ARTS-ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC: ‘Gypsy Caravan’ on Tour in United States

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 20 1999 (IPS) - The past decade has been a brutal one for the 10 million Roma people of central Europe with reports of harassment and expulsion in Hungary, Romania and former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

It’s been that way for 900 years as the history of the original Romanies has been one of travel and expulsion from the flight of the original Romanies from India in the 11th century to the “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo today.

Ian Hancock, UN representative of the Romany peoples, says that European Romanies “were either kept in slavery in the Balkans…or else were able to move on and up into the rest of the continent”, reaching every corner of Europe by 1500.

As a result of such widespread dispersion, he says, “the Roma have emerged as a collection of distinct ethnic groups within a larger whole”.

The Roma diaspora stretches from India and Russia through to Europe and the United States – and features an international culture that assimilates distinctive Romany elements into diverse national traditions.

Now the ‘Gypsy Caravan’ is touring here featuring six different acts that demonstrate the immense contribution of Romanies to European and Asian song and dance.

The tour’s six groups – Musafir, from India’s Rajasthan province; Russia’s Kolpakov Trio; the band Taraf de Haidouks from Romania; Bulgaria’s Yuri Yunakov Ensemble; the Hungarian group Kalyi Jag; and Spain’s Antonio el Pipa Flamenco Ensemble – show many distinctively Romany assets: plaintive singing, percussive elements, and dances with elaborate hand gestures amog them.

Yet the various musical and dance acts are all quite different, with Musafir’s whirling khattak dancing a distant cousin to the bold, strutting flamenco of dancer Antonio el Pipa, and Taraf de Haidouk’s jazzy ensemble a clear contrast to the folk melodies of Kalyi Jag.

“Contrary to popular conceptions, there is no one ‘Gypsy scale’ (in music),” says Carol Silverman, a Romany studies scholar at the University of Oregon who has joined the Gypsy Caravan by singing with the Yunakov Ensemble.

“There are perhaps some stylistic and performance elements – such as a propensity to improvise, the intensity of emotional expression and the openness to new styles – which are common to in European Roma music,” she says.

As a result, Silverman notes the Roma sometimes have been dismissed as “musical sponges” – but she adds that they have done more than simply seep up local traditions.

“Romany culture festivals take place in many cities,” she says. “In all of these fora, music plays an important role in celebrating the creative adaptability of Roma despite centuries of discrimination.”

Many of the acts in the Caravan know firsthand the importance of using music to promote cultural survival during periods of anti- Roma sentiment.

Three members of saxophonist Yuri Yunakov’s ensemble were jailed by Bulgaria’s government in the 1980s during a crackdown on “foreign” elements in Bulgarian culture.

The Kolpakov Trio has played in Moscow’s Romen Theatre, created in 1931 to preserve Romany culture but required, since 1936, to conduct performances only in the Russian language as part of Josef Stalin’s “Russification” programme. As a result, the music itself often is a compromise between tradition and political trends that often explicitly discourage expressions of Romany culture.

Yet the groups all show an abiding respect for their heritage, from Taraf de Haidouks’ epic songs about brigands to Musafir’s Langa melodies depicting everthing from Rajasthani life to Sufi poetry and modern-day films.

When the Caravan performed at New York’s World Music Institute this month they were even able to combine all their varied styles in a group encore, in which Antonio el Pipa’s flamenco dancing melded into that of Musafir dancer Sayeri Sapera, and Taraf de Haidouks’ piercing violins joined with the mandolins and milk cans played by Kalyi Jag.

For one magical moment, there was singing and dancing in harmony with sounds and movements that had traveled from India to the United States, and almost every point in between. And then the Caravan moved on – trying to make the case for Romany culture even amid the latest wave of crackdowns in the Balkans.