Tune-Yards – FIYA

I started a new hobby blog today about African guitar music. There’s not a whole lot of crossover between ukuleles and African music but the one obvious link is Tune-Yards. Merrill Garbus cropped up on a couple of tracks on the recent Red Hot + Fela album including the standout track Lady with ?uestlove, Angelique Kidjo and others.

So today I’ve written up one of her African-influenced tracks FIYA.

The tab shows the riffs used in each section of the song (not the whole tabs).

The Tuning

The tuning on this one is weird. I think it’s baritone tuning (on a tenor ukulele) with a high-d string. But that high-d is tuned half a step to Db. So it’s dbGBE.

Standard Tuning Version

In case you don’t fancy making the effort for that tuning here’s a version in standard tuning that more or less works out:

Here’s how that intro sounds:

Intro Riff

The bridge:

Bridge Riff

And the chorus:

Chorus Riff

Links

Buy it on iTunes
tune-yards.com
Tune-Yards: Africa in Your Earbuds
Hatari tab
Powa tab