SOAS Ceilidh Band - Cairo Tour - November 2017 - Lu rusciu de lu mare

Описание: LYRICS AND TRANSLATION:

In November 2017 the SOAS Ceilidh Band toured to Egypt.

Arriving in Cairo we travelled north to Alexandria, with the intention of playing for the Syrian refugees in that city.

We found ourselves by the sea, on the beach where boatbuilders make the small fishing boats that work in the bay.

It seemed a natural place to play the song "Lu rusciu de lu mare" - which we later performed in the Makan cultural centre in Cairo.

The performers in this piece are Ivana Bevilacqua and Giulio Cicilioni.

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Lyrics:

U Rusciu te lu mare

Nu giurnu scei ‘ncaccia a li patuli
e ‘ntisi na cranonchiula cantare.

A una a una le sentia cantare
ca me pariane lu rusciu te lu mare.

Lu rusciu te lu mare è troppu forte
la fija te lu re si ta la morte.

Iddha si ta la morte e jeu la vita
la fija te lu re sta se marita.

Iddha sta se marita e jeu me ‘nzuru
la fija te li re porta nu fiuru.

Iddha porta nu fiuru e jeu na parma
la fija te lu re sta va ‘lla Spagna.

Iddha sta va la Spagna e jeu ‘n Turchia
la fija te lu re è a zita mia.

E vola vola vola vola vola
e vola vola vola palomba mia
ca jeu lu core meu te l’aggiu ddare
ca jeu lu core meu te l’aggiu ddare.

Translation:

One day I was going hunting through the marshes.
I heard a frog croaking.

I heard them singing, one after the other
And it sounded to me like the sound of the sea.

The sound of the sea is too strong
The king’s daughter is giving herself death.

She gives death, and I give life.
Now the king’s daughter is getting married.

She is getting married and I am getting engaged.
The king’s daughter is carrying a flower.

She is carrying a flower, and I carry a palm
The king’s daughter is departing to Spain.

She goes to Spain, and I go to Turkey.
The king’s daughter is my fiancée.

And fly, fly, fly, fly,
and fly, fly, my dove, fly.
Because I have to give my heart to you.
Because I have to give my heart to you.

Translation: [email protected]

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Of necessity we then had to go to where the fishing boats are made. A further few hundred yards around the perimeter of the port. A place that appears as a wasteland until you realise that much of the rubble and jetsam is discarded wood from the process of building boats. The foreshore is lined with boats beached on the sand. Most of them are beautifully painted, often in blues and greens. Many of them bear inscriptions calligraphed with Islamic invocations – indeed one has a fine depiction on its hull of the sacred Ka’aba of Mecca.

As you can imagine, I am instantly in love with the place, the handcrafted beauty of the boats, the interesting and original colours, and the gentle shushing of the waves on the sandy beach.

There are very few people around, so I am left undisturbed as I wander among the boats taking photographs of their structural detail. To one side is a shed. An elderly man has a boat half on its side. He is repairing broken and rotted planking. In the process he works carefully and quickly with the caulking thread, and I watch him as he goes. Simple, slow, methodical movement of his tools. From within his workshop there is the distinctive and beautiful sound of a muezzin on the radio, intoning Islamic chant from the mosque. A devotional accompaniment to the day’s long and intricate labours. The moment is sublimely beautiful in a deeply human sense.

And the beauty comes thick and fast. A little further along the beach a man comes running. He insists that I follow him with my camera. I go to where he leads me, behind a couple of small shacks, to where a square-build shack stands. Built of an unwieldy patterning of timber planking, weathered grey by the sun, this cabin has a narrow doorway. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark. There, inside, is a workbench, a working structure of stocks and chocks. And on it sits the almost completed structure of a scaled-down model of a pharaonic boat, built dinghy-style, with a carvel hull, and terminating with large carved-wood lotus flowers fore and aft. The
wood is a gentle amber in colour, illuminated by shafts of sunlight that penetrate through the slats of the wall timbers. An elderly man is quietly at work on his piece of art, wielding saw and chisel. I ask him for permission to photograph, and he agrees. There is something almost shrine-like about this space, and almost devotional in the way that he goes about his work. A work that has an entirely different temporality – long, slow, day in day out – to the kinds of things that you or I might do with our waking hours.