Eki Dumah (Ek Dam) [488-489] (361-362)

We recorded this last minute chantey as people were running out the door and heading to different parts of the world...the better, more animated take accidentally did not get recorded!! So this is our first take: not so thrilling, but the heart is still there...

This hauling chantey comes from the Caribbean, however it is based in the phenomenon of "Lascars" or South Asian crews. The interactions, aboard ship, between Indian crew members and other nationalities resulted in mixtures of culture and language. Words and commands in the so called "Lascari baat" (shipboard Hindi/Urdu) were freely mixed with English, Portuguese, etc, and the lingua-franca was often a creole or pidgin with common features from China to India to Jamaica, etc. Hence the grammar of "no likee", etc, which is not meant to make fun of any speech -- instead it was common form, so that all could be understood.

The most notable Lascari word here is "serang" (more properly, sarhang) which was the term for a bosun. "Number One" is the captain, of course, but that could go in any pidgin. And of course, "coolie" was the term for Indian workers, especially indentured ones in the colonies, and in the Caribbean it went on to become a not-necessarily-derisive general term for Indians. There's a line in the text, "Somerset killa wire fall" which to me makes no sense, and I changed it to "...wife-o", the usual pidgin for "wife."

The "story" of the lyrics, if there is one --they are fragmentary-- seems to be there was some guy named "Somerset" who went crazy (?) and killed several crew, officers, and laborers. Hmm. Well, whatever the situation, this work song was preserved in the Caribbean, as Stan Hugill learned it circa 1930s-40s from "Harry Lauder" of St. Lucia.

About the refrain (and title of the chantey), Hugill writes: "In this example the words 'Eki dumah!' are probably a corruption of the Hindustani expression 'Ek dom', i.e. one man."

I am quite sure that he is wrong. It must really be (spelled more accurately) "ek-dam" which literally means "one breath" and effectively means "At once" / "all at once" / "All together." This is certainly something that Indians might say in a work song when they have to pull all together. "Ek" rhymes with "break"; "dam" sounds like "dumb". The reason for "ek-i" and "dum-ah" is simply the fact that in Hindi one enunciates consonants to their full value, even at the end of words and especially in songs or other rhythmic speech. In order to enunciate a consonant in full, it is considered that an accompanying short vowel sound need follow it. So the singers of this song or Hugill must have heard the over-enunciated song-pronunciation of the words and assumed them to have phonemic value. Of course, when we read the text now, the mis-spelling prompts us to OVER pronounce thise letters, as long vowels.

The rhythm of the refrain in Hugill's text has some discrepancies that I believe stemmed from the fact that he was just one man singing it, so unable to "overlap" the parts. So in our version, along with the word's pronunciation, I've also "corrected" the rhythm to what I think was more likely (makes more sense).

Only a few performers have done this song in recent years, and their versions are surely influenced by one another. Funny, this song was especially popular with Polish chantey singers (like the seminal Stare Dzwony) amongst which one finds a few versions that are fairly literal renderings of Hugill's text.

See the whole "Shanties from the Seven Seas" project, here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=58B55DD66F22060C

Category:

Music

Tags:

• chanties
• from
• the
• seven
• seas
• szanty
• shanties
• hindi
• urdu
• hindustani
• lascar
• laskar
• khalasi
• west
• indies
• magic
• mountain
• camarillo
• brillo

[nagra01]

Damn, those are some good singers there!

Nice JOSH! :P

[hultonclint]

sorry about the missing "take 2"!!!! :(

[philipsmovies]

Great video. Well done to everyone.

[hultonclint]

On behalf of everyone, thanks a lot!

[pawan1979]

Ooh, who's the good-looking guy in the firetruck red t-shirt? He looks like he has pretty feet.

[hultonclint]

@pawan1979

He has lotus feet, a jolly paunch, and his name is "Buddha"

[munnibhai123]

lol... really nice :)

[hultonclint]

as I love to hear your comments. They will really appreciate your kind words, thanks!

[medicinesocks]

always relish and enjoy your videos and commentary. great crew you had on this one, too!