1.3: The Romani Diaspora in Europe

Mutual Influences

A diaspora is a whole population or ethnic group that moves out of one place of origin, usually scattering to different places. (The word diaspora comes from the word spore—seeds in the wind, a “scattering” of people.) The term is often applied to Roma, Jews, and Africans who have been displaced from their original homelands for a variety of reasons. Most diasporas are involuntary or semivoluntary, not a happily chosen option. The movement of people and their practices and habits from one place to another has sparked musical interchange as populations come into contact. Taking the Roma as a case study, this chapter explores how the scattering of people affects music-making. We will see that even in diaspora, people can create and maintain meaningful connections that span distances and cross national borders.

Who Are the Roma?

The Roma are a diasporic people, a minority group of Indian descent. Scholars believe there are about 15 million Roma in Europe, several million in the Middle East, and about one million in North America, although the population figures are uncertain. There are many different language and cultural groups of Romani people. The term Roma comes from the Romani language and means “people.” In recent years some European Roma have rejected the disparaging name Gypsies (derived from Egyptian, with negative connotations of being “gypped” or cheated) and adopted the term Roma as a way of talking about their diaspora as a whole. Joining their common political interests has enabled a more unified effort to obtain legal protections that are routinely denied them in their various countries of residence. Not all groups welcome this collective identity, though: the Sinti, who are scattered throughout central and western Page 44 →Europe, prefer to use their own ethnonym (ethnic group name). Nonetheless, for the sake of convenience, I will adopt the widely recognized term Roma to refer to the diasporic population in general. An adjective form, useful too as a name for the language, is Romani—as in “the Romani people.”

As people of North Indian origin, ancestors of Roma migrated to other parts of Asia, where some of their descendants remain, as well as to Europe. Continuing persecution and the search for employment introduced nomadic customs for some groups of Roma, although the overwhelming majority have been settled for decades or centuries. How the Roma diaspora began is unclear. Some histories suggest that thousands of Indian musicians were deported from India into the Sassanid Empire (now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan) to provide entertainment. Other accounts suggest that Arabic invasions of India caused waves of outward migration. It appears that over generations the Roma gradually made their way through the Byzantine Empire, moving farther into the Balkans, Greece, and the Slavic regions.¹

During the 1400s and early 1500s small groups of Roma migrated to many parts of Europe, as far away as Spain and Scandinavia (fig. 2.1). They found creative ways to keep themselves safe as newcomers: acting the role of Christian penitents or pilgrims or using (often forged) letters from nobles or the pope stating that they should be allowed to travel. People in Europe wanted the Roma to provide skilled service as musicians, herbalists and healers, fortune-tellers, horse-traders, metalworkers, and manufacturers of weapons. But when the Roma entered these trades, they offended the local artisans, who lost business to them. Most Europeans viewed the Roma as criminals and intruders or believed them untrustworthy because they were far from their place of origin and had dark skin. Sometimes they were accused of witchcraft and punished without a trial or even hunted and murdered.² In eastern Europe some rulers valued the services of the Roma and allowed them to remain. Often they were paid in food rather than money, which increased their dependence on the goodwill of the rulers. In Wallachia and Moldavia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the lords enslaved almost all of the Roma, keeping them as skilled laborers.³

Because Romani customs seemed strange, European governments enforced assimilation; that is, they wanted Roma to act more like the people around them. Beginning in the 1640s, the king of Spain attempted to force Romani people to adopt Spanish customs. In the Habsburg Empire Empress Maria Theresa encouraged assimilation by requiring the Roma to settle and pay taxes from the 1740s onward. She tried to dilute their racial identity by letting them Page 45 →marry only non-Roma, and she prohibited them from setting themselves apart by their clothing, their language, or their professions. Aside from encouraging the diasporic Roma to stay put, these measures failed. Most Roma did not entirely give up their own traditions, even if they adopted local habits when required to do so. Most continued to use the Romani language alongside whatever local languages they needed, such as German, Slovak, Spanish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, or French. Integration has had marked effects—the Romani language includes many borrowed words from local languages—but efforts to extinguish Romani traditions and ethnic traits were largely unsuccessful.⁴

Fig. 2.1. Music on the Move: Migration of Romani people into Europe. Map by Eric Fosler-Lussier, based on Lev Tcherenkov and Stéphane Laederich, The Rroma, vol. 1 (Basel, CH: Schwabe, 2004), 83. (See https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.18)

