Upstate New York, 1940s. A little Italian-American kid named Ronald Padavona watches his grandmother walk to the steel mill every day to bring his grandfather lunch.

And every time something feels off (a strange look, a bad word, a black cat) she does this thing with her hand.

Index finger and pinky up. Everything else down.

The corna.

Little Ronald doesn't think much of it. It's just nonna being nonna. Just part of the furniture of an Italian family.

Fast forward thirty years.

Little Ronald is now Ronnie James Dio.

Yes, Dio, as in the Italian word for God, because subtlety was never a rock star's strong suit — and he's about to replace Ozzy Osbourne as the singer of Black Sabbath.

One problem.

Ozzy had a signature move. The peace sign. Every show, every photo.

Ronnie refuses to copy him. He needs his own thing.

So one night, on stage, he raises his hand and does the only gesture that ever meant anything to him.

His grandmother's gesture. The one against the malocchio — the evil eye.

The crowd goes wild.

And just like that, an ancient Italian protection sign (the same one you'll still see flashed in Sicilian markets today when someone mentions bad luck out loud) becomes the universal symbol of heavy metal.

The "devil horns" thrown by millions of fans at every rock concert on the planet.

A gesture meant to ward off the devil, adopted by the genre that pretends to summon him.

Nonna would have something to say about that.

Here's the part I love most. Dio never claimed he invented it. He said claiming credit would be like saying he invented the wheel — somebody did it long before him, he just made it famous.

That's Italy for you.

We have a saying: ne sappiamo una più del diavolo. We know one more trick than the devil himself.

You think Italy gave the world Leonardo, opera, and good coffee — and then quietly retired. Meanwhile we're out here shaping rock and roll with our grandmothers' superstitions.

This is the thing about Italian culture that no guidebook will ever show you. It's not in the museums. It's in the hands. The gestures, the rituals, the small daily magic passed down from people who never wrote any of it down.

When I take families into Sicily, this is what we go looking for. Not the postcard. The corna. The living stuff.

Because anyone can visit Italy.

Very few people get to recognize their grandmother in a stadium of 50,000 metalheads.

A presto,

Fabiana🤘 - la Capitana rock

P.S. If you've ever felt a pull toward Italy you can't quite explain — maybe it's your own nonna, working her magic from somewhere. Reply to this email, I’d love to know more about your story!

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