Strings
by Frank van Empel & Caro Sicking
When I walk towards the train station to make a telephone call, all public phones are occupied. I decide to wait close to the one in which a dark boy is talking. He speaks very loudly. He speaks Lingala, my native language. I try not to listen, but I canÆt. My ears swallow every word he is saying. Just for the sound of it. It has been so long since I heard the tongue I was born in. As soon as he hangs up the phone, I address him directly. He is a nice guy. He looks friendly to me and asks questions about my two lives: back home in the Congo and my life here in the Netherlands. Then he tells his lifestory. HeÆs a musician, he says. Proudly he shows a CD. When I open the box, I notice there is a little booklet inside. In the booklet there are photos and names of the members of the band my new friend plays with. I browse through the tiny book, unsuspectingly. Then all of a sudden my eyes hook on a page. I canÆt even manage to blink. ôOh no, this canÆt be true.ö I narrow my eyes as if there is too much light all of a sudden for them to cope with. I catch my breath. It feels like I am going to faint. The boy asks if I am alright.
æOn one of the photographs in the booklet I see my husband, his name in the subscription. I grasp the boyÆs arm and point towards the picture. ôWho is this man? Where is he? I need to find him. He is my man!ö
æThe boy looks deranged. He does not know where my husband went. The band had been brought together just to record this CD. After the recordings everybody went different ways. All he can tell me is that the recording studio was a Dutch one. He looks at me with his big dark eyes and I read his feelings. He feels like me. I can see he too lost love in a war, running for his life. He gives me the CD with my husbandÆs music and his photo. I forget I came to make a phone call. I walk towards home, my eyes fixed on the picture.
æA little later, I notice the name of the studio. A Dutch friend helps me to look it up. It takes her two days to get me an address. No telephone number. I write a letter. Another two days of waiting. Then the phone rings. It is HIM. He is real and alive and in the Netherlands. Just as much shocked, relieved and surprised as I am. ôIs it really you?ö he keeps asking. ôYes, it is me!ö Tomorrow he will come over to my house. We will meet again after four years of separation. Four long years of not knowing whether the other was still alive.Æ
Marie Chante tells the story almost without breathing. In her hand the CD that brought her and her husband together after a chaotic flight from Congo.
Transcription by Eric Johansson
Ok, I have tabbed the main guitar part on this beautiful song, it is repeated over and over with some changes that are easy to hear.
C G Am F
e---------0 -----------3-----------------------------------------------------
b---------1------------3-----------------------1-----------------------------
g--------0-------------------------------------2-----------------------------
d----------------------------------------------2--------0h2----3--3----2---2-
a---3--------------------------2---3----0------------------------------------
e-------------0h1h3----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 14:49:57 +0100 (MEZ)
We are walking through the city of Rabat. Looking for a music store. Our host, Max, was touched by Marie ChanteÆs story. Max Moulay is a Moroccan Jew who grew up in Canada. He has only been in Rabat for a few months now and works as a girand. Max manages La Caravelle, situated in the old prison with an eyeblinding sight of the sea at sunset. He invited us kindly to sleep in his private Riad. Every night we dine at La Caravelle. It is the only Rabat restaurant we know of that has alcohol on the menu. In MaxÆs studio there is an old guitar. He turns out to be a couturier instead of a girand. The last job is only temporary. In Tangier Max owns a small couturier shop. Two people work for him. Yesterday we all sang together, sitting on his rooftop, next to the mosque. We sang without a guitar. Two of the strings are broken. Thus we are now looking to buy new strings.
æI donÆt have a clue,Æ is the manÆs answer to our question about where to find a music store. æRabat is a financial centre. Nobody around here plays music.Æ We have to agree with this, Rabat is the most organised and western feeling city of Morocco we have seen. In Rabat you even get a fine for parking in the wrong place. But then, out of the blue, a couple of Congolese, fellow countrymen of Marie Chante, appear right before us. They walk the street swaying and swinging their hips, guitars on their back. The guys from Congo take us to a shop, close to an internet cafÚ. The Moroccan woman behind the counter looks a bit alarmed when five Europeans, white as snow, accompagnied by two Africans, as black as the night, talking and gesturing vividly with each other, enter her business. Ten guitars, bongos and a few other instruments are displayed. You can try them if you like. One of the Africans takes a guitar. No woman no cry. C G Am F. He plays. The other African starts to sing. The woman behind the counter relaxes. She walks towards us, hips swinging. After one hour we leave the store, singing and swinging, with capo dÆastro and new strings for Max.