Persecution has followed the Roma throughout their history, even to the present day. Almost two-thirds of the Roma in Nazi-occupied Europe were killed in the Holocaust; the Roma received no postwar reparations from the German government, and the killing of Romani people was not fully acknowledgedPage 46 → until the late 1970s.⁵ Policies that took Romani children away from their families to encourage assimilation persisted in Switzerland until the 1970s and were prominent in the communist East Bloc countries. Romani who have endured forced sterilization, police brutality, and routine denial of access to education have sought redress in the European Court of Human Rights.⁶ Although Romani people have lived in Europe for centuries, they have not always been offered a sense of belonging.

Even so, the Roma have played a significant and distinctive role in European musical culture. Because many Romani people were musicians and entertainers by profession, they interacted a great deal with the other populations of every region they visited, and many of them became adept at performing musical styles of those regions. Playing whatever style of music people would pay to hear is a form of social and economic assimilation—changing their behavior to fit the expectations of the dominant group—that has been useful for diasporic Romani people in many parts of Europe.

The majority cultures around them have shaped how the Roma minority make their music, but their music has also had a noticeable impact on the people around them. Not only have the Roma taken on the musical styles of regions where they live and work; they have also helped to define what those regional styles are. What is known worldwide as Hungarian music is hard to separate from the Romani style of playing. Flamenco, one of the most recognizable musical styles of Spain, was developed by the Calé, or Spanish Roma. Sinti jazz (also called Manouche jazz) is a distinctive style of music that originated in Paris. The interplay of the Roma and Sinti with the peoples around them makes a useful case study, helping us to see the ways in which diasporic people adapt to new places and shape musical life in those places.

Hungarian “Gypsy” (Romani) Music: Integration and Tradition

The music of Hungarian Roma provides an excellent example of the strategies by which diasporic people fit socially and culturally into the societies in which they live. Because they have adapted over time to a variety of social circumstances, different groups of Roma have developed different musical practices. The two largest groups of Hungarian Roma are the Romungro and the Vlach Roma. The Romungro are Hungarian Roma who have historically been integrated into Hungarian society, most of them urban. Most of them speak more Hungarian than Romani; many of them have lost their Romani language skills Page 47 →altogether. Documents from the 1700s tell of “Gypsy music” ensembles who were hired to provide party music and dance music at the courts of princes and dukes. This evidence demonstrates that Romungro musicians were integrated into the fabric of life for ethnic Hungarians, even though they participated as a separate social class, as hired help at parties. Today they continue to be employed as professional musicians but also work in a variety of other jobs. They still experience discrimination in education, although the number who have access to universities is growing.⁷

Romungro Music

The popular music that Romungro (integrated, Hungarian-speaking) musicians play for Hungarian listeners has long been known simply as “Gypsy music”—even though it has also been strongly associated with Hungarian identity. In the words of the musicologist David Schneider, “‘Gypsy music’ refers to the popular music often performed in cafés or restaurants in regions historically belonging to Hungary by professional musicians who are frequently ethnic Romanies.”⁸ For a long time people made no distinction between the “Hungarian” style of music and the “Gypsy” style: Hungarians thought of the music Romungro people played as Hungarians’ own (after all, it was made for them), and Western Europeans thought the Hungarian and the Gypsy style were one and the same because both Hungarians and Roma seemed foreign to them.⁹

Very often a single piece of Romungro music includes a slow section (“music for listening”) followed by a fast section (“music for dancing”). This slow-fast sequence is a holdover from a popular Hungarian dance style of the late 1700s. In addition, Romungro musicians often played Hungarian tunes; and they adopted the violin and the clarinet, two Western European instruments, as the most prominent lead instruments in their bands. In short, the music known as “Gypsy music” has long blended ethnic Hungarian elements with a style of performance particular to Romungro musicians.¹⁰ This style is not intrinsically ethnic—it can also be adopted by non-Romungro musicians—but it has been associated with Roma because so many Roma people in Hungary made a living as professional musicians, playing this music.

