lethargic_man | lethargic_man's indirect relationship with the Roma

This post was originally going to be about the irreverent attitude conveyed by such (indirect) encounters with Roma (Gypsies) I've had; but it seems to have grown in the process.

I've been interested in Roma for some time, but was surprised, on looking into my mail archive, to see where that interest originated. I suppose my first encounters with them were in the Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King) novel Thinner in 1992 (not that real-life Roma turned out to be at all impressed by their portrayal in that), and then the R.A. Lafferty short story "Land of Great Horses" in 1997.

Then, in 1999, I made a passing reference, in a story I was writing, set a thousand years in the future, to the "fall of first the government and then the state of United Carpathiastan." After reading a book review (of what I have now no idea) in the Jewish Chronicle, though, I decided to replace the flippant reference to United Carpathiastan with one to Romanestan: a state for the Roma, who have had no country of their own since they left India a thousand years ago.

After receiving feedback from my writers' group that the story did not involve enough happening, I decided to rewrite it from the perspective of a refugee from the fall of Romanestan. This led to much researching of the Roma, and my becoming much more knowledgeable about them. Of the books I read then, the ones that stick in my mind the most are the two by Jan Yoors, The Gypsies, describing his life after he ran away with the Gypsies aged twelve, and then spent his teenage years alternating between spending time with his parents and wandering with a company of Roma all over Europe; and Crossing, describing his experience during the War, aiding the Resistance against the Nazis and acting as a go-between between them and the Roma (of whom all those we had previously met ended up being murdered in what the Roma call o Baro Porrajmos—the Great Devouring).

Then, in 2002, I happened by chance to turn the television on to the Radio 3 World Music Awards on BBC Knowledge (the precursor to BBC Four), which featured, inter alia, a couple of pieces by a band of Romani musicians from Romania called Taraf de Haïdouks. The first, "The Ballad of the Dictator" (written shortly after the ousting from power of Ceauşescu), featured the band leader, a man in his seventies called Nicolae Neacşu, playing a violin by the unusual technique of dragging a loop of horsehair along the string, resulting in an uncharacteristically scratchy sound:

(I wouldn't recommend listening to the whole of this one unless you understand Romanian!) The second piece, "Return of the Magic Horses", was a manic piece which featured what sounded like fifteen minutes of music compressed into just five. I was instantly hooked. This track doesn't seem to be on YouTube, but here's a somewhat less manic piece of theirs:

Some of the tracks on the album of theirs I got, Band of Gypsies, featured a Macedonian Romani band called Kočani Orkestar; strangely, though, I didn't investigate them any further until iddewes mentioned them in the music tag of a post of hers last summer. This led to me investigating them on YouTube and heading off to buy their albums Alone At My Wedding and The Ravished Bride (and L'Orient Est Rouge, which I wasn't so impressed by).

Then last autumn, when I gave Band of Gypsies to bluepork as a birthday present, he recommended me back the self-styled Gypsy punk rock band Gogol Bordello, whom I went to see in concert in Edinburgh in March, and whose album Super Taranta is now one of my favourite albums. This isn't off Super Taranta, but if I had to choose one Gogol Bordello track, it would have to be this one:

Then just the other week, listening to Terry Gilliam on Desert Island Discs got me into the Hungarian Romani band Parno Graszt, and I have now got myself a copy of their album Ez A Világ Való (This World Is Made For Me). They are characterised by slightly unusual instrumentation, including milk churns, a pair of spoons, and "oral bass" (continuous improvised scatting). Here's another tune of theirs on YouTube (slow introduction; more typical from 0:43 in):

When reading the Yoors books, one thing that came through strongly was the irreverent, almost wacky, attitude that characterised the Roma:

[Pulika, the leader of the kumpaniya] was having a quiet beer at a tavern not far from our encampment when the local veterinarain bluntly accused him of kidnaping and detaining a child. Devoid of any real guilt or a sense of wrongdoing, but ever aware of a good opportunity to ridicule the Gaje [non-Gypsies], Pulika calmly replied that it was none of the man's business. As an afterthought he warned the man to keep away from me [the young Yoors]. He warmed up to his role and in convincing detail described the cradle snatching that had never occurred. The Gaje were baffled and disarmed by his simple confirmation of their worst suspicions and by his complete cynicism. Pulika winked broadly at them, paid for his beer, and left before they had recovered their breath. Pulika relished his success of sorts as a teller of tall tales. At every opportunity he repeated his story, embellished it, embroidered upon it, changing the country, the social status of the stolen child's parents, the age at which he supposedly had been abducted by the Gypsies. Pulika did his best to live up to this legend of notoriety. [...] Then, one day [...] the camp was surrounded and raided by the mounted police. They were accompanied by several indignant witnesses: the people had told the story to and, it suddently became obvious to him, had been too thoroughly taken in. I was soon found. However, on checking my identity all concerned were much relieved to find that I was not the son of a certain well-to-do figure of the Austro-Hungarian nobility whom Pulika had made me out to be. I heard the police officers and the Gaje talk about all the other little boys that had been stolen by the Gypsies, and I suddenly realised these were only my numerous alter egos, innocently made up by Pulika's fertile imagination.

