TUTTI FRUTTI
Tutti Frutti is one of my
favourite Romani songs, and as a project to get people more involved in world
music, I thought it would be a good plan to arrange this song and play it in a
group of my fellow students. The song is strophic, so made up of three verses
and choruses, and also features a solo which would usually be played on a
traditional woodwind instrument, but I have written it for trumpet. The lyrics
are actually in the Romani language, so I thought it would be interesting not
to translate them and see how British people get on speaking the language. These are the lyrics:
Tutti frutti te khelas
Te khelas te giľavas
Te khelas te giľavas
Le romenca demadjas/ e Romencar
te pagjas (2x)
Chorus:
Chi zhanav so te kerav
Pala late me merav (4x)
Sa o Roma Daje kelenav
Sa o Roma Daje on pijelav (2x)
Kako Uvil to pamato, a man Marga
korkoro.
A garavla kaj geli, tilatari za
vogi. (3x)
The song is actually written by
Adrian Simionescu, and was played in the film ‘Gadjo Dilo’, a film all about
the Romani people in Romania. This is not the first version of the song I was
aware of; the first time I heard this song was on a CD of a band called Xenos. The
two versions of this song are pretty different, for one, Xenos has female
vocals instead of male, and also features more percussion. Also, Adrian
Simionescu’s original includes a cimbalom.
The translation of the lyrics
shows that this song is about getting drunk and dancing:
“All the Roma, mother, are
dancing,
All the Roma, mother, are
drinking”, this is the second verse and it shows that the song is very fun, and
also carefree, as the chorus translates to ‘I don’t know, what can I do? I’ll
die anyway’.
I decided to base my arrangement
on the Xenos version, after listening to it lots I thought it would be fairly
easy to do. Instead of having lots of Balkan instruments to use in the
arrangement, I had to work with what available musicians there were at college,
so I decided the instrumentation of my version would be; Piano, Guitar, Bass,
Drums, Vocals and Trumpet. I decided the trumpet would have the main melody as
the wind instruments do in the other versions of the song. I arranged the parts
on the Sibelius software; it took me a few weeks to get the parts together as
the rhythm section is quite straightforward. I wrote it out in G harmonic
minor, which I think is what the other versions key signatures are too.
It didn’t take long to get a band
together after advertising on Facebook, most people were very interested in my
project and that was brilliant to see because that is the main aim of this. It took
a few practices and then we videoed our performance of the song. Throughout the
rehearsal process, everyone has remained enthusiastic about the song and we
have worked really well as a group because of this.
I hope this is the start of
getting more people involved in world music. It’s encouraging that everyone
really enjoyed playing this song, and so did I, it was a brilliant experience. Most
of the feedback I received from the group is that they enjoyed it because it
was something new. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. There is a lack of
inspiration among musicians, and getting involved with music that they would
have never thought about it something that could give out ideas for a change in
style, just something unique which will make the artist stand out from the
crowd and be more likely to be successful.