www.chordie.com/chord.pere/tabfu.thudspace.net/fugees/no_woman_no_cry.tab
Dinner is over. A flute comes out of a bag. Somebody takes his mandola from the car. We find the guitar. Des sets the tone. He sings. It is an Irish song. Leprechauns on his shoulder. Ireland beat England today: 43 -13 in Croke Park. Rugby. Six Nations. Right there at the stadium where fourteen Irish perished on Bloody Sunday in November 1920. The English executed them. No English sport was allowed at Croke Park. The stadion is built from the scrathes of a destroyed Dublin in 1916. Destroyed by the English. Today, God save the Queen sounds loudly through the sports stadium. White English facing green Irishmen. 43 -13. The Union leader sings with his low voice. Eyes closed. Today is February the 24th. Tomorrow Sculpting Life will be shown for the very first time. A documentary on Rowan Gillespie. Right now we are at his place. We eat, drink and play music. Erwin, almost twenty years old, gets hold of the guitar as soon as Des stops singing. Erwin wants to be a musician. He writes his own music. He tunes the instrument. Strums..... the strings break.
Customs told us to open our suitcases. The small pair of scissors I use to cut my nails was not allowed in the plane. They did look surprised when they discovered a pair of brand new guitar strings of Arabian origin, but we apparently didnÆt look like we were planning to strangle the pilot with them, so they let us keep them. æThese are the strings we bought for Max, back in Rabat.Æ æHow on earth do they get here?Æ æNo idea. I probably never took them out of the suitcase.Æ MaxÆs instrument appeared to be a Western guitar, but we had bought strings for a Spanish guitar. So we gave Max a different pair of strings and kept these ourselves. We obviously never unwrapped them. Apparently to take them to Dublin to give to Erwin so he could play and sing for the gathered party today, February 24th. Right now, right here in Dublin. The wine is out of the bottle. Every Irish can sing.
e|--------------9---------------------------------------
B|--------------9h11p9----------------------------------
G|8--10-------------------------------------------------
D|-------11--8------------------------------------------
A|------------------------------------------------------
E|------------------------------------------------------
That's about it for now...let me know what you think of this transcription, because I have plenty more just like this one...Thanks :o)
Sounds have their own reality. They do not imitate anything in the existing world. Whether you play the guitar in Rabat or hit the bodhrÓn in Dublin, everybody can join in.There are just as many differences between the people you meet as between the ways you can play a song. All music is world music, without borders. Music can connect people who do not speak each otherÆs language. People who do not know each other. People who are unable to meet, unwilling to meet and to know each other, through years, over borders, past ages, past guns and over religions.
I don't think that the G/B in the first line of the chorus is correct. It sounds to me like that chord dives lower, I'm guessing to an Em. Corrected as such.
[G] [C] [G/B] [Am7] [F] [C] [F] [C] [G]
[C] No [G/B]woman, no cry.[Am]
[F][C] No [F]woman, no [C]cry.
[G][C] No [G/B]woman, no [Am]cry.
[F][C] No [F]woman, no [C]cry.[G]
Mariana Lazarevic cuts her long curly hair at eight oÆclock in the morning of the same 24th of February that Des is singing Irish folksongs in Dublin. She is sitting inside her brand new The Hague workshop and looks around. Production. Work needs to be done. A new show is on the way. She needs to dress the models. Her golden blond hair falls around her like heavy woollen dreads. She can almost hear it fall. The dreads sound like her grandmothers clock on the wall in the Belgrado appartment. Mariana rubs her eyes. Strumming a pencil on the beat of DepÛche Mode. The rhythm of stitching. Softly. Tearing. Cracking. Mariana knows how to sing, but she hardly ever does it. Her voice is inside the Chinese cloth she uses for the full dress caged by a black silken ribbon. It climbs smoothly upwards alongside dark collars with white stitchings. It curves around slender hips, disappearing in between the rouches. It gets lost in a sleeve, an ultra long sleeve hiding the hand attached. MarianaÆs voice takes a swing at the frayed threads, unravelled. It falls back into the seams, folds and bows of cloth. A long time ago, ages ago, when Yugoslavia had just fallen apart, long long before this show: haute couture, Mariana sang Italian songs, sitting at a wooden table. Her curly hair was as long as a womanÆs arm. It was copper red and did not sound yet as grandmothers hour. She sang wholeheartedly, accompagnied by a guitar, a maraca, an Irish BodrÓn and a rinkelingtinkeling kind of thing made of caps of beerbottles. That day she first met Mariana from Croatia. Mutual Dutch friends introduced the women. In a gallery in Den Bosch, far from Belgrade, far from Zaghreb.
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