Template:Did you know nominations/Fifă

Fifă

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... that in the Romanian Carpathians, young women once flirted with the hills – playing the fifă fluier and answering its echo with yodel-like hăulit singing?
ALT1: ... that women the Romanian Carpathians traditionally play the one-note fifă fluier, around which their voice "embroiders" a rudimentary melody using a yodel-like hăulit singing?
ALT2: ... that the single tone of the fifă, an archaic fluier from the foothills of the Carpathians , combines with yodel-like hăulit singing to create a zigzag contour of a single melodic line?
ALT3: ... that when women in the Oltenia Carpathians play the fifă, their voice essentially becomes an extension of the instrument, compensating for its minimal resources with yodel-like hăulit?
ALT4: ... that the Pygmy whistle hindewhu is played almost exactly like the archaic Romanian fluier fifă — and that Herbie Hancock recreated its sound using empty beer bottles in his 1973 version of "Watermelon Man"?

Source: Fifă [dudina, suieras]. End-blown notched flute of Romania. It is made from a hollow hemlock or lovage stalk, a handbreadth long, stopped with a node at the lower end... The fifa can produce only one note, and is blown mostly by women. Its intermittent note is a sound axis around which the performer’s voice ‘embroiders’ a rudimentary melody using a yodel-like vocal technique (hăulit)...

Libin, Laurence, ed. (2014). The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2 (2 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, p. 278

- Reviewed:

Created by Iurii.s (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

Iurii.s (talk) 05:59, 28 October 2025 (UTC).

First of all, allow me to congratulate our new colleague Iurii.s for what emerges as a remarkably well written, and thoroughly engaging, series about Romanian-areal folk music. This is a new, long, thorough, well researched and plagiarism-free article; the only drawback is perhaps that the lead does not summarize the article content, but that is obviously not a DYK requirement. User is, as mentioned, new, and QPQ is not required. That said: I should point out that the hook is not verified by the source, nor is it apparently mentioned in the article. Unless there is some arcane terminology that eludes me (and would elude most readers), "to flirt" would indicate that women actually personify the hills and act out as if they were singing to romantic partners. Is there any other way to phrase this? Dahn (talk) 07:38, 7 November 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the positive feedback and the kind words! I really appreciate it. And you're right, the hook needs improvement. I've added ALT1 version. -Iurii.s (talk) 10:36, 7 November 2025 (UTC)
  - The ALT is certainly an improvement, but the word "embroiders" would need to also appear in the article. What is more: the cited source is only cited once in the article, and not for the fact in the hook (!). Please note that the hook needs to be based on something actually found in the article -- you can easily solve this by adding it to the article, with the corresponding citation. Once that is fixed, please note: the ALT is a bit on the wordy side, and loses focus. I will suggest a punchier wording once you will have addressed the query above. Dahn (talk) 22:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

@Iurii.s: I am not sure if the added ALTs are admitting that the original hook is unusable. On the other hand, I see additional potential issues with them. For instance, you render "extension of the instrument" as a quote, but is not a visible quote in the article -- it is not clear if you're attributing it to the source or if you're paraphrasing the source. If the former, the quote would need be, quote marks and all, in the article as well; if the latter, you do not need quote marks here. The same goes for the "zigzag" ALT. I also have to wonder about the hindewhu paragraph and the ALT based on it: does the source you used ever mention fifăs, by name or by description? Because the phrasing seems to suggest that some original research went into that, as per WP:SYNTH. Dahn (talk) 13:35, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
- I have removed quote marks from ALT2-3, you have your point. As for ALT4, the source (Херцеа 1988) in the article mentions morphological kinship of the fifa with other simple single-note stopped tubes. Hindewhu falls into that category, though not listed implicitly. So I believe no original research from my side. From my point of view ALT2-4 are OK. -Iurii.s (talk) 12:38, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

@Dahn: What else needs doing here?--Laun chba ller 16:16, 1 December 2025 (UTC)