Amari Szi, Amari

“Amari Szi” is a Roma song about a family welcoming their new daughter-in-law into the fold. This song comes to us thanks to a German band called Csokolom. (pictured below)

The song caught Catherine’s attention while touring with the Mollys in Australia (1999?). She heard it performed by the German band, Csokolom, at a festival attended by both groups.  Csokolom, based in Amsterdam and Berlin, issued its first CD "May I Kiss Your Hand" in November 1998. 
Led by violinist Anti von Klewitz, Csokolom http://www.csokolom.com/e/members_e.html, performed “Amari szi” on the soundtrack to the movie “Everything is Illuminated” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8sWw3aqY4. “Everything is Illuminated” starred Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello fame (much more about them later), and Elija Wood (yes, that Elija Wood).  Csokolom should not be confused with the Hungarian rock band called Csokolom Zenekar that was formed in 1993 and is still performing http://www.kancso.hu/.

“Amari szi” shares a melody and chorus with the song “Keren Chave”, and both can be found on Gypsylyrics.net.  (http://gypsylyrics.net/keren-chave/ ) There are many wonderful Roma songs, with lyrics, and many with video performances, on that site.  Csokolom (with Anti) performs Keren Chave on YouTube with both sets of lyrics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IVfIoO3zQ4, or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8sWw3aqY4.

M2M performs Amari szi in a rather straightforward E minor, where the chords are Em, Am, D, G, B in part A, and Em, Am, D, G, Am, B, Em in part B. The scale seems to be E natural minor. That would be the same as the Mode known as E Aeolian. The traditional American song “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” is in natural minor.

Amari Szi, Amari  is on our new CD "Postcards from El Bossa", available November 2016 at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/minute2minute , just in time for Christmas!