I have experienced firsthand the ways in which Nikole centers community building, collective learning, co-creation, authenticity, and deep inquiry in all that she does as an artist, teacher, and student of this music. Nikole's orientation toward accessibility in her teaching of these musical traditions allows people from all backgrounds and experience levels to engage with the music. Nikole can effectively teach online as well as in person, and she guides the development of musical practice and artistic programming with humility and care. She stewards the sharing of the knowledge she has gained from her teachers in a way that cultivates respect for the origins, traditions, and cultures surrounding this music, while also leaving space for iteration, exploration, and play among her students and collaborators. 

Bryce

Nikole brings a warm invitation to all community to join in a horizontal structure of community circle where the power and the making of the music and dance is shared by all and in turn transforms all.  She strives to bring and weave what she has found in Italy and from the traditions to the US on this soil to connect those of the community who are generations from the diaspora as well as non-Italian/Sicilian American community members as well. The weaving of this tradition here has helped me and many community members to find connection, community, growth, care, and experience the ancient technologies of healing for humans and more-than-human kin and the earth. I am grateful to be grafted back into and also create a new this music, dance and healing tradition of my ancestors. I have seen the circle grow and increase its size and capacity with the tending, facilitating and devotion that Nikole brings.

-          Luce

Nikole has dedicated herself to this music: song, dance, and drum — the tarantella, tammurriata, pizzica, siciliana; from lullabies to liturgies, songs of labor and of love — through hands-on, in-person study with many different master teachers as well as her own exploration and research. She not only delves into the historical, geopolitical, cultural, linguistic, mythological, and magical characteristics and stories of this music within their individual, distinct regions, she also plays this music and shares it in a way that brings back to life what this music was initially all about in the first place — healing family and community through ritual and rhythm.

• Shay

Testimonials

I met Nikole through Saint Joseph’s Day in New Orleans where she taught those of us new to tarantella (Italian folk music) how to connect to our ancestry through singing and playing the frame drum. Nikole is dedicated to transferring knowledge of the tamburello and its many rhythms to Sicilians and Italians living in the diaspora. She hosts gatherings on her farm to carry this music into a new context helping paesans connect severed ties from the past. Nikole’s respect of this art form and healing practice shines through her lessons. Her reverence for her teachers in Sicily and the music itself is clear.

 Lucia 

To know Nikole is to witness the art of protecting cultural practice sans gatekeeping.
As she endlessly deepens into her relationship with folk traditions, she transparently extends her learning with heartfelt invitation. With her, every lesson is prefaced with a firm grounding in connection and gratitude for those who have carried it through time. She approaches this with such care that every collective embrace of the music feeds a communication with all of the life of our grounding. She stewards the Sacred in such a way that you can’t help but feel the tendrils of her Spirit tapping yours to join in her celebratory stewardship.

-          Echo