Hello everyone!

I have a question about a song on GFII. Does anyone know the name and lyrics of the song that little Vito Corleone sings in his quarantine room when he first arrives at Ellis Island? It seems like it is almost the same melody as the song being played at Anthony's (Vito's grandson) First Holy Communion party. Can anyone interpret for me? Thanks bunches!!

~~ Lollie

I believe that it is called The Immigrant.


Don Cardi

Thanks, DC! Any idea where I can find the song or the translation? It is so beautiful. I'd like to learn it myself and teach it to my students.

Thanks again!

~~ Lollie

Did you search this forum on this topic? I believe someone had asked about the same thing some weeks ago.

No, I haven't tried that. Not sure how to. I'll try to figure it out and if I have problems, I'll let you all know and perhaps you can advise me further on how to do that, ok?

Thanks for your help!

~~ Lollie

Song Lyrics

It is an old Sicilian song and the title, in English, is The Donkey.

Sicilian Babe: Thanks so much! I did do several searches and was not able to find anything on it! I'm not sure if I was searching correctly, but I wasn't able to come up with anything at all. Thanks also for the lyrics! Knowing what the words are makes the already poignant scene even more telling about the person of Vito Corleone.

~~ Lollie

Does anyone know if the kid was in anything else or his that his claim to fame in life a 5-10 minute part in the greatest film ever

Sicilian Babe: One last thing, can you tell me which song it is? (sorry, my Italian is VERY limited!)

~~ Lollie

According to IMBd, Oreste Baldini is now 43 years old (born in Milan, Italy in 1962) and had done only 2 other things besides "Godfather II". He did one Italian movie and another Italian TV series (but it looks like it may have been in English). It says his father was a plain-clothed policeman in Rome. That's all the info it had.

~~ Lollie

U SCICCAREDDU is the name of the song, which in Sicilian means donkey.

Sicilian Babe: WOW! The Sicilian language is very different from the authentic Italian language! I copied the song (I sort of thought the first one was the song about the donkey) and pasted it into an Italian-English translator and there were only a few words that it could translate into English--mostly simple words like "and, love, etc." I couldn't understand why it couldn't translate it. I thought maybe in the cutting and pasting it did something to it, but now I understand why. Sicilian is really a language unto itself. Do you find as a Sicilian that you can understand other Italians from other regions? How very interesting! I had a great-aunt by marriage who was Sicilian and she and my grandmother (from Calabria) would get into it every once in awhile about who made the "real" Italian spaghetti sauce (we call it spaghetti "gravy" in Chicago!), or who made the most authentic Christmas cookies (anise cookies-had a very licorice taste to them), and other stuff like that. It was usually pretty funny until they started swearing at each other in Italian!

~~ Lollie

Sicilian is a language of its own. Although many people mistakenly refer to it as a dialect of Italian, it is actually a mix of the languages of the many countries that invaded Sicily.

Please realize that I'm 2nd generation Italian and that I was born and raised in NY!! I do have family still in Sicily and my family spoke it at home. However, I studied "Italian" in high school and for one semester of college.

I can tell you that even in Sicily the language can vary. My family lives in Partinico, near Palermo. My mother's friend is from Messina, which is the other side of the island. They use completely different words for things!

You probably won't find a translator on the computer, but try to do a Google search and see if the translated version pops up anywhere.

Sicilian Babe: Thanks so much again! I thought you were living in Italy/Sicily somewhere now! That would have been really cool! I can remember as a little girl around Christmas my mother, aunt and Italian grandparents would always gather things together to send to our "cousins" in Italy. We did that for many years and when I got older and we hadn't sent any care packages for a long time, I finally asked who this relative was. Apparently she was a cousin of my mom and her sister. She had a larfe family somewhat better off than they were. But, I don't hear from anyone even after all my Italian relatives have passed away.

I bet Sicily is a real interesting place to go visi.

~~ Lollie