Si la kale bal
A song by the legendary Serbian Rom singer Saban Bajramovic, recorded in 1980. It’s played in a Banat-style 7/8 meter (3+2+2, with stress on beats 1, 2, 4 and 6, not 1, 3, 4 and 6 as commonly heard in the Balkans). We play it for listening, though dancers sometimes do a Romanian dance to it. The instrumental melody is usually highly elaborated by a soloist; the transcription shows only a basic melody, so listen to lots of performances on YouTube and take it from there.
We’ve heard several versions of the lyrics and use those from the Galbeno Songbook here. These include “Si la” in the title and lyrics, not “Sila” as seen almost everywhere else for this song. Our compact Romany dictionary translates “Si la kale bal” word for word as “is her black hair” (“her hair is black”, “she has black hair”), whereas it has no entry for “sila.” Sounds the same either way.
Sila kale bal
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Sve se osim tuge deli
This folk-flavored popular song of lost love was a hit circa 2001 for Ljubisa Stojanovic, the Serbian singer better known as Louis. (He adopted his stage name at the age of 9, when he performed the songs of Louis Armstrong.) Jasmina Jaksic wrote the music, and Milenko Jaksic wrote the lyrics. We play it as a cocek.
Sve se osim tuge deli
Sve se osim tuge deli lyrics
Song video (it won’t embed, for some reason): https://youtu.be/0Dk_TARDpz4
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Vranjanski cocek
An instrumental cocek dance melody in 9/8 meter from southern Serbia, played by an orchestra led by folk music composer and arranger Zarko Milanovic. The tempo slowly accelerates throughout.
Vranjanski cocek
The original recording isn’t available on YouTube, but here’s a nice version of the same melody by Duo Moderato from Beograd.
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Ah ya bibi
A hot dance tune from Fanfare Ciocarlia, the internationally popular Rom brass band from northeast Romania, on their 1998 debut CD Radio Prascani. I wonder if the name is related to the Arabic word habibi, “beloved one.”
Ah ya bibi
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Song for Baba Nedelya
Here is a pravo horo dance song from Thrace, Bulgaria, recorded in 1991 by singer Maria Karafizieva, accompanied by her husband, Ivo Papazov, and his legendary Bulgarian Rom wedding band. This simple transcription shows only the basic instrumental and vocal melodies – listen to the recording for its vocal and instrumental ornamentation, rhythmic inventiveness and mind-boggling clarinet solo.
Baba Nedelya
Baba Nedelya lyrics
(The video graphics are a mystery.)
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Lidija
This song was a hit for Serbian singer Branka Sovrlic in 1990. It has also been recorded by the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble in New York with vocalist Carol Silverman, who sings slightly different lyrics. We learned the song from her, but the chart below uses Branka Sovrlic’s lyrics (note that the second line of the chorus uses different words after each verse). We play it as a cocek.
Lidija
View high-resolution PDF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EsyEk0S5u8
(The video won’t embed, for some reason)
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