Heavenly One (Cielito Lindo)
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 14/09/2020

Day 180 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Frito/Lay used the chorus of this song as an ad jingle during my childhood. Now that I've heard to actual song and it's contents, it makes me mad the song was ruined in that way.

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (published by Oxford Press) claims the song was popular in Mexico before 1840.

Sandburg writes in 1927: "In the southwestern states on the Mexican border are a million or more citizens of the United States, having Latin, North American Indian, or Nordic mother tongues, who sing Cielito Lindo only in Spanish. The text and tune here are from Luis Morones of Chicago, in the version most familiar to him since birth and education in Mexico, and residence in border states."

Having abandoned trying to sing the Spanish lyrics mentioned above, I attempted my own translation/paraphrase.