A few weeks ago I was excited to learn that respected Italian journalist and bestselling non-fiction author Gian Antonio Stella would appear at Chicago's Newberry Library with legendary folk singer Gualtiero Bertelli in a collaborative performance that mixes music, reading and photos.

Stella wrote "The Horde: When We Were the Albanians," a few years ago, explaining to Italians -- in case they'd forgotten -- that the way they viewed the newly arrived immigrants -- especially from Albania, but from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc. -- is the same way that Americans, Argentianians, Brazilians, Canadians and other Europeans viewed Italians a century ago.

The book is a catalogue of the anti-Italianism of the era, and certainly one could write a book like "L'Orda" for nearly every ethnic group that ever emigrated in any significant number.

If anyone hadn't known Stella's name yet, "L'Orda" had fixed that. Another book, "Odysseys," focused on the journeys that Italian emigrants faced and the numerous and often deadly bumps in the road along the way.

I put the Italian Language Week event in my calendar but figured I likely wouldn't get there on a Thursday night. Then, unexpectedly, Bertelli sent an email saying a mutual acquaintance mentioned I lived nearby and he looked forward to meeting me. When that email comes, a change of plan is in order.

The Venetian singer and songwriter has been making records longer than I've been alive and two of his recent discs feature his group Compagnia delle Acque performing emigration songs both old and new.

In a rented room at the stately Newberry Library, the Italian Cultural Institute hosted Stella with his computer packed full of images -- many not easy to look at -- Bertelli with accordion and acoustic guitar and three members of the Compagnia: pianist Paolo Favorido, singer Giuseppina Casarin and singer/guitarist Rosanna Zucaro.

The room was full and remained hushed during the performance except for bursts of applause at the end of the songs that added emotional impact to the hard-hitting images illustrating Stella's narration.

Stella's presentation was entirely in Italian, but the lyrics appeared onscreen in English as each song began and some of the projected photos bore English captions, allowing most to follow along. However, someone with zero knowledge of Italian might have struggled to grasp the subtleties of the performance.

What no one could miss was the musical talent on the stage. The songs were rendered with the barest of instrumentation, often just accordion or guitar and piano with a dash of tambourine, and they needed nothing else to transmit the emotionally rich material. The voices, especially those of the women onstage, were especially emotive and the air vibrated palpably with melancholy as Zucaro sang the Calabrian song, "Chiantu De L'Emigranti."

Topical music like the songs that spread like wildfire among emigrants waiting at docks, rocking queasily in steerage and in ticket office lines, reminds us of the real power of music: its ability to unite people, to tell a story and to vent frustration, anger, sorrow, joy in both a personal and a communal way.

Even if Stella, Bertelli and the Compagnia delle Acque had done nothing but remind us of that power, they'd have done us a service. Luckily for us, they did a lot more.