The video clip in example 2.1 shows musicians performing “Gypsy music” in a restaurant in Budapest. There is a clear social separation between the entertainers and the restaurant patrons; however, the Romungro do share the space of the restaurant with its Hungarian patrons, and the patrons evidently Page 48 →enjoy the music. The music at the beginning is an example of the slow (listening) style. The music sounds very romantic: the violinist plays fast notes “around” the main notes of the melody as ornaments and often hesitates and holds out notes to prolong the listener’s suspense. You see and hear a lead violin (playing the melody); a cimbalom, a hammer dulcimer that can play either melody or background chords; and some backup stringed instruments, the bass and second violin, which typically fill in harmony along with the cimbalom, or play “oom-pah” off-beats in fast music. Sometimes a band like this also includes a clarinet as a second lead instrument.

Example 2.1. Lajos Sárkozi, Jr., and his ensemble playing at the Százéves restaurant, Budapest. Video by Willem Gulcher, used by permission. Good faith effort has been made to contact the performers.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.19

Listen to example 2.1, and notice the changes in tempo (speed). The lead violinist, Lajos Sárközi Jr. (LYE-osh SHAR-keh-zee), dictates the pace of the music, and as in the previous example, there are pauses, hesitations, and very fast passages with lots of notes. In the slow section that opens the clip, the group lingers on each harmony while the violinist provides the ornamented, dramatic melody. The changes in tempo and some of the ornamental flourishes are improvised: Sárközi decides on these in the moment. At timepoint 1:49 he leads the group to move slightly faster, and the progression of time becomes a little more regular. In this section, even though the tempo is still slow, we start to hear a steady “oom-pah” pulse in the background some of the time. At timepoint 3:44, the violinist pauses, then begins a section in the fast style (“music for dancing”). The violinist introduces a new tune that sounds more like “fiddling,” with a steadier stream of notes, and the chord changes become more frequent. The musicians play at a quick and comparatively steady tempo, accompanied by “oom-pah” patterns in the bass and second violin. Even at this fast tempo, the lead violinist takes some liberties, arriving at the main beat a little before or a little behind everyone else and leading the whole group to speed up toward the end. This purposeful imprecision adds to the feeling of spontaneity in the performance, keeping the listener in moment-to-moment suspense about what is coming next.

The virtuosity of the lead violinist and the cimbalom player is an important part of the performance. Virtuosity means technically difficult playing (such as playing two notes at once or a series of extremely fast notes): the Page 49 →person who plays this way is called a virtuoso. To play this music well requires that the performers be as dramatic and showy as possible. Sárközi comes from a Romani family with a long musical tradition: his father is also a well-known performer. The younger Sárközi (1991–) developed his virtuosity at Hungary’s premier school of music, the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. The “Gypsy” style is not his only occupation: he is also an expert performer of jazz, including but not limited to the Manouche jazz tradition developed in France.

Minority and Nationhood

The integration of Romani people into European societies as professional musicians has presented both opportunities and challenges. Like other Romani people in Hungary, Romungro musicians face discrimination in housing, education, and other social services. Still, their ability to entertain Hungarian listeners has provided them an income and a distinctive social role. As the musicologist Lynn Hooker has shown, this “integrated but not equal” status has shaped how people understand their music.

Perhaps because Romani performers are so often thought of in racist terms, the question of who should take the credit for “Gypsy music” has been raised throughout the music’s history. In 1854 a Hungarian scholar warned that “trusting the preservation and distribution” of the national music “only to Gypsies” could lead to a serious misunderstanding: “it must not be a matter of surprise if foreign musicians begin to doubt the true Hungarian character of the national music customarily performed by our Gypsies, and if they regard this as being Indian Gypsy music rather than Hungarian music.”¹¹ Some Hungarians wanted the credit for Romani musicians’ innovative playing to be given to Hungary rather than to the Roma themselves.

This sentiment was in accord with the Hungarian nationalism of the time. Nationalism can encompass not only an investment in the nation’s political success but also promotion of its artistic achievements. It is important to remember that nationalism is based on a belief in shared genealogy, history, or ethnicity; in a nation that saw itself as ethnically Hungarian, Roma were outsiders, no matter how long they had been there. From the Hungarian ethnic nationalist point of view, the musical basis of Hungarian “Gypsy music” was entirely Hungarian, including musical features that had been present in Hungarian folk songs for centuries. The Roma were merely hired performers who had adapted to the Hungarian style: they filled a social need, since gentlemen Page 50 →might compose a song but would certainly never perform one in public for money. Given the low social status of Romani people, many Hungarian critics have been unwilling to see them as creative partners in forming the national style of Hungary.

