By Tom Carlson

It was seven years ago that I first heard “O Dewel.” My friend Denis Chang, who runs a digital music school (DC Music School) out of Montreal, posted a recording of the song he had just made alongside Romani polymath Tcha Limberger. “O Dewel” is a Romani worship song sung in a very secretive variation of the Romani language spoken by the Sinti people of Western Europe. Limberger sings the gospel and plays beautiful violin melodies and harmonies, and Chang backs him up on a French-style jazz guitar, and Paul Van Dyke bows a double bass. 

I was enamored with this music, as were many who play the music inspired by legendary Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt. Many asked Chang and Limberger about the rights and if they could record the song as well — all were answered with, “I don’t know who wrote it or really where it comes from…” This sparked a year-long journey for me that led me to discover more about Romani music and folk music in general. 

We start with our only lead. Irene Ypenburg, a long-time friend of mine and long-time friend of Pupa Schafer, a now-deceased Dutch Sinti woman who is the mother of popular guitarist Paulus Schafer. At some point in their friendship, this same question arose, “Who wrote ‘O Dewel?’” Apparently, Schafer did, but not entirely by herself. The melody was taken from an old dutch pop song from either the ’50s or ’60s. Schafer rewrote the lyrics to her native language of Sinti-Romanes. She had since forgotten what song it came from but did remember the opening line, “Nooit zal ik jou vergenten” (I will never forget you), which had been the basis for changing the lyrics to Romanes to be about never forgetting God. 

From Irene’s suggestion, I fell down the rabbit hole following these lyrics. As it turns out, there are hundreds of Dutch songs from this era with that line or title and none of them seem to match up. The song must have only been popular in a small place for a short period of time. This led me to understand something about Romani music and the art of contrafact. Contrafact is the art of repurposing a melody or chord progression. This occurs a lot in Jazz. For example, Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee” is simply an adaptation of “Indiana,” a song that came years before. To understand why contrafact is so popular in Romani music we have to understand the position many Romani find themselves in. 

Ethnic minorities like the Sinti don’t have the same socioeconomic mobility that white Europeans do. Racism has historically built mistrust between them and the majority. As a result of this, the Sinti find music to be a profitable job. As a musician, one encounters less racism in hiring by one’s ability to employ themselves. Romani has since been romanticized as great musicians because of this economic opportunity. 

Here is a quote from an article on Romarchive by Romani-Ethnomusicologist Petra Gelbart from the Rom Archive. "Unless we use the circular definition of ‘music played by and/or attributed to Romani people,’ there is no musicological genre that encompasses all Romani music. The very divergent styles performed, historically shaped and constantly reshaped by Roma include flamenco, jazz manouche, Russian ‘romances,’ Balkan (not to mention Middle Eastern) music, Hungarian czardas as well as fusions with jazz, hip hop, Western art music, and numerous national ‘folk’ genres. There is no ‘Gypsy scale,’ rhythmic pattern or harmonic structure that unites them all, and these musical styles often have less in common with one another other than they do with the music of a given geographical region (e.g. Hungarian Romani vs Spanish Gitano music).” 

Imagine a wedding band. A wedding band plays the popular songs of any given moment, eventually, they play the songs so much that they become ingrained in the musician’s mind far long after the popularity of the piece. This is the same as the Romani. Long after the popularity of whatever song “O Dewel” came from, Dutch Sinti communities still appreciated it and knew it well - so they changed the lyrics to suit them and kept singing it after it had been forgotten. 

With good investigative skills, one can actually find this happening a lot. Schnuckenack Reinhardt’s classic “O letscho Kurko” comes from a 1936 Soviet Polish tango by the name “Utomlennoe Solntse,” which was rumored to be the inspiration for Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday.” Hascha Reinhardt’s “Gei Hams Noch Halauter Kettene” takes the verse melody from Fiddler on the Roof’s “Sunrise Sunset.” If you think the practice is stealing then I want to you to look at the definition of “Folk Music” — "music that originates in traditional popular culture or that is written in such a style. Folk music is typical of unknown authorship and is transmitted orally from generation to generation.” What’s happening here is incredibly common. 

After months of searching and listening to many Dutch pop songs, I decided to email Limberger and see if he had made a similar finding since. He informed me that he had been looking for eight years and still found nothing. Since his search for Dutch popular music of the '50s had gone out, he had actually started looking into New Orleans music from the '20s. Limberger had contacted Evan Cristopher, an authority on the genre, who also claimed that he had the faintest idea. 

With all leads dead, I decided to turn to the older Dutch population to see if they had any idea. I shared the song with record collectors and found nothing. I shared the song with several friends’ Dutch parents, who couldn’t place it. I contacted Dutch folk music societies, who had no idea, and I contacted general music groups on Facebook and Reddit and found nothing. I was starting to believe that perhaps it wasn’t Dutch after all. This led me to contact Jimmy Grant. Grant is a wonderful musician and longtime Sinti-Music record collector. He said it was familiar and that he possibly heard the melody from a French Romani record, but still couldn’t find it. After hours of trying different spellings of the title “O Dewel,” I eventually came across a recording that was older than Limberger’s recording or his family’s recording. This came from an old German record family band in the '80s. I sent the recording to Limberger and he said it was further away from any recording or version he had ever heard and likely not it at all. 

With my head hung low, I decided to attack the problem by brute force. Limberger replied with artist suggestions of the same names I had already listened to hundreds of times. Names like Tante Leen, Willy Derby, and Johnny Jordaan. I wanted to be careful so I searched their entire discographies and made playlists. For months all I did was listen to Dutch music from this scene,  making sure I exhausted their discographies and live recordings through hours of listening to a day. Eventually, my whole YouTube suggestion feed was '50s Dutch Waltzes, which to be honest is not my favorite. 

It wasn’t until one moment deep in the night that I came across a new Leen song. This time it wasn’t sung by her. It was a shaky camcorder recording of a street organ (an instrument much like a player-piano but with pipes). I clicked on the song and to my surprise, the carnival-like song, titled “Nog Steeds” by Leen was in fact the same melody as “O Dewel.” There were no other recordings of it, nowhere could I find her singing it, so I had to trust this grainy carnival sound as truth. And I cried. I cried joy at something most people would run away from.

Tom is a culture writer for La Tonique.