From "In Full Bloom: Square One, Barbados’ contribution to the Advancement of Soca on the World Arena."

Faluma arose while the band was touring Suriname in early 1998. It essentially is a Dutch folk tune, and the band intent on making their audience feel more at home at their concerts decided to sing it, with their own twist of course. The result was a Dutch folk tune sung to a soca beat almost entirely in Dutch. One could probably predict that the song would be, to say the least, well received in Suriname, however who would fathom that a song whose lyrics are virtually incomprehensible unless one is (no pun intended) speaking Dutch.
The answer to this phenomenon (although already seen before with the likes of Macarena by Los del Rios) I believe lies in the beauty of the arrangement.
Faluma starts of slowly with an extended introduction, where lead Alison Hinds repeats affectionately ‘Mama a ye,ye duna’ to the excitement of the crowd. This is done to a backdrop of light keyboard and the rain-like effect of the high hat. At first she sings solo but is then joined by Anderson Armstrong in a seemingly modified call and response section. This builds up a level of excitement and anticipation as a break is introduced where all that is heard is the roar of the crowd. Suddenly, in true soca style Alison yells ‘ Get Ready to wine’ twice warning the crowd of things to come and to prepare for the fever pitch percussion that is about to follow. Simultaneously all of the instrumentation begins with an insanely fast percussion line in quadruple time (4/8). The bass repeats a simple yet catchy riff, while the drum machine plays a seemingly triple time high-hat (playing six beats per bar). An accordion, not a traditional soca instrument is also used which plays an ascending broken chord at the beginning of every third bar. This is probably a typical instrument of the original folk tune and is used brilliantly in this case.
The song is call and response in its entirety in varying forms. Within the verses, the background singers repeat Alison’s lines and so to in the chorus which commences the song the call and response theme is kept, though in another form. Here, Alison sings followed by the background vocals crying “Faluma!”
She uses the bridge in the song to elicit more calls to the crowd to join in the excitement first in Dutch then in English. During the refrain near the end of the song she ‘exits’ singing English in true soca fashion inviting the crowd to wave their hands in the air and party.

By Dentonio Worrell
you can see his whole paper at:
http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Stu/dworrell/In%20Full%20Bloom.doc