La musica

This week in my class I am going to be talking about music. I am excited because Italian music is one of my favorite things! I just thought I would share some of what I'm going to be talking about. Some of it is pretty interesting! :) At least to me!

First off-did you know that every year the Italians hold a music festival in Sanremo, Italy? Appropriately, it is titled Il festival di Sanremo. Much like American Idol, Italians vote on the winners. The difference is that in this competition-the song, not the singer is most emphasized. It's all about good songwriting. Very often singer/ songwriters who win go onto big success. One example is Andrea Bocelli.

Did you further know that it was at this very festival that the song, "Nel blu dipinto di blu," was sung by Domenico Modugno?

You might know the song as "Volare," popularized in America by Dean Martin-among others.

It's the only song by an Italian artist to hit the top of the American Billboard 100 charts.

Something else...

Have you ever heard the song O Sole Mio? If you have, does it sound familiar to you? It should.

Now think about Elvis' song "Its now or never." Yes that's right-it's the same song! The melody for It's now or never was taken from O Sole Mio. So you could've been singing an Italian song all along without knowing it! hehe...

One last thing I thought I would share. Italian artist Laura Pausini recently released a song with British star James Blunt. The song is called, "Primavera in anticipo." It's all about telling someone they have given you a rebirth-an early spring. It's sung partly in Italian and partly in English. I love it. I love when Italian artists collaborate with English speaking ones because you get to see the English speakers singing in Italian and the Italian ones singing in English! Makes me very happy. :) I'm going to try to include videos for both songs in this post. I just love youtube because I can use it to show my students great footage of old songs like Nel blu dipinto di blu, along with current music videos!

Can't wait for my lesson! :)