The music of itinerant groups, predominantly found in Europe but also in other areas, such as the Middle East and South Asia. Most often classified as ‘Gypsy’ – once a derogatory term but more recently the source of political pride – these groups also have their own ethnonyms. The main focus of this article is the music of Roma/Gypsies in Europe, with the aim of underlining similar patterns in their musical practices and processes, that reflect their shared values and ethos. For the music of non-European Gypsies, see under the appropriate country article.
3. Adaptation and conservation.
4. Musical and textual transformations.
IRÉN KERTÉSZ WILKINSON
‘Gypsies’ comprise many different groups, but these can be classified into two main categories: the Indian-originated Roma (and Sinti) and the indigenous peripatetic Traveller groups of particular countries and areas. The Roma, whose name is derived from the Romani word man, are also known in different places as Romen, Romani, Rom or Romanichals. Roma is the term implemented by Roma politicians to avoid non-Gypsy derogatory terms such as ‘çingene’, ‘cigány’ or ‘gypsy’. Spanish Gypsies refer to themselves as Gitan (‘Gypsy’). Others opt for a different name all together. In German speaking areas, the ‘Gypsy’ group who suffered most during the Holocaust stress this through their name, Sinti. In Finland they call themselves Kale.
Within the broad categories of Roma, Sinti or Gitan, there are further subdivisions according to type and level of descent, language use and religion, all of which serve as a framework for Roma social structure. Many Roma groups are divided according to their previous or present residency in a country and its cultural symbols. In Bulgaria, the trilingual Xoraxani (Turkish) Roma speak a strongly Turkish-inflected Romani and are Muslims. The Dasikane (Bulgarian) and the Vlaxe (Vlach) Roma also have their own Romani dialect and are Orthodox Christians. (Here, the term ‘Vlach’, just as in Hungary, refers to the Roma's past residence in Romania and is not to be confused with the Aroumanian Vlachs, who are pastoralist nomads living in Macedonia and Greece.) Some Bulgarian Roma even resort to a paradoxical category of Gažikane (non-Gypsy) Roma to distinguish themselves from all the other Roma groups.
Traveller and other ‘Gypsy’ groups are also known by a great number of names, such as the Mincéirs of Ireland, the Reisende (‘Travellers’) in Scandinavia, the Jenish of German-speaking areas and the Mercheros in Spain. As with the Roma, these Traveller groups have names that distinguish subdivisions, partly because their itinerant life styles favour small social units, which may comprise families, who build further connections through marriages with other groups.
These differences are important in creating ‘Gypsy’ identities that, from the viewpoint of particular Roma, Traveller or other groups and individuals, make the single concept ‘Gypsy’ meaningless, except within the recently developed Romani rights political movement. The term ‘Gypsy’ is used in this article to designate the collectivity of many separate groups, all of which treasure their own uniqueness. Use of the collective term, however, does not mean that they constitute a homogeneous whole. Gypsy society is characterized by variety, in which the individual orders the world through the perspectives of the social group to which he or she belongs (Liégeois, 1986).
Enforced or voluntary sedentarisation has helped to create regional musical styles, but even within these there are still persistent differences according to descent and community. Beneath the ostensible variety of Gypsy musics, however, lie shared socio-cultural values, which are responses to pressures for assimilation and constant persecution from different ‘host’ societies. Those values are, to an extent, embodied in their musical activities. They include a lack of shared homeland (even in mythology); a strong emphasis on the importance of an individual's descent; economic dependence through mainly autonomous occupations; an explicit ‘purity’ system to mark social and other boundaries between Gypsies and non-Gypsies as well as between different Gypsy groups; a non-possessional attitude to property; and a social memory that concentrates largely on history within living memory while mythologizing older events. These socio-cultural aspects represent a Gypsy ethos shared by sedentary and itinerant Roma or Traveller groups, and have correspondences in musical products and in processes and conceptualizations that are brought together in performance (fig.1).
Recent political and socio-economic changes, together with rapid developments in mass communications, have widened the possibilities for Gypsy interaction. With growing political self-determination in most communities, aspirations to Roma or Traveller unity are being articulated for the first time and symbolically embodied in a Gypsy (inter)national anthem, Gelem, gelem. However, this co-exists with various regional ‘national’ anthems, and an awareness of differences in historical origin and development; for instance, Roma populations have an increasing awareness of relationships to India or Arab cultures. This has brought with it changes in general thinking and musical practices, which through their long-established flexible value system allow accommodation of several concurrent identities in relation to immediate family and locality or to a wider region and even the world at large.
Documented instances of Roma individuals playing lutes or plucked instruments at the royal courts of Europe go back over 500 years (e.g. to the Duke of Ferrara of Italy in 1469; the Royal Court of Hungary, near Buda, in 1489). The available evidence suggests that in subsequent centuries Gypsies offered a wide range of entertainments to the broadest possible public. Initially this role was shared with non-Gypsy entertainers, but early modern times saw a growing religious ambivalence, and even prohibitions, in relation to music for entertainment, and that tendency gave increasing opportunities for Gypsies to become professional musicians. This was aided by their marginalized social position and the association that many societies make between musicianship and the magical, exotic and even devilish. This economic niche as professional musicians suited the Gypsies' preference for autonomous occupations that allow them to work mainly with their own kin. Famous musician families, such as the Stewarts and Robertsons in Scotland, the Keenans in Ireland, the Manush families of Ferréts, Reinhardts or Rosenbergas, the Hungarian Romungre dynasties of Lakatos and many others, carry a complex social web in their musical heritage.
Furthermore, for the Gypsies themselves, musicianship has positive connotations. The cultural significance of Gypsy musical practices, which may also comprise verbal-musical and kinaesthetic forms, is exemplified in the concept of ‘true words’ (čači vorba) among the Hungarian Vlašicka Roma (Vlach Gypsies) and the Finnish Roma, while the Travellers of the British Isles talk about the ‘realness’ of performance.
A mobile, flexible mode of life and lack of their own nation-state has forced the Gypsies to create their own social space within the existing political structures of other nations. This has encouraged dependency on the ‘host’ culture, a non-proprietary attitude to goods and a willingness to adapt, conserve and transform all values which find expression at various levels in the music-making sphere. Processes of adaptation form a continuum, ranging from imitation-recreation of the original material, through various transformations of this process to the creation of new genres. At another level, this may involve changes in musical parameters such as instrumentation as well as, tonal, temporal, linguistic, kinaesthetic and conceptual shifts, which together form a complex set of connections with and demarcations from the practices of the dominant non-Gypsy society and other Gypsy groups.
A widely-noted and valued aspect of Gypsy musical practices is the preservation of the traditional musical materials and customs of the dominant society in both their own group repertories and their activities as professional musicians. For instance, the Romanian lăutari, playing in the villages of Muntenia and Oltenia, kept the otherwise disappearing tradition of epic singing (cîntec bâtrînesc) alive into the late 20th century by performing epics at wedding feasts and other celebrations (see Romania, §III, 3). As elsewhere in the Balkans, these epic songs deal with real or imagined outlaws (haiduki) who fought for social justice, often in face of the Ottoman power. Roma groups update the texts to refer to current events, as in Taraf de Haïduk's The Ballad of the Dictator (e.g. Ceauşescu).
Similarly, the instrumental repertory of the cigány muzsikusok of Transylvanian villages has proved to be a treasury of Hungarian folk music traditions that had largely died out in Hungary itself until their ‘discovery’ by visiting Hungarian musicians, who mined it for the urban folk music revival in Hungary in the 1970s (see Hungary, §II, 6). Though such preservation by professional Gypsy musicians can be ascribed largely to their catering to the tastes of their host-culture audiences, significantly it can also be found among non-professional Gypsies singing for their own in-group needs. In the British Isles it was the contribution of non-professional Scottish Travellers (both directly and through revivalists such as Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger or a.l. Lloyd) that gave ballad singing an important place in the English folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s, a tradition that was still going strong in the 70s among the Irish Travellers. In the Balkans, too, it is the Roma who keep ballad singing alive as a tradition, with certain ballads, for instance the Song of the Bridge, still widespread during the 1990s. In Hungary, by contrast, the brothers Csenki were still able to collect a number of ballads among Hungarian Vlach Gypsies in south-east Hungary in the 1940s; these have since became virtually extinct in both Roma and Hungarian society.
Paradoxically, it is the older materials in many traditions that Gypsy performers tend to regard as their own, while more recent repertories are more likely to be viewed as adopted. In Bulgaria, the Turkish Roma (Xoraxane) divide their repertory into ‘heavy-songs’ (phari gili) – a classification also used in Bulgarian traditional music – which are mostly laments in Romani language, or Romani mixed with Turkish or Bulgarian; ‘slow-songs’ (loki gili), which are slower versions of čoček dance melodies and ‘dance-songs’ (khelimaski gili), comprising adaptations of Bulgarian and Serbian dance-songs. ‘Heavy-songs’ follow the Bulgarian epic (na trapeza) but add Romani topics of loneliness, loss and sorrow. Song structure has a wider tonal range than other Bulgarian songs, reaching a 7th or an octave, with highly ornamented melody lines descending in steps within a 4th or 5th. They are sung solo.
In Slovakia, the Roma classification emphasizes the age of songs: ‘old songs’ (phurikane gilja), as opposed to ‘new songs’ (nevi gilja). The first group comprises slow, lyrical, sad (žalosna) or poor (čorikane) songs and dance-songs (khelibnaskere gilja); ‘new songs’ may use old melodies with new texts, new melodies with old texts or new melodies with new texts. This practice, also found among Hungarian Vlach Gypsies, underlines a Roma cultural view that the ‘novelty’ of a composition does not necessarily lie in the melody. Hungarian Vlach Gypsies and the Slovak Roma also differentiate between ‘old’ (durmutani), ‘new’ (nevi) songs (the former refer to the generation of the performer's parents or grandparents, the latter to the most recently acquired items in the repertory, important for the young and those in early middle-age) and ‘not-so-old’ or ‘not-so-new’, those songs that metaphorically link past, present and future.
