Roma (Gypsy) Music Overview:
It may not be the oldest music in the world, but the sounds of the Roma, or Gypsy people, are certainly the most travelled, covering thousands of miles in a journey that's lasted centuries, influencing, blending with and taking on the colors of the many places it's landed along the way. Always outsiders, often shunned, with many exterminated by the Nazis during World War II, the Gypsies have long been travelling people—their home is the road. Of course, along the way many have settled, including thousands upon thousands of them across the Balkans, where they've became part of village life even as others continued their journey westward.
The tale begins in Rajahstan, India, in the 11th century. (You can still hear the roots of Gypsy music in modern Rajahsthani bands like Musafir.) With the arrival of an invasion force, some of the Roma people started moving to the west—although whether they were fleeing or routing the enemy isn't known. They arrived in Egypt (the derogatory term "Gypsy" derives from Egyptian), then Turkey, finally penetrating Europe through Armenia, then into the Balkans and Greece. They'd brought their music with them, but over the course of a few hundred years it had become an entirely different creature.
Roma musicians absorbed music from the new territories, and in turn influenced the locals—you can hear it in everything from the modes and percussion of Turkey to the raw duende of Spanish flamenco. But their influence was greatest across the Balkans and Central Europe, where it was often the Romany musicians who earned their living by playing for village weddings, feasts and celebrations of all kinds. They became familiar with the music of different parts of the Balkans where they settled, adding their own flourishes, which in turn became standard fare for local musicians. The Roma would travel throughout the region, playing, taking in sounds and ideas and adding them to their own. It became commonplace to see Gypsy and Jewish klezmer musicians playing together, and klezmer took on some of the characteristics of Gypsy music and vice versa.
There's a lot more to Gypsy music than what one hears in the borrowed Romanticism of Franz Liszt, although it wasn't until the fall of Communism that the West truly became aware of it, thanks not only to an ease in travel restrictions but also Emir Kusturica's groundbreaking 1988 film The Time of the Gypsies. Beyond the aching sadness, there were also the horos and other dances, often played at a frantic pace by Rom musicians on fiddles (as with Taraf de Haïdouks from Romania, for example) and other stringed instruments, with scratch ensembles put together for weddings that lasted for days (wedding music remains a vital part of life throughout the Balkans, and often stages of the ceremony are accompanied by drums and zurna, a kind of wooden shawm). The sheer energy of performance overwhelms listeners and dancers. The violin is certainly the instrument most associated with Gypsy music, and its regional variations have been well documented. For example, the Hungarian group Muzsikas has released an album of Transylvanian material and composer Béla Bartók had collected village tunes around his native Hungary in the early part of the 20th century. The instrument is also a supple complement to singers, and the culture has produced some who are stunning, such as Esma Redžepova, often called Queen of the Gypsies, with her raw, haunted voice, or Slovakia's Vera Bílá, whose curious blend of emotive singing with Brazilian melodies and rhythms has won fans worldwide.
But violin and song are only two expressions of Roma music. There are also the gloriously rowdy brass bands, a legacy of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans and its military bands. It's a massive phenomenon, celebrated each year with a festival in Guca, Serbia, where more than 200 groups regularly compete. Initially brought to Western ears by Romania's Fanfare Ciocarlia, it's a sound that has become addictive, with brass and wind instruments careening through tunes at a ridiculous pace and offering wild improvisations. It's a field that's flagged up a number of stars such as Serbia's Boban Markovic and Macedonia's Kocani Orkestar,
At the Western edge of Europe, in Spain and France, it's guitar and voice that rule, and in artists like Peret or even the late genius Django Reinhardt you can heard the long road the Gypsies have travelled across the years. The flamenco style, stripped down and portable, can also be heard across the Pyrenees in France, with artists like guitar virtuoso Thierry Robin. The Gypsies even made it as far as Britain and Ireland, where they're often referred to as "the travelling people." However, for once, they seemed to leave their traditional music behind, as songs collected from them have much more in common with local folk music.
The journey of Gypsy music goes on. It may not be the physical trek it once was but the sounds keep developing. A younger generation, including bands like Besh o Drom and Shukar Collective, are reinventing it, adding touches of rock, jazz and electronica while keeping the raw heart of the music intact. —Chris Nickson
