Faluma is a 1998 hit by Square One and Alison Hinds that topped the charts in much of the Caribbean, and was actually recommended to me by a friend who grew up listening to it in Barbados.
Originally, Faluma was a Surinamese folk song, which inspired the version recorded by Ai Sa Si. (That is the version of the song going on the playlist. The Alison Hinds version is also a bop and I recommend listening to it; but it's not on Tidal so it's not going on the playlist. And to be honest I do like the Ai Sa Si version a bit better.)
There's a lot of confusion about what language this song is in, with various sources claiming Sranan Tongo, Saramaccan, or Aukan. I'll go into each of these languages a bit, and explain why there's so much confusion about what language this song is in.
Sranan Tongo, Saramaccan, and Aukan are all Surinamese creoles. Sranan Tongo is an English-based creole, and is the unofficial national language of Suriname, spoken by the majority of the country.
Saramaccan and Aukan are both spoken by Surinamese Maroon peoples, who are descendants of escaped slaves who established their own communities in inland Suriname. Due in part to their relative geographic isolation, these communities developed unique cultures and languages.
Aukan (aka Ndyuka) is an English-based creole that is mutually intelligible with Sranan Tongo. Aukan has its own syllabary, Afaka script (pictured below), which is the only script developed specifically for a creole language currently in use.
Saramaccan (aka Saamaka) is an English-Portuguese creole with up to 50% of its vocabulary coming from African languages.
Most online sources claim Faluma is sung in Saramaccan; however, this is not the case. Faluma is actually sung in Aukan. The song is sung in "deep" Aukan, or a traditional dialect primarily spoken by the older generation, which is less mutually intelligible with Sranan Tongo. This makes it easy to mistake for Saramaccan, despite being closer to Sranan Tongo.
What surprised me is that so much misinformation is online. There are many songs without definitive information about what language they are sung in. But I have never seen so much wrong information about a song's language. There are many articles and blogs that list the language as Saramaccan. If you ask Google "what language is Faluma by Alison Hinds," Gemini answers Saramaccan. But the only people who showed any actual knowledge of the language were the folks in the comment sections of social media posts. Nowhere does anyone say "I understand Saramaccan and this is in Saramaccan." In the end I got confirmation from r/Suriname, where I was able to find someone who was actually familiar with Aukan.
It's insane to me that almost nowhere lists the correct language. There is an interview where Alison Hinds herself states that the song is in Sranan Tongo. There are videos diving into the history and meaning of the song that state it's in Saramaccan. But those who actually understand the song are in the comments, largely ignored. How many other songs has this happened to? How many communities have had their traditional songs attributed elsewhere, intentionally or otherwise?
