-musicians, she was a steady fixture of great integrity. She ran many, many miles along these old roads, attended mass regularly, and through the Del Rossi’s Trattoria in Dublin, provided one of the Monadnock region’s finest leisure establishments.
As a musician, I can tell you I have played many places where there’s nowhere comfortable to sit, food’s not that great, the bathroom smells bad and you’re glad your parents aren’t there to see this. You feel embarrassed to invite people who know you too well out to a lotta joints. You ignore the overcooked entree, the obscenities scrawled on the bathroom door, the line somebody forgot on the back of the toilet … cause you’re trying to stay in the dream, trying to remain a believer. Del Rossi’s was not that kinda joint. Del Rossi’s was a place of such classic and enduring appeal that I truly believe it would not have been out of place to bring Abraham Lincoln to such an establishment.
In saying goodbye, I have struggled to decide what to call Elaina. She was much more than a mere music teacher or restauranteur; she was an all-encompassing master of ceremonies for an ongoing cultural tradition, an innkeeper mixed with a teacher mixed with a performer, who tied it all together with a worldview based on the simple truth that providing a space for people to gather for food, drink and music is an ancient and essentially good — even noble — thing to do in this world.
An American roots musician is forever chasing something that slips through our fingers just as we start to learn how to grasp it. You crave authenticity and fear being a corny photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, and you think your hometown is boring so you get in the van and you drive all over creation and you knock all sorts of doors and you drink this and smoke that and have a tiny bit of glory and much more humble pie than you ever believed you could, and after all your running around, you accidentally come back home and wander into Del Rossi’s Trattoria, just down the road from Mom and Dad and all of a sudden it hits you: this is American roots. To truly summit the highest mountain as an American roots musician, you gotta return to your roots … and it turns out your American roots have been there all along, over the river and through the woods, just down the way from where it all began.
The imprint on the supple mind of a young picker made by the intertwined smell of garlic and sound of a mandolin being tuned upstairs: this is culture.
People talk about being “the real deal.” The deal doesn’t get realer than Elaina Del Rossi. In my estimation, that woman was nothing less than a guardian of cultural heritage, a steward of ancient folklore tradition, the very definition of “American roots.” I guess that’s what I’d call her. If I manage to turn out half as authentic as Elaina Del Rossi, I’ll be very proud of myself indeed.
About a decade ago, I stopped in at the instrument shop under the pretext of needing some strings. Really, I was there to strum a guitar in front of her and tell her I was a working musician. Her quiet nod of approval at my guitar chops and my lifestyle meant everything to me; that was perhaps the proudest moment in my lifetime as a musician.
The last time I saw her, a few years back, we passed each other on the rail trail out in the swamp area near the path to the Children’s Woods. Though she didn’t recognize me, she understood that I knew her and spoke to me with the quiet Yankee dignity of a woman who was truly of this place.
I turned around once after going some ways and saw her walk off amongst the New Hampshire trees.
So long, Elaina. Thanks for the songs.
Michael
Michael Francis McCarthy grew up in Jaffrey and now lives in Saugerties, New York, home of his heroes, The Band, known for the song that includes the lyric “Take a load off, Fanny …” He plays music up and down the East Coast, and mostly in the Hudson Valley region of New York.
Editor’s note: The author’s description was updated to correct the reference to the lyric.