In the early 20th century, ethnomusicologists confronted this question. They acknowledged that Hungarian “Gypsy music” was Romani in origin, but they claimed that it was no good: it was merely popular music that had been corrupted to appeal to the masses. They blamed the Roma for demeaning the national style, and they went looking for “pure” musical performances among ethnically Hungarian peasants in rural areas.¹² This idea of “purity” was both an unattainable ideal and a racist one. It is unusual for a given ethnic group or a given music to maintain firm, clear boundaries over centuries. In particular, Eastern Europe’s history is full of migrations that encouraged the mixing of peoples and musics. This quest for a purely “Hungarian” tradition can be understood as a product of the pressures of the time, as well as ethnic bias: many peoples during this period claimed their national traditions as a point of pride, and Eastern European nations wanted to establish their own identities more firmly. Still, the desire either to strip the credit for “Gypsy music” from the Roma or to vilify the music altogether is striking, given the ongoing popularity of this music in Hungarian public life. This controversy demonstrates that even when the majority culture has adopted the musical contributions of a diasporic minority, that adoption has not always been wholehearted.

In contrast, Franz Liszt (1811–86; pronounced “List”), a 19th-century musician of Hungarian descent, thought that the uniqueness of Hungarian music was primarily attributable to the Roma. Liszt insisted that Romani performers should receive credit for their musical creations; of course, Hungarian music critics were outraged.¹³ People in Western Europe were reasonably willing to accept Liszt’s story because the Hungarians, being of a different language group, already seemed peculiar. Furthermore, Western Europeans were susceptible to orientalism: they enjoyed reading about “oriental secrets” and hearing vivid, exciting performances. Whether these performances were defined as Hungarian or Gypsy was not very important to them; indeed, they did not recognize the difference between the two. Ironically, the way people in Western Europe thought about Hungarians was similar to the way Hungarians thought about the Roma. Believing that some people are exotic “others” can make their music seem more attractive, even as it also creates a disparity of opportunities between the two groups.

Page 51 →Vlach Roma Music

The second most populous subgroup of Romani people in Hungary are known as Vlach Roma (sometimes spelled Vlax; the final sound is a “kh” at the back of the throat). The Vlach Roma are descendants of the Roma who were enslaved in Wallachia and Moldavia. Those who moved into Hungary after their emancipation in the 1850s lived in rural areas, were not well integrated into Hungarian language and culture, and tended to preserve the Romani language. They maintained their own musical styles, distinct from the styles of the urban Romungro.¹⁴ Traditionally, Vlach Roma were not professional musicians but artisans: for generations many were metalworkers or wood-carvers. As the rural Vlach musical tradition developed, these Roma typically made music among themselves, for their own use. Whereas the Romungro adopted some Western European instruments (like the violin) for their music-making, the music of the Hungarian Vlach Roma places far more emphasis on the human voice.¹⁵

Like Romungro music, the traditional music of Vlach Roma people can be either slow or fast. Songs in the slow style are typically laments: they express longing, sadness, or frustration. Example 2.2 is a lament called “Grief, Grief.” This song is not accompanied by instruments, and it is comparatively simple. The melody generally moves from higher notes to lower notes, like a sigh, and it has a mournful tone. The tempo is variable, and the singer uses both the timing of his phrases and the quality of his voice to express sorrow. You can also hear that the music-making is interactive, with audience comments inserted into the singer’s pauses. These are the lyrics to “Grief, Grief”:

Grief, grief,

If I could catch you,

I would bind you into my apron,

I would push you into the [river] Danube.

Into the Danube, into the [river] Tisza,

’cause I’m alone;

I have neither father nor mother;

I will die.

Oh, how God has damned me,

And there’s nothing I can do,

Page 52 →I have to suffer,

Mother, I must die!

This whore has killed me,

Let misery eat her!

She’s eaten my head,

Let poverty destroy her!

I don’t sleep for nights on end,

I just keep thinking;

I always think about

What I could do?

I grew up in poverty,

Motherless and fatherless,

And I grew up

Among the many good boys.

My young life, mother,

I live in sorrow,

But I have to know

That I grew up as an orphan.¹⁶

Vlach Roma songs in the slow style often refer to being orphaned or disconnected from family. Among Romani people, separation from one’s family is one of the worst tragedies imaginable—and a common one throughout their history of persecution.

