Tuesday, July 20, 2010

La Golondrina - Kun kesä on


This song has been discussed a while back in the Finnpicks comments (see ealier entry). Now it is a suitable time to present it here. Susanna Nio (real name Susanna Lönnberg) sung "Kun kesä on" (When it is summer) in 1971. As you can hear from her voice she was quite young and in deed she was a some kind of child star at the time. She's still in the music business, doing gigs as a singer fronting the dance orchestra DozenBeat. The "Kun kesä on" song has become a classic summer song, both for children and adults. The original song "La Golondrina" (The Swallow) has been versioned in Finnish by several artists, with at least 4 or 5 different lyrics. The lyrics for Susanna's song were made by famous female lyricist Tuula Valkama. The song was written by a Mexican composer Narciso Serradell Sevilla alreay in 1883. The first recording with Spanish lyrics was done by Mexican singer Carlo Francisco in 1906, and we are proud to present it here. The lyrics of "La Golondrina" the image of a migrating swallow to describe sentiments of longing for one's homeland. In 1961 the American songwriter duo Felice & Boudleaux Bryant provided the English lyrics, and the song got the title "She Wears My Ring". The original version with these lyrics was recorded by a Canadian country singer Jimmy Bell (real name Jimmy Sweeney). It has since been recorded by many famous artists and Solomon Burke got a big hit with it in 1968. The tune has widely been used as a wedding song.

Updated on 17.01.2011: added the first Finnish version "Pääskynen" (The swallow) in 1960 by Seija Lampila.

Here's the bunch:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for this interesting info about "La Golondrina"/"Las Golondrinas"/"She Wears My Ring"/"Kun kesä on"/etc...
I love this Mexican song of Narciso Serradell Sevilla (Alvarado, Veracruz, 1843 – Ciudad de México, 1910) very much and have already more than 500 versions /instrumentals & songs. In Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese... This song is touching in many ways... Here is not enough space to write more about this song, only to say that among others, one version: Karel Gott-"Prazdny dum" ("Empty House")in Czech is so touching and beautiful. This Mexican song "La Golondrina" of Narciso Serradell, sometimes is titled as "Las Golondrinas", also is often thought of as "traditional"(!). Also, there are beautiful versions titled "Adios Amor"/Lorenzo De Monteclaro. The English version is "She Wears My Ring", known by recordings by Elvis, Roy Orbison, etc...but also there exists the same song with different words and title ("I Wear His Ring").Etc...etc...
It's hard to find more versions of this song. There are songs titled "La Golondrina", but they are different songs, as well as "Las Golondrinas" < and there exist few songs titled "She Wears My Ring" -but they are different songs too! What a mess! Also, I know about "She Wears My Ring" in Chinese/Mandarin language, by Rita & Sakura /Taiwan/Singapore/, but one man sent me a message that "he cannot transfer it from LP to mp3 (!)"-or he just won't help me, etc...
So, thank you so much for this Finnish version here. If anyone can help me about my collection, please mail me at: darko47darko@yahoo.com
Thank you so much in advance.
Slobodan

Anonymous said...

A bit late, but I see my friend Slobodan already thanked you for this Finnish version, here I add my thanks.
Regards
Machteld

Anonymous said...

*Thank you for Seija Lampila - "Pääskynen" /your new upload/! Who is more interested to get some .mp3 versions of "La Golondrina" w.w., please let me know.
Best wishes, Slobodan,
darko47darko@yahoo.com