Italian captivates and moves you with its melody, it is high and low notes in operatic composition, its upbeat vowel sounds expressed with a musical tone, animation, and a kinesthetic that can’t help but cause you to physically move your body, your arms, your hands, lips, eyes and brows. You can’t help but dance a little as you speak Italian. It’s like a good song that you can’t help but dance to as you listen. Italian reaches all your senses where a common word like ‘towel’ becomes poetry with asciugamano (ah-shoo-ga-mah-no) and ‘I love you’ cannot be expressed only in one way; it is not enough, it needs two expressions--ti amo and ti voglio bene, (tee-vo-yo-beh-neh), the former, a more intimate and romantic type of love and the latter signifying a deeper more committed sense of love yet both full of passion and depth like an opera. The Italian language personifies the Italian way of life, its rhythm, its melodious charm and allure, and its strong connection to family and those we care for deeply. If Italian captivates and moves you, imagine what its music does to you. Songs we know such as those sung by American-Italian crooners like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Louis Prima have stuck and stuck so deeply into the American culture that we think of Italian music as ‘a big pizza pie’ and ‘that’s amore’ as we wait for ‘Angelina…the waitress at the pizzeria.’ These are great songs and sounds, mind you, yet what about the Italian songs we didn’t even know were originally Italian and were made popular by American and English artists and musicians? Do you know of any? Will you know them once you hear them? Did you know they were originally Italian songs?
There is something about the Italian language that captivates and moves you unlike its Romance relatives. Its Romance relatives are beautiful too yet they captivate and move you in a very different way. French is elegant, rich and lush like its food yet it sometimes gets stuck in a place that is in between your throat and the top of you palate. Spanish is current, lively and rhythmically rough like its country but at times its musicality sounds muted. Portuguese is unique, resembling a combination of the sounds of Italian, French and Spanish making for a particular harmony like the notes of ships as they come towards its Lisbon port and Romanian has a Slavic thread making for an interesting tone and combination of East and West yet it does not captivate like its phonetic Italian relative.
Italian captivates and moves you with its melody, it is high and low notes in operatic composition, its upbeat vowel sounds expressed with a musical tone, animation, and a kinesthetic that can’t help but cause you to physically move your body, your arms, your hands, lips, eyes and brows. You can’t help but dance a little as you speak Italian. It’s like a good song that you can’t help but dance to as you listen. Italian reaches all your senses where a common word like ‘towel’ becomes poetry with asciugamano (ah-shoo-ga-mah-no) and ‘I love you’ cannot be expressed only in one way; it is not enough, it needs two expressions--ti amo and ti voglio bene, (tee-vo-yo-beh-neh), the former, a more intimate and romantic type of love and the latter signifying a deeper more committed sense of love yet both full of passion and depth like an opera. The Italian language personifies the Italian way of life, its rhythm, its melodious charm and allure, and its strong connection to family and those we care for deeply. If Italian captivates and moves you, imagine what its music does to you. Songs we know such as those sung by American-Italian crooners like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Louis Prima have stuck and stuck so deeply into the American culture that we think of Italian music as ‘a big pizza pie’ and ‘that’s amore’ as we wait for ‘Angelina…the waitress at the pizzeria.’ These are great songs and sounds, mind you, yet what about the Italian songs we didn’t even know were originally Italian and were made popular by American and English artists and musicians? Do you know of any? Will you know them once you hear them? Did you know they were originally Italian songs?
Let’s see and let’s hear some original Italian songs made popular by American and English musicians…Let’s begin in 1898 when the now famous song O Sole Mio (Capurro/di Capua) was written. Many different artists have covered O Sole Mio but did you know that Elvis Presley covered the song in 1960 into It’s Now or Never?
Elvis also remade other Italian songs such as, Surrender, a remake of Torna a Surriento and Domenico Modugno’s song Io remade by Elvis and called, Ask Me. Domenico Modugno is considered an Italian icon in the category of singer-song-writer, his music is know all over the world and his songs have been translated into many different languages. Modugno’s song Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (1958) otherwise known as Volare which has been covered by many artists including David Bowie, Barry White and in Spanish by the Gipsy Kings (1989).
Adriano Celentano is another well known and popular Italian singer from the 1960’s that covered a number of English and American songs which built his popularity in Italy; however, some of his own songs were covered such as, Il Ragazzo della Via Gluck done by Verdella Smith and retitled Tar and Cement and the 1961 song 24.000 Baci, redone in English, Four An’Twenty Thousand Kisses by Roy Young.
Italian singer Tony Renis, stage name for Elio Cesari had several of his songs covered, the most famous being Quando, Quando, Quando (1962) by Engelbert Humperdinck.
Spero che vi siate divertiti…I hope you all had fun…there are more original Italian songs that were covered and in Part Two of the post we’ll cover some more of them…a presto! See You Soon!
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Ciao, io mi chiamo Anna
E' un piacere conoscervi. Nice meeting all of you. I am an Italian teacher in the States and have been teaching for almost 20 years. I love teaching Italian yet Public Education has changed since I started; or it may be that I have changed since I started--maybe a little bit of both. I was granted a sabbatical year to work on a project about my family that metamorphosed into something bigger than my family. It developed into a website called the Story of Silence. It speaks about seven women and the stories they tell about their personal experiences during WW2. I am hoping it can develop further into a resource for teachers of all subjects and for life-long learners in general who believe in the power of Storytelling and its capacity to connect us in the most human of ways. Storytelling lead me to create For the Love of All Things Italian as well. I love Italy and thought this would be another way of sharing Italy with others who have the same passion and love for this breathtakingly beautiful yet unabashedly flawed and enigmatic country--it is what makes Italians so very human. You'll find stories from different areas of Italy I have had personal experiences in; however, I highlight Sicily. It's where I go every year and where a little piece of my heart remains until I return. Archives
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