A similar distinction between old and new seems also to be present in Andalusia. Flamenco subgenres of tonás and martinetes, sung without guitar accompaniment (a palo seco), along with the soleas and siguiriyas, are considered to be the oldest, most ‘Gitano’ genre, collectively referred to as cante hondo (‘deep song’). They contrast with the ‘lighter’ subgenres of cante chico, with its numerous adaptations such as the fandango, and the mixed genres of intermedio (see Flamenco). ‘Deep songs’ – as in various Gypsy repertories in the Balkans, central, north and eastern Europe – include genres such as laments, begging and prison songs, which, though often shared with other ethnic-cultural communities, have been creatively transformed by the Gypsies into their own distinctive genres, not least because they found in them strong resonances of their own life experiences.
The selection of materials, alongside folk classifications, can serve to express musical distinctness from the main population, as well as from other Gypsies. For example, Hungarian Vlach Gypsies avoid performing what they consider to be Hungarian folksong or nóta in Romani contexts, just as the Irish Travellers do not sing the most ‘Irish’ genre, sean nós songs. In north-east Syria the nayel and swehli vocal genres are in the Nawar (Gypsy) repertory. In other instances, such differences are expressed through transformation, keeping some aspects intact, such as melody, while ‘Gypsyfying’ others, such as temporal or textual aspects, thereby generating considerable ambiguity in relation to a ‘pure’ or single musical identity.
Hungarian Vlach Gypsies singing adapted songs tend to bring the temporal aspects into conformity with their own stylistics, as discussed above, and when necessary and possible introduce small changes in the tonal structure to move the Hungarian feature of 4th- or 5th-shift structures (of folksongs) towards more harmonic-based aesthetics. Dance-songs, even those from popular genres such as the tango, often receive an added accompaniment played on spoons, tables or metal water jug, as well as mouth-bass, ‘rolling’ and rhythmical shouts. Such transformations are even extended to adaptations of Western pop music. Similarly, in flamenco, genres of Spanish folk origin such as the campanilleros may be transformed closer to a hondo style through long rubato type or stretched musical lines, more highly ornamented vocals, and the modal delivery and harmonics of the guitar accompaniment, as is evident in performances from the 1920 to 30s (e.g. Manuel Torre with Miguell Borull on guitar), or the more chico style of alegrias from the 1950s (e.g. Canalejas de Jerez with Antonio Uteras on the guitar).
Transformation can also be illustrated by the way the Roma of Kosovo took over the Brazilian hit tune Lambada, by omitting repeats (thus changing the symmetrical structure), and adding new sections of a formal and improvisatory character (taksim) in which the oboe, accordion and synthesizer players altered the scales to modal variants and simultaneously filled out the melodically ‘empty’ parts in parallel but slightly different ways (ex.1). The Portuguese vocal was also left out by Roma performers, though included by non-Roma musicians.
Playing with ambiguity and crossing musical (and social) boundaries may give rise to specific genres. Again in Kosovo, during the 1980s, Roma singers, such as Tafa, developed a new genre called talava (‘under arm’), based on an originally female genre of singing with frame drum accompaniment. The ambivalence created by men performing women's songs and playing a women's instrument has since been eliminated by ‘masculinizing’ the genre through the introduction of amplified instruments as accompaniment (e.g. by Fadil Sulejmani and Mazlum Šačiri-Lumi). In this format, the genre using short and repetitive musical lines to improvise texts in Romani, and to a lesser degree, in Albanian, has rapidly gained popularity among the general population of Kosovo for use as praise-songs at weddings and other celebrations, despite the criticisms of other Roma musicians.
Other examples illustrate the creative use by Gypsy musicians of different musical styles. This may be largely an individual matter, as when an Irish Traveller performs a song both in the traditional Irish way and in American Country and Western style. It may also be more systematic as with Manush and Sinti jazz musicians, such as Hänsche Weiss and his group, who are able to perform Hungarian urban Gypsy music (that is the nóta and csárdás of Hungarian popular music) both with a Hungarian style of delivery or in Swing jazz style with corresponding tempo changes and use of complex seventh and ninth harmonics in the guitar accompaniment.
Change of tempo is a common musical technique with which Gypsies distinguish items of their repertory from those shared with the main population or other Gypsy groups. In the Finnish Roma tradition, long pauses and ornamented, elongated tones, especially at cadences, generally halve the tempo of songs by comparison with the Finnish folksinging tradition. Similarly, Slovak Roma deliver tempo giusto – adapted Slovakian songs at a much reduced speed. In Hungary the Vlach Gypsies also mark their regional differences through variation in tempo: the south-eastern Vlach Gypsies perform slower than those in the north, particularly compared to performers in Budapest. British Travellers, as with the Finnish Roma, may change the metrically-structured tempos of adopted songs to a freer rubato style. Despite the similarities of processes, such temporal changes sound very different from one group to another. A Finnish Roma performance, for example, still sounds metrically structured in comparison with Spanish or Hungarian vocal deliveries.
