88 International has worked with music clubs in almost every high school in Tunisia to write and produce songs for the Tunisia88 Song Contest. I have served on the judging panel for several years and have had the pleasure of hearing so many talented, young musicians and inspiring songs. Alumni from this program formed a choir to tour the US in 2025 and commissioned this piece from me.
Lu-Ga-Lay for SATB choir and piano (2025)
Composed by Simon Fink (b. 1980)
Performed by TUNISIA88 Alumni Choir and Kevin Kyaw, piano
Baldwin Auditorium, Duke University
Poem by unknown author
translated by Friedrich V. Lustig, Burmese Classical Poems (1966)
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လူကလေး လူကလေးရယ်ငို၊ ခိုဖမ်းလို့ပေး၊ ခိုဖြူခိုပြာနက်ကယ်၊ ဖမ်းခက်လှလေး။
Little Boy Oh little boy crying!
I would I could
Catch you a pigeon White, blue or black.
Oh little boy How hard it is
To catch a pigeon White, blue, or black.
Simon Fink 