Example 2.2. Mihály Várady, “Grief, Grief,” Gypsy Folk Songs from Hungary (Hungaroton 18028-29, 1989 [1976]). Courtesy of Naxos USA.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.20

In contrast, the Hungarian Vlach Roma fast song style often emphasizes happier themes. This is music for dancing, usually performed at parties with friends and extended family. This kind of song is produced in a distinctive way: people use their mouths to imitate the sounds of the string bass and other instruments to maintain a steady rhythm. (The closest analogy in Western tradition is beatboxing. The technical term for this strategy is oral bassing.) Page 53 →Vlach Roma dance music can be accompanied with hand-clapping, spoons, or other rhythm sounds. If another instrument is available, it may be used, but the foundation of this music is the singing and the rhythm created by the oral bassing.

Listen now to Mihály Kolompar’s “You Are Not That Sort of Girl” (example 2.3), which illustrates the Vlach Roma fast song style. This song is sung by just one singer. It is a lighthearted, flirtatious song, in which the singer playfully denounces a girl who might not return his affections. The singer alternates lyrics in Hungarian and Romani with oral bassing. He conveys the tune not only with singing but also with vocables (syllables that do not carry linguistic meaning) and trumpet-like buzzing with his lips:

You aren’t that pretty, only your eyes are pretty.

Because of your curly black hair, soon I’ll die.

This gypsy girl didn’t give me any grub.

I asked her for it, but she didn’t give it to me; she gave me brandy.¹⁷

Example 2.3. Mihály Kolompar, “You are not that sort of girl.” Music on the Gypsy Route vol. 2 (Frémaux and Associés, 2004). Used by permission.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.21

Example 2.4 is one more Vlach Roma fast song, called “Who Has Been There.” This example shows how two singers can perform this style of dance music. A woman’s voice introduces the oral bassing; then she sings the main tune, with words in Hungarian and Romani, while a man joins in with oral bassing as accompaniment. Other people join in as the song continues. This kind of singing might be heard at a festive family party, with different people taking over the music-making so that everyone has a turn to dance.¹⁸

Example 2.4. “Who has Been There,” song attributed to “the daughter of Limchi, in Végegyháza, the Buje.” Gypsy Folk Songs from Hungary (Hungaroton 18028-29, 1989 [1976]). Courtesy of Naxos USA.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.22

This historical distinction between integrated and nonintegrated populations has broken down in recent years. From the early 1970s onward, a revival of folk music and dance in Hungary encouraged the exploration of many kinds of traditional music. Through formal classes or informal folk-dance evenings, amateur and professional folk dance enthusiasts brought rural music Page 54 →and musicians into urban environments.¹⁹ The 1980s saw a boom in world beat (also called world music): the mass-marketing of recordings of many different ethnic groups and traditions.²⁰ These trends have brought Vlach Roma music greater visibility and brought Vlach Roma people opportunities and connections. The Vlach Roma performing group Kalyi Jag has capitalized on the appeal and novelty of this music. Their recordings, like the song “The Night Girls” (example 2.5), have made this music accessible internationally. So have the “Gypsy punk” musicians in the New York band Gogol Bordello.

Example 2.5. Excerpt from Kalyi Jag, “La Řatjake Cheya” (The Night Girls). The Gypsy Road: A Musical Migration from India to Spain (Alula Records, 1999). YouTube.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.23

The Hungarian Vlach Roma are only one among many Romani groups. Despite the linguistic connections that tie them together, different groups have distinctive musical styles and practices. For instance, compare the Greek music in example 2.6 with the Romungro and Vlach Roma examples.

Example 2.6. Panajótis Lókos, Jórgos Pátzis, and Jórgos Jorgíou, “Khoròs Gáïda” (Bagpipe dance), recorded in 1977. Gipsy Music from Macedonia (Topic Records TSCD914, 1996).

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.24

The lead instrument in example 2.6 is a zurna, a reed instrument like an oboe. This music bears no resemblance to the Romani music typically performed in Hungary. Because the Roma are a diasporic population, scattered like seeds throughout many places, they have adapted their musical practices to suit their situations.

To sum up our story so far, there are important differences between the musics of different diasporic Romani groups. As we saw in the contrast between the Romungro people (Roma who have historