Lyrics to “Domingo no Parque” (Sunday in the park) by Gilberto Gil (1967)
Recorded with Os Mutantes for the LP Philips III Festival of Brazilian Popular Music (1967)
—
The king of play — hey, José
The king of trouble — hey, João
One worked at the market — hey José
The other in construction — hey, João
Last week, on the weekend
João decided not to fight
On Sunday afternoon, he went out in a hurry
And he didn’t go to Ribeira to play
Capoeira
He didn’t go over there, to Ribeira
He went to court [a girl]
José as always on the weekend
Took down his stall and vanished
He went to take, on Sunday, a stroll in the park
Over there, near Boca do Rio
In the park was where he first caught sight of
Juliana
There he saw
Juliana on the wheel with João
A rose and an ice cream in her hand
Juliana, his dream, an illusion
Juliana and the friend João
The thorn on the rose wounded Zé [José]
And the ice cream froze his heart
The ice cream and the rose — oh, José
The rose and the ice cream — oh, José
Hi, dancing on the chest — oh, José
Of the playful José — oh, José
The ice cream and the rose — oh, José
The rose and the ice cream — oh, José
Hi, turning over in the mind — oh, José
Of the playful José — oh, José
Juliana turning –hi, turning
Hi, on the ferris wheel — hi, turning
The friend João — hi, João
The ice cream is strawberry — it’s red
Hi, turning, and the rose — it’s red
Hi, turning, turning — it’s red
Hi, turning, turning — look at the knife!
Look at the blood on his hand — hey, José
Juliana on the ground — hey, José
Another body down — hey, José
His friend João — hey, José
Tomorrow there’s no market — hey, José
There’s no more construction — hey, João
There’s no more playing — hey, José
There’s no more trouble — hey, João
— Interpretation —
Gilberto Gil began this song with the intention of writing something innovative — with a strong regional influence from his native Bahia — for the III Festival de Música Popular Brasileira with TV Record.
The song uses berimbau — the single-string percussion instrument of African origin used in the capoeira circles so characteristic of Bahia — and the music, pattern of singing (call and response), and lyrics follow a folkloric form that recalls the songs sung in capoeira circles. Gil explains, “The song was born, then, from the desire to replicate the folk song, and represent the archetypes of capoeira music, but with exclusive, specific facts: with such a romance, like a Mexican story.”
To begin, Gil introduces his characters– the market worker and the capoeira player. Much of the story that follows came about through the rhymes that Gil discovered as he wrote: to rhyme with the Portuguese word for vanished, sumiu, he thought of Boca do Rio, a beachside neighborhood in Salvador that was a popular hang-out among Gil and his friends in the 1960s and 1970s; when he thought of Boca do Rio, he thought of a ferris wheel he had seen there, and jotted down “ferris wheel” as a note to himself to work the word into the song.
At that point, he explains, it was necessary to bring João and José together. João hadn’t gone “over there” (lá) to Ribeira (another neighborhood in Salvador), but had gone instead to “to court” (namorar = flirt, court, make love, etc. ), to rhyme namorar (pronounced namorá) with “lá.” Here the two characters come together. One is audacious and open, the other timid and withdrawn. The latter is in love with Juliana but doesn’t have the courage to tell her, and could only dream of talking to her; he finds the bold friend João flirting with her in the park after meeting her for the first time, and the sense of disappointment and injustice is too much for José to bear.
To conclude, Gil begins making allusions to blood: the ice cream becomes red strawberry ice cream, and the rose is a red rose, and then the cut of the knife — “a sudden impulse, a sudden manifestation of a power within José that he didn’t know he had,” explains Gil.
Gil wrote “Domingo no Parque” in the Hotel Danúbio in São Paulo, where he lived for a year. At the time, he was married to the singer Nana Caymmi — daughter of Dorival Caymmi — and, after a day spent with a friend of Dorival’s, Gil was thinking a lot about Bahia, and was inspired to write the song. He says he and Nana got to the hotel around 2 a.m.; he stayed up all night writing, and recorded “Domingo no Parque” the next day.
The song came in second place at the III Festival of Música Popular Brasileira, but was definitely the most innovative, and together with Caetano Veloso‘s contribution “Alegria, Alegria,” represented the beginning of what Gil and Caetano Veloso referred to as their “universal sound.” Universal sound defied norms for Brazilian popular music, incorporating influences from many genres and from all over the world — a revolutionary experiment in Brazilian popular music at the time, when many artists and critics were fighting to defend the purity of Brazilian music. The universal sound came to represent the nascent Tropicália movement.
Main sources for this post: Gilberto Gil’s commentary on the song in Carlos Rennó’s Gilberto Gil: Todas as Letras (2003, Gilberto Gil) and Christopher Dunn’s Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counter-Culture.
Post by Victoria Broadus
Lyrical Brazil 
great article, thanks!
I have listened to this song many times, but I do not speak much Portuguese, so I had no idea what the lyrics meant. I always assumed it was about a happy Sunday afternoon in the park with Juliana. Thanks for this great article!