13050: origin of song 'Fey' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: aussiegrimel@adam.com.au

I was wondering if anyone could assist me with a question I have about the
origin of the song 'Fey' (part of song written below).

Fey o, sove lavi mwen
nan mize mwen ye, o.

I have two recordings of this song - one of them being Boukman Eksperyans on
their 'Kafou Danje' CD (I think).
I had the interesting experience of hearing an acapella group singing this song
recently, in French.  It was particularly surprising because I live in
Australia and I never expect to hear any songs from Haiti here.  But I was a
bit disturbed by the group's singing because the French didn't make sense -
almost as if it was transliterated (I hope this is the right word - the French
words they used sounded like the Creole words, but didn't necessarily mean the
same) and wasn't particularly good French.  The group had originally been
singing this song in African Creole (as they understood it to be) but then
discovered the French version on the internet.  They made some connection to
Paul Simon - maybe he sang it at some time.
an example of the French was something like this for the second line of the
chorus above:
dan mes yeuilles mouillez (in my wet eyes)

I would appreciate finding out which language is the original for this song. I
strongly suspect Creole to be the answer.  I'd like to pass this information on
to the group - most of the members found it much easier to sing in Creole and I
think would be happy for justification to revert to it. I'd be thrilled for
them to do that, too, especially since one of the members, when asked why they
changed to the French version, said 'to sing it more correctly'.  I am pro-
Creole when it comes to things like this and therefore that response was not
well received by me!

mesi davans
aussie_grimel

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