Changes in tempo affect the texts in vocal genres. The priority given by Gypsies to emotional expression means that poetical aspects may be distorted or overridden. This is especially pronounced in flamenco singing where the performers may interrupt a word to include long melismatic decorations or guitar solos, so that even the metric structures, such as seguiriyas, lose their importance.
In genres such as ballads, in which the emotional intensity important for Gypsies is already embedded in their topics, performers tend to support a specific story in a manner that stays more or less faithful to the original, though additional verses or lines may be added to ‘Gypsify’ the protagonists or performer. For example, at the end of one performance of For my Name is Jock Stewart, Jeannie Robertson added the lines, ‘So come, fill up your glasses of brandy and wine, Whatever it costs I will pay’. This is almost identical to a formulaic couplet used by Hungarian Vlach Gypsies to express their generosity and the value of sharing money and good times with others.
Among bi- or trilingual Gypsy groups, switching languages is a more obvious signal of context. It may serve, for example, to protest at the ‘alien’ position of Gypsies in a non-Gypsy world, such as when they are in hospital or prison, or to playfully blur the demarcations (e.g. adding a purely Romani text to a Hungarian song), or to allow ironical or humorous expression of matters that offend strict Romani morality and thus are more safely sung in the second language.
While professional Gypsy performers must, to a degree, comply with the linguistic and thematic preferences of their non-Gypsy audiences, they often find ways of ‘Gypsifying’ texts by making references within traditional songs to, for instance, football stars, popular television programmes or driving a Mercedes car.
Whether texts are adapted (e.g. ballads), or created by a technique of formulaic improvisation, Gypsy songs in Europe tend to deal with a similar range of topics and mostly, though not exclusively, from a male perspective. These include personal loss, loneliness, imprisonment, family relations (especially between mother and children) and the ambiguous nature of love, but also the joys of Gypsy life, such as being together with their ‘brothers’, going to a fair, selling and buying horses, as well as explicit notions of physical love, a topic that is also part of the kinaesthetic expressions of many Gypsy dances.
Gypsies generally – whether Finnish Roma, Hungarian Vlach Gypsies or British Travellers – also have a practice of associating songs with a special individual in their lives or creating specific songs to the memory of a beloved person, which is rooted in the significance of music and its relationship with Gypsy life and family.
Typically, lyrics retain elements of ambiguity, which can make it hard to distinguish them from more specific personal statements unless one is familiar with Gypsy symbols, logic or the individual's life story. Such ambiguity offers a way of telling or ‘confessing’ socially and personally disturbing events which, under the strong moral rules of Gypsy societies, cannot be talked about explicitly.
Until recently, Gypsy songs have lacked overt political messages. Even songs about the Holocaust (e.g. Ballad of Hitler) followed their conventional deeply sorrowful and resigned lyrics and were seldom performed except by those personally affected. An implicit political aspect, in its broadest sense, is present in the performance practice, within the interactions between performers.
As with repertory, instruments used by Gypsy performers are generally those favoured by the dominant population, for instance the fiddle and bagpipes in Scotland and Ireland or the harp in Wales. In many places, for instance in German-speaking areas, the guitar is an important Gypsy instrument. It may occur in specific forms, such as the seven-string guitar among Russian Roma or the flamenco guitar in Andalusia. In Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries, Gypsies are associated with the spike fiddle (rebaba) and the long-necked lute buzuq. In Syria the Nawar use empty petrol cans as sound-boxes for rebaba, not unlike the eastern European Roma, who also use various household items and other utensils in their music-making. In Roma-populated regions of eastern Europe, the taraf ensembles of Romania and cigány banda of Hungarian areas (expanding to areas of the former Habsburg empire), comprising violin, viola and double bass, may be combined with local instruments (e.g. ţambal or cimbalom), which are strongly, if not exclusively, associated with Roma (fig.2). In other instances, the viola and bass may be replaced by the accordion, another instrument which has strong Roma associations in Romania as well as Bulgaria, in order to become acceptable to local aesthetics or reduce cost and problems of transportation. Local aesthetics may require a tambura band comprising a tamburica, brach tambura and bass tambura as in southern Hungary or be reduced to two tamburicas as in Serbian-populated Banat (Romania) areas. Brass ensembles or fanfare perform with breathtaking virtuosity among the Roma in that region as in central Moldavia and in Serbia.
In the Ottoman Turkish tradition of the Balkans are urban bands known as čalgija in Kosovo and Macedonia, koumpania in Greece (see Greece, §IV, 2(i)) and ‘wedding bands’ in Bulgaria. These bands employ similar instruments to those of urban Turkish popular art music traditions, such as the kaman (violin), tanner, (long-necked fretted lute), ‘ūd (fretless lute), ney (flute), daire (frame drum) or darabuka (kettledrum). They are also played by Roma. Some instruments are viewed as typically Roma, for instance the dzumbus (banjo) in Kosovo or the clarinet in Bulgaria, and tend to be retained for that reason; in recent years, some instruments have tended to be replaced by their amplified modern equivalents (e.g. guitar, bass guitar, drum sets). The rural, and largely outdoor zurna-davul ensembles, which are traditionally of ritual importance at weddings and circumcision ceremonies, have survived as a preserve of Roma performers throughout the Balkans as well as in many parts of the Middle East (see also Surnāy). In Iraq the Gypsies, or kawlīyya, perform on the drum and shawm (tabl wa zurna) in addition to the spike fiddle (rebāba). In many instances, the traditional zurna-davul Roma ensemble developed during the 19th century into full brass-band ensembles, with trumpets, saxophone, tuba, bass tuba and additional instruments such the accordion, though its traditional form is also kept in some countries, for instance Macedonia, as a symbol of the Roma ‘national’ political movement.
The strong connection between the Roma and the zurna-davul ensemble, which may be connected to their Indian heritage, is evident in the name of Albanian Roma bands, dualle (drum) which, as in other parts of the Balkans, has became modernised and uses amplified instruments. It is also argued that the zurna-davul combination inspired the violin-gardon ensembles of Hungarians and some Roma in Transylvania. There, the cello-shaped gardon is used as a percussive instrument, with strings plucked and beaten with a bow. The gardon is regularly, though not exclusively, played by a woman, the wife of the violinist.
Gypsy women are notable performers of flamenco singing and dancing, and a few have been and still are distinguished primáses (lead violin player) in Hungarian cigány banda. In the Ottoman Turkish-influenced Balkans and Middle-East, they are widely engaged as professional singers, dancers and frame-drum (daire) players (see Dāira and Daff). Their musical activities are viewed, however, with suspicion, since only women of bad-reputation are thought to take part in musical entertainment. Gypsy women performers have, for centuries, been perceived by non-Gypsies as prostitutes or as femmes fatales, a common theme also of 19th-century European operas such as Carmen or Rigoletto. This widespread representation is related to a complex combination of concepts about music, Gypsies and the socio-economic position of women in societies at large. In most Gypsy societies, women are the dominant providers for their families’ everyday needs and musical performance is one of many economic roles (others include hawking, fortune telling or providing domestic help for non-Gypsy households). Gypsy woman take advantage of non-Gypsy stereotypes and sell these representations but not themselves in music and dance. Gypsy women adhere to strict moral rules, which keep strict boundaries between Gypsies and non-Gypsies, males and females. In turn, Gypsies regard non-Gypsy women as potentially non-moral.
The ambivalent position of male and female Gypsy musicians enables them to perform during the liminality of rites of passages such as weddings, circumcisions, baptisms and funerals. For the same reason, non-professional Gypsies carry out a number of pre-Christian or pagan traditions in Christian societies. In Bulgaria and Romania the rain-invoking dance, paparuda, is performed by young Roma girls dressed in grass and sprinkled with water while singing. Roma adults also perform rituals on New Year's Eve both in Romania and Hungary.
In many societies Gypsy musicians help to induce heightened states of mind in their audiences, such as kefi in Greece, duende in Spain or Hungarian mulatás (merry-making or ‘merry-making with tears’), echoed in the Vlach Gypsy concept of voja kerel, a sacred ‘liminal’ state that combines joy, sorrow, consolation, extreme happiness and peace.
The massive upheavals of the 20th century, with its two world wars, frequently changing political regimes and boundaries, increasing urbanization and industrialization and, not least, the first stirrings of Roma movements to claim their own rights, all left their mark on Gypsy populations and on their music-making.
Arguably, the most widely influential development is the Manush jazz style evolved in the 1930s by Belgian-born Django Reinhardt. This drew on several strands, particularly 19th-century musette. a dance music style that developed in Paris from the traditions of migrant workers from rural France (Auvergne) and Italy. Initially it was played on the accordion, to which the bandurria and the banjo were later added as accompanying instruments, the latter being introduced to France together with minstrel shows after World War I. Subsequently, the guitar proved better suited for performance of the fast and fluid improvisatory sections in the dialogic interactions between performers, a performance structure preferred by the Manush and by most other Gypsies to the non-Gypsy (gajo) ‘lead’ and ‘accompanist’ structure. Thus the basic seed of the French ‘jazz’ tradition had been planted by the time Reinhardt started playing; his contribution was to blend it with further traditions, such as American Swing, and to give it an eastern European Gypsy flavour in the form of Stephane Grappelli's violin style. The western European Gypsy style of Manush jazz created by their Quintet de la Hot Club de France has continued to thrive and diversify. Some performers (e.g. the Rosenberg Trio) have stayed near to the original ‘tradition’, while others push it towards more mainstream US jazz styles (e.g. Christian Escoudé) or flamenco (e.g. Rapháel Fäyre), though most of them acknowledge their musical descent from Reinhardt by playing his compositions (e.g. Nuages or Anounman).
The Manush jazz style was also taken up by the German Sinti, the Roma group most affected by the Holocaust, as a way of breaking publicly from Germany by asserting a new musical identity. This Sinti school started in the late 1960s on the initiative of the violin player Schnukenack Reinhardt. It is stylistically similar to Manush jazz, but adds vocal parts, which may articulate political texts in Sinti Romani, and places more emphasis on eastern European Roma traditions. The latter dimension involves both repertory (including Hungarian nóta and csárdás) and Russian popular pieces or Gypsy romances) and additional instrumentation (accordion, harp, cimbalom and double bass).
Another major trend has been the emergence of ‘newly composed folk music’ (novokomponovana narodna muzika) in the territories of former Yugoslavia since the 1980s. Introduced by the Belgrade group Južni Vetar, (‘Southern Wind’), this blended various elements associated with specific ethnic musics, such as the Serbian dvojka (2/4) metre, the Bosnian ornamented sevdalinka and ‘flat’ (ravno) singing style, and Macedonian asymmetric rhythms (7/9), with Western pop-music instrumentation. The overall eastern feel of the music, together with involvement of Roma musicians such as Šaban Bajramovič and the appeal of its ‘internationalism’ and ‘novelty’ to Roma taste, led to rapid acceptance of this style by the local Roma population, to the extent that older repertory was pushed into the background, thereby diminishing divisions between the repertories of professional and non-professional Roma musicians.
By contrast, a perceptible growth in nationalism in Bulgaria strongly favoured the propagation of ‘pure’ Bulgarian culture, free from ‘foreign’ (i.e. Turkish) influences. The newly emergent ‘wedding music’ (svadbarska musika), which was predominantly performed by Roma (and/or Turks), came under sustained attack because of its fast tempos, and its highly improvised ornamented character and instrumentation – all perceived to be opposed to the quieter, simpler values of ‘folk music’ (narodna muzika). Despite official disapproval, ‘wedding music’ gained wide popularity among Bulgaria's youth, both Roma and Bulgarian, precisely because its foremost performers (e.g. Ivo Papasov) amalgamated the hora, rutsenitsa and kopanitsa styles of folk dance music with a mixture of others, such as arabesque, Macedonian Roma, film music, Western pop and jazz, played on loudly amplified modern instruments.
In Spain, the flamenco tradition, which already had a long history of incorporating new influences (e.g. Cuban rumba or son into flamenco rumba) continued to develop. After the death of Franco and an accelerated migration of population from the Andalusian south to the industrial cities of Madrid and Barcelona, flamenco rumba was fused with Western rock music in the Catalan rumba, which continued to use the Andalusian Phrygian cadence and Gitano techniques of voice production but took on a more consciously political stance in its song texts and emphasized its rock affiliations. Guitarist Paco de Lucia and the singer Camarón infused traditional flamenco style with jazz and pop elements, while other artists, such as Lole (Montoya) and Manuel, combined flamenco guitar playing and blues-inflected Arab singing to give new life to flamenco's (and Anadalusia's) historical connection with Arab music. The Catalan-style flamenco and rumba have gained popularity among the Southern French Roma too, many of whom are from Catalan Gitan descent, for example the (kin) members of the group Gypsy Kings, and they have developed it further by incorporating the Cuban Salsa.
In Hungary, the 1970s ‘dance house’ revival of folk music among Hungarian youth inspired young Vlach Gypsies working in Budapest to modernize their own hitherto unknown vocal traditions by adding harmonic accompaniments on acoustic guitar. The growing public recognition given to recordings of the pioneering group Kalyi Jag has inspired others. One of the most innovatory of these is Andro Drom, who have served Roma political goals by broadening the original Vlach Gypsy core of the music to acknowledge symbolic links not just with Hungarian Romungre (the inclusion of cimbalom) but also to other Roma traditions, both from the East (the Balkans and even India) and the West (Catalan rumba rhythms).
Though Gypsies have in most places been appreciated for their musical services and their popularity is increasing widely, their marginalized social position has persisted. It is ironical that Gypsy music thrives through its willingness to conserve, adapt and experiment with the traditions of their ‘host’ cultures, thereby sustaining and enriching the very cultures that for five centuries have been bent on excluding and eradicating the Gypsy presence from their midst.
See also Albania, §II; European traditional music, §6; Iraq, §III, 1–2; Jordan (i); Macedonia; Greece, §IV, 1(iii), 2(i); Hungary, §II, 4(i)–(iii); Kurdish music; Romania, §II, 3; Syria; Turkey; and Yugoslavia.
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C. Nečas and D. Holý: ‘A Auschwitz il y a une grande prison’, Cahiers de littérature orale, xxx (1991), 15–35
U. Hemetek: Romane Gila: Lieder and Tänze der Roma in Österreich (Vienna, 1992)
K. Kovalcsik, ed.: Ernő Király's Collection of Gypsy Folk Music from Voivodina (Budapest, 1992)
C. Juhasz: ‘Chants et musiques tsiganes collectés dans le Balkan’, Etudes tsiganes: musiques tsiganes: tradition, héritage, modernité, i (1994), 86–103
P. Williams: ‘Maro Bravlepen … un répertoire de chansons manouches’, ibid., 28–42
J. Porter and H. Gower: Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice (Knoxville, TN, 1995)
C. Fennesz-Juhasz: ‘Me ka-džav ko gurbeti: Klage- und Abschiedslieder mazedonischer Roma- Migranten’, Echo der Vielfalt, ed. U. Hemetek (Vienna, 1996), 256–70
U. Hemetek: ‘ROMA: eine Österreichische Volksgruppe: die Rolle der traditionelle Music im Prozess der Identitätsfindung’, Echo der Vielfalt (Vienna, 1996), 271–86
K. Kovalcsik: ‘Roma or Boyash Identity? The music of the ‘Ard'elan’ Boyashes in Hungary’, World of Music, xxxviii/1 (1996), 77–93
A. Lemon: ‘Hot Blood and Black Pearls: Socialism, Society, and Authenticity at the Moscow Teatr Romen’, Theatre Journal, xlviii (1996), 479–94
R. Blomster, ed.: disc notes, Könni and the Gypsies: Nine Encounters with the Gypsies in Finland (Tampere, 1997) [from the collections of Prof. E. ala-Könni, Kansanmusiiki-inst. KICD 50]
E. Marushiakova and V. Popov, eds.: The Song of the Bridge, Studii Romani, iii–iv (Bulgaria, 1997)
F. Liszt: Des bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris, 1859, 2/1881/R: Eng. trans., 1926/R, as The Gypsy in Music)
B. Sárosi: Gypsy Music (Budapest, 1978)
R. Garfias: ‘Survivals of Turkish Characteristics in Romanian Musica Lautereasca’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, xiii (1981), 97–107
T. Rice: ‘The Surla and Tapan Tradition in Yugoslav Macedonia’, GSJ, xxxv (1982), 122–37
J. Bouët: ‘Fioritures et accompagnements dans les faubourgs et les villages’, Dialogue, xii/13 (1984), 63–77
B. Lortat-Jacob: ‘Le metier de lăutar’, Dialogue, xii/13 (Montpellier, 1984), 13–35
M. Zwerin: La tristesse de Saint Louis: Jazz Under the Nazis (New York, 1985)
S. Rădulescu: disc notes, Village Music from Romania, archives Internationales de Musique populaire AIMP and VDE Gallo CD 537–9 (1988)
P. Williams: Django Reinhardt (Montpellier, 1989)
S.T. Seeman: Continuity and Transformation in the Macedonian Genre of Calgija: Past Perfect and Present Imperfective (thesis, U. of Washington, 1990)
S. Ziegler: ‘Gender-Specific Traditional Wedding Music in Southwestern Turkey’, Music Gender and Culture, ed. M. Herndon and S. Ziegler (Wilhelmshaven, 1990)
M.H. Beissinger: The Art of the Lăutar: the Epic Tradition of Romania (New York, 1991)
S. Pettan: ‘“Lambada in Kosovo”: a Profile of Gypsy Creativity’, Journal of Gypsy Lore Society, 5th ser., ii/2 (1992), 117–30
G. Bertrand and J.-P. Escudero: ‘Les musicians gitans de Perpignan’, Etudes tsiganes: musiques tsiganes: tradition, héritage, modernité, i (1994), 44–55
F. Couvreux: ‘Panorama du jazz tsigane en Allemagne’, ibid., 20–27
D. Roussin: ‘Les tsiganes, le musette, le guitare, le banjo’, ibid., 134–45
R.M. Bradl: ‘The “Yiftoi” and the Music of Greece: Role and Function’, World of Music, xxxviii/1 (1996), 7–32
D.A. Buchanan: ‘Wedding Musicians, Political Transition, and National Consciousness of Bulgaria’, Retuning Culture, ed. M. Slobin (Durham and London, 1996), 200–230
S. Pettan: ‘Selling Music: Rom Musicians and the Music Market of Kosovo’, Echo der Vielfalt, ed. U. Hemetek (Vienna, 1996), 233–46
L. Rasmussen Vidič: ‘The Southern Wind of Change: Style and the Politics of Identity in Prewar Yugoslavia’, Retuning Culture, ed. M. Slobin (Durham and London, 1996), 99–116
C. Silverman: ‘Music and Power: Gender and Performance among Roma (Gypsies) of Skopje, Macedonia’, World of Music, xxxviii/1 (1996), 63–76
Kaale Džambana: Finnish Gypsies Sing, various pfmrs, Global Music Centre GM 9302 (1975)
What a Voice! Jeannie Robertson, a Documentary, Folktracks 067 (1975)
The Bonny Green Tree, coll. J. Reilly, Topic 12 T 359 (1978)
Kurzemes čigani: Latviešu folklora, Melodiya M32 43361 2 (1981)
Songs of a Macedonian Gypsy, perf. E. Redžepova and U. Jašarova, Monitor MFS 496 (1982)
Gypsy Folk Songs from Hungary, perf. Kalyi Jag, Hungaroton HCD 18132 (1987)
Pearl of Gypsy Music from Russia, Mezdunarodnaya Kniga MKE 3002 (1989)
De Sant Jaume Son, Musiciens Gitans de Perpignan, Al sur ALCD 105 (1991)
José Reyes: Cantaor de la Camargue, Tudor Recordings LC 2365 (1991)
Roma Pop, Hungaroton SLMP 37505 (1991)
Taraf de Haidouks: Musiques des tsiganes de Roumania, Cram World Craw2 (1991)
O Suno (The Dream): Gypsy Folk Songs from Hungary, perf. Kalyi Jag, Hungaraton HCD 18211 (1992)
Rom Sam Ame: traditions Isiganes en Hongrie, Fonti Musicali Traditions du Monde FMD 194 (1993)
Amare ğila-Ünsere Lieder, perf. R. Nicolič-Lakatos, Tondokumente zur Volksmusik in Österreich, vol.4: Romamusik 1. RST Records, RST 91571 2 (1994)
Correspondances, perf. Bratch, Niglo 888002 (1994)
Florilyé dâ primǎvǎra: Beash Gypsy Songs, various pfmrs, Gandhi Középiskola GK1 (1994)
Songs of the Travelling People, Saydisc SDL 407 (1994)
Kaj Phirel of Del, perf. Andro Drom, Andro Drom Foundation AD 01 BP 95 (1995)
Rom-Pop, perf. V. Bílá and Kale Kampa 7422510, (1995)
Anthology of Gypsy Folk Songs, i–iv: Hungary and Romania, coll. K. Bari, EMI Quintana QUI 903095 (1996)
Luludžako Drom: Finnish Gypsy Songs, Olarin Musikki OMCD 49 (1996)
Melodies of Sorrow and Joy: Hungary and Romania, Descendants of the itinerant Gypsies, various pfmrs, Globe Trot MCM 3010 (1996)
Roma Reggae, Roma Rap, perf. E. Sándor, Eston ES 001 (1996)
Könni and the Gypsies: Nine Encounters with the Gypsies in Finland, coll. E. Ala-Könni, Kansanmusiikki-inst KICD 50 (1997)
Phari Mamo, perf. Andro Drom, Gema Network LC6759 (1997)
Relax and Enjoy, perf. Boulau Ferré Quartet, Steeple Chase ScS 1210 (1985)
Erinnerungen, perf. Hänsche Weiss Ensemble, Elite Special Extra E 733503 (1988)
Fis, Fis Tsigane, perf. O. Temiz, La Lichere LLL 107 (1989)
Roumanie: la vrai tradition de Transylvania, Ocora C 559070 (1989)
Voyages, perf. R. Fays and P. Blanchard, Ricordu CDR 0289 (1989)
Anarhos Theos, perf. Y. Mangas, Fablesound MBI 10556 (1991)
Balkanology, perf. I. Papasov and his Orchestra, Hannibal HN 1363 (1991)
Dreyfus, perf. Charlie Haden/Christian Escoudé, DuoSPPF ISRC 14F 849 226 2 (1991)
Gypsy Summer, perf. Rosenberg Trio, Dino DNCD 11265 (1991)
Tsigane: The Gypsy Music of Turkey, perf. Erköse Ensemble, CMP Records 3010 (1991)
Djangology, perf. D. Reinhardt, Double Play GRFO89 (1992)
Puoro Sinto: musiques des tsiganes de France (Manouches), Planett 242034 (1992)
Roumanie: musiques pour cordes de Transylvanie, coll. B. Lortat-Jacob and J. Bouët, Le Chant du Monde CNR 274937 (1992) [incl. notes]
Christian Escoudé in La, Polygram 518653.2 (1993)
Roumanie: Taraf de Carancèbes, musiciens du Banat, Silex Y 225 208 (1993)
Les classiques du musette, perf. J. Privat, Versailles 47683 2 (1994)
Magyarpalatka: Hungarian Folk Music from the Transylvanian Heath, Hungaroton HCD 18217 (1994)
Night and Day, perf. Hot Club Austria, Granit GR 94001 (1994)
Swinging with Jimmy Rosenberg, perf. Hot Club de Norvège, Hot Club records HCR 82 (1994)
Elemér Duka Jr. and his Gypsy Saloon Band Play Filmhits and Other Classics, Quality art Studio, QARTCD 9601 (1996)
L'orient est rouge, perf. Kočani Orkestar, Cram World Craw 19 (1997)
Macedonian Wedding Soul Cooking, perf. Ferus Mustafov, Globestyle GTSY 089 (1997)
Radiao Pasani, perf. Fanfare Ciocărlia, Pi'ra:nha PIRI 1254 (1998)