Talk:Saturday in the Park

Singing Italian Songs…

This may not be the right place to ask this, but I would like to know exactly what is being sung by the Italian man selling ice-cream. I have tried syllabifying standard Italian into a feasible sentence and, zero. I am also cognizant of the fact that there are around 30+ (basic) dialects of Italian and am too overflooded with the phonetic possibilities of them all to try to apply this phrase. Here's basically what the phrase sounds like (in IPA):

/ˈɛ.ku̹ ˈʋa.re i se ˈn̪a.d̪e/

which in Italian could (perhaps) be spelt:

Eccu varre hi se nade.

Again, I am uncertain of the actual written syllabic division. I have looked at lyric websites and they pretty much all say the same thing: (improvised Italian). I did see one attempt to transcribe the phrase which looked something like ekoo varee ee say nardee which, to me, seems worse than my own guess of the phrase. It is possible that he (Lamm) did use improvised Italian, but I suspect that the phrase means something in some Italian dialect. Can anyone help me here? —or— ♬Does anybody really know what phrase it is?♬ Does anybody really care? I do. Please help! Mille grazie!—Strabismus 20:50, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"Eicay vare, eise narde" is what the majority uses today. Hope this makes sense. - Dated 28 August 2009

In my grandmother's southern Italian (Pugliese) dialect, "Eh, compadre," literally, "Hey, godfather of my child," which she used figuratively for many close friends, etc., that weren't literally family, sounds a lot like the first half of what the ice cream man says. No idea on the second half, though... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 35.11.168.177 (talk) 17:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

IMO, it seems to me to be the first line of a happy popular Italian song titled "Eh Cumpari". It is also the first line of every verse of "Eh Cumpari". The words are "Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari". If you watch Lamm's lips on a popular public video site that features music videos he appears to be singing "Eh cumpari, ci'sunari", the "ci vo" seemingly condensed to "ci'sunari". This song is certainly one you might hear from a man selling ice cream to entertain and attract customers, especially with "people dancing, people laughing". These are the words I use when I perform this tune and it works splendidly. The original melody of "Eh Cumpari" can be inserted into Lamm's musical structure without missing a beat, "Eh Cumpari, ci'sunari, can you dig it, yes I can". His own melody in these bars are very close to it. The i's at the end of each word are pronounced as long a's in English or like the first word itself, "eh". This makes the most sense to me, especially if they are indeed adlibbed Italian words based on a snippet of a song he can't quite recall. Hope this helps. Stopinthenameoflove (talk) 20:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned above, there is a video, easily found online, of Chicago performing "Saturday in the Park" at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago, in 1973. In this performance, Robert Lamm clearly sings, "Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari," no elisions or contractions. He even rolls his "R"s and attempts proper Italian pronunciation. The song, as sung by Julius La Rosa, was a huge hit in the early 1950s (hitting number 2 on the Billboard charts). So it is entirely likely that Lamm knew the song. I don't know what else needs to known to settle the matter. Given that Lamm sings the lyrics clear as day in the 1973 concert, this information should be inserted into the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.50.150.150 (talk) 10:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

http://scn.wiki.x.io/wiki/Eh_Cumpari — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.42.87.17 (talk) 20:01, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Just like to confirm what the previous post says: Eh cumpari, ci vo' sunari - has all the hallmarks of Southern Italian, or a variety of Sicilian.

Standard Italian would be: Eh, compare, ci vuoi suonare (could you play for us). In Sicilian, compare become cumpari, very common in Sicilian and the far South, which usually means a very close family friend, or it can be a form of greeting to someone from your village, similar to Hey, paesano!

Ci vuoi suonare means could you play for us (as in play an instrument). In Sicilian, Italian suonare becomes sunari, meaning to play an instrument.

Vuoi has a number of variations in Sicilian, usually something like "voi", which gets shortened to vo' in day to day speech.

The post above mentions Pugliese, of course the far Southern part of Puglia speak a dialect very close to Sicilian and considered a part of the Sicilian family of languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.66.9 (talk) 12:07, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Personnel

Right now it reads: "Peter Cetera – lead vocals (chorus)." Not to go down a music semantical rabbit hole over song structure, but if there's a "chorus" (refrain) in this song it's the "Saturday in the park" bit, which is sung by Robert Lamm. Peter sings the "People laughing, really smiling" (etc.) parts, which might be thought of as a bridge. I'd recommend simply removing "(chorus)" from that section, letting the pair share lead vocal attribution.O0drogue0o (talk) 12:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Saturday in the Park which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)