When I got my Taraf de Haïdouks CD, I wondered whether the same attitude would manifest itself there too, in Roma from sixty plus years later and half the width of Europe away. (Yoors talks about descriptions such as "Vlax Romani" being inaccurate as the same companies would wander from France to Romania and beyond, but of course for most of the intervening time, there was an Iron Curtain dividing Europe in two, and besides, Roma have been forced to become sedentary in many countries in Central Europe since.)

Anyhow, the answer to my question was yes, as the Band of Gypsies sleeve notes demonstrate:

Two journalists show up, roaring with laughter. Marius and Caliu, two wily Taraf members, offered to give them a ride from the hotel. They climb into a wreck driven by a friend of one of the guys. The engine starts coughing after 200 metres and the car grinds to a halt. Marius feigns anger: "What kind of person is this, taking us in a car that doesn't even work! You know, I've got a musical ear, I could tell right away that this car was going to be sick!" Then he appeals to the two passengers: "OK, please lend us some money to buy gasoline, we don't have any change on us."

Or:

Along comes old Ion Manole on his bicycle. He was one of the leading figures on those early European tours by the Taraf. Hat jammed tight on his head, thick glasses, saucy stories 24 hours a day, his powerful voice dominated the band. But as he aged (he's now over 80) he became a bit deaf. His tuning began to suffer from that so they had to leave him behind. He came to the first concert in Bucharest but couldn't convince anyone to let him on stage (after all, the purpose of the concerts was to record an album). Anyway, he is determined to show us how fit he is, as he keeps cycling back and forth in front of us... Suddenly we hear faint traces of music coming from a distance. The music grows louder. Pulled by a tractor, here come a large cart on which the entire Taraf are perched. They play, they sing, their voices, violins and accordions valiantly struggling against the sound of the engine. It's an unreal, dream-like spectacle. Or rather, "film-like", which is hardly surprising as this is one of Elsa's ideas. [Their film director, also Romany.] She's been shooting since dawn, and has just filmed this long tracking shot in the countryside, the Taraf singing at the top of their lungs while the trees and clouds pass by in the background. This imprompty stage stops dead in front of us and the Taraf, grins stretching from ear to ear, welcome us with a song.

The same irreverence can also be heard coming through in (some of) their music (not to mention the video on YouTube in which three members of the band perform in the back of a travelling car (complete with the noise of traffic going past), interrupting themselves in the middle of singing to give directions to the driver)—and that of Gogol Bordello, and that of Parno Graszt.

Nicolae Neacşu himself was brimming over with charisma; you can hear it in his music even if you'd never seen a picture of him or read about him. I was quite upset when I started looking to see what YouTube had of Taraf de Haïdouks, found him missing from recent videos, and, googling elsewhere, discovered he'd died. Taraf de Haïdouks doesn't seem the same without him.

So, from all of the above, you'd expect to find me a great Romaphile, right? Well, I'm not so sure. I've never met a self-identified Rom (which is to say, I've known one or two people with some Rom blood, but not one who had taken Romany identity to their heart like Eugene Hütz, the singer-songwriter behind Gogol Bordello, who, though only one quarter Rom by blood, clearly identifies strongly as Romany), but I suspect if I did meet Rom adhering to a traditional life, I might be put off by several aspects of their life, for example their loudness, or their morals, which evince no compunction about stealing items of low value from the Gaje when needs must, or "borrowing" and failing to give back:

He had no intention of keeping the scissors, since we would not need another haircut for a long time, and then, no doubt, other scissors could just as easily he had. He simply felt that the scissors could take care of themselves, that they would "get lost," or be borrowed by other Gypsies in need of them. It was certainly not out of an acquisitive instinct that Kore hesitated to take them back. He just failed to see why this was of any consequence.

Whilst certainly overshooting the mark for me, Eugene Hütz's lyrics hit uncomfortably close to home when he sings: