music short essay

Romani (Gypsy) Music

Key Facts

• Scholars believe Roma came from India 1,000 years ago

• “Gypsy” – derogatory, Europeans believed they came from Egypt (used in UK, Spain)

• “Tsigan” – heathen (used in Germany and eastern Europe)

• Politically-correct name is “Roma” – meaning “man” in Romanes, the language of Roma

• CDs – often constructed as a “journey” from India to Europe (each track features Gypsy music from a country “along the journey”

Romani Flag / Indian Flag

Marketing Gypsies - 
 nomadism, cultural difference, 


shared history

A DVD /documentary, 2008

2 CD set that features Gypsy music from different countries, 1995

Romani Musicians

• “Gypsies” – musicians, fortune-tellers, dancers, horse-traders, NOMADS

• Accepted as entertainers, shunned in everyday life

• Historically hired to perform non-Roma and Roma music for nobility, at weddings, in restaurants

What is “real” Gypsy music?

• Roma have private and public music repertoires

• Non-Roma (gadje) are familiar mostly with non-Roma repertoires as performed by Roma

• Private music – rituals for funerals, personal songs, songs as expressions of individual emotion (for instance, sorrow)

Romani instruments

• Hungary – cimbalom • Russia – seven-string guitar • Serbia – brass bands • Romania – string bands • Spain – flamenco - guitar

* Roma musical bands are often very similar to those of the non-Roma majority

Different types of Romani musicians

Taraf de Haidouks –Romania (top left)

Esma Redzepova – Macedonia (top right)

Gipsy Kings – Southern France (originally from Spain) (bottom left)

Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) France (bottom right)

Taraf de Haidouks (Romania)

• Taraf - Turkish word meaning “ensemble” • Haidouk – Turkish word (derogatory)

meaning highwayman/ freedom fighter (against Ottoman and Habsburg authorities)

• Troup of lautars (professional Romani musicians) from Clejani, Romania

• “discovered” by Swiss ethnomusicologist/ producer Laurent Aubert

1999 album cover

Fanfare Ciocarlia (Romania)

• Ciocarlia (skylark) – famous lautar tune • Brass band from northeastern Romania,

village of Zece Prajini • “discovered” in 1996 by German sound

engineer and producer Henry Ernst • Trumpets, tubas, tenor and baritone horns,

saxophones, bass drum, percussion • Fuse Turkish, Bulgarian, Serbian, and

Macedonian musical styles

Fanfare Ciocarlia 
 (always play “old” instruments on stage)

Esma Redzepova (Macedonia)

• Born into a Muslim Romani family in Skopje, Macedonia in 1943

• Married Stevo Teodosievski (gadje – non- Roma)

• First to sing in Romani language on stage in Yugoslavia

• Fostered 49 male children, taught them Romani music (performs with her adopted sons on stage)

Flamenco - from Andalusia

Granada – Gypsy caves

Inside a modern cave

Musical Influences- 18th cent.

Spanish – contemporary flamenco rooted in local styles

Romani – became associated with Gypsies Moorish – Arab/North African - microtones Sephardic – Jewish (not Ashkenazi)

Songs of the lower classes Golden Age -(1869-1910) style solidified in late 19th

cent in cafes (emotion, hope, pain)

Characteristics

• Microtonal inflections • Narrow range of notes • Timbre • Chromaticism • Improvisation • Sad texts • Polyrhythms (guitar differs from voice

emphasis)

Gipsy Kings

• From southern France - fled Andalusia in the 1930s during the war

• rumba flamenca - fusion of Cuban rumba and flamenco

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