Çadırımın Üstüne Şıp Dedi
or, Rompi Rompi

(Rain Dripped On My Tent)

This page contains the song lyrics to "Çadırımın Üstüne" (sometimes called "Rompi Rompi" or "Rampi Rampi"), an old Turkish folk song. It is the song that bands usually play for a dancer who requests a song with a 9/8 rhythm. Some international folk dance clubs do a line dance to this music.

Below are three verses and three different choruses. You'll find that different musicians choose to record different verses, and they also may vary in how they use the choruses. For example, on Omar Faruk Tekbilek's Gypsy Fire album, only the first and third verses are used. For the chorus, instead of singing all four lines of Chorus 1 below, they sing two lines of Chorus 1, then two lines of Chorus 2. They don't use Chorus 3 at all. However, on John Bilezikjian's recording of this song on his Sirocco album, the only chorus he uses at all is Chorus 3. That's simply the way things go with old, old, popular folk songs in any culture, and Turkish folk songs are no exception. Many variations arise, and musicians perform the variations they like best.

Listen to MP3 Clips of This Song

	Sung by John Bilezkjian
	Sung by Omar Faruk Tekbilek

Lyrics

The word "Rompi" is a nonsense word, something like "tra-la" in English-language songs.

According to Shivaun, this song is from Thrace so the word "Rompi" could have originally been in Greek and the Turkish adopted it just like a lot of other 9/8 tunes. So maybe it is the only word remaining from the original Greek. In fact, according to Turkish linguistic rules, Rompi could not be a Turkish word - the vowels don't match together. (Turkish has a system of vowel harmony we lack in English).

Where to Get Recordings of this Song

	Listen to Clip	Artist: Omar Faruk Tekbilek CD Title: Gypsy Fire Amazon Store:
	Listen to Clip	Artist: Mediterranean RaqsBand CD Title: Music Saqra Likes for Dancers & Drummers, Volume 1 Web Site: www.raqsband.com
	Listen to Clip	Artist: John Bilezikjian & Var Daghdevirian Album Title: Sirocco Dantz Records - John Bilezikjian P.O. Box 2434 Laguna Hills, CA 92654-2434 U.S.A. Telephone: (+1) (949) 581-5664 Web Site: www.dantzrecords.com
		Artist: Melissa Murphey & Carmine T. Guida CD Title: Simplified Middle Eastern Songs for Learning and Practice, Volume 2 Amazon Store:
		Artist: Middle Earth Ensemble CD Title: Passage Amazon Store:

About the Translator

Many, many thanks to Gunsu Temirer, who did this translation for the first three verses of this popular Turkish song! Gunsu was born in Turkey, and now lives in the United States.

Many, many thanks to Shivaun, who provided verses 4 and 5 along with their translations as well as the introductory comments providing background on the word "rompi". She heard children singing verses 4 and 5 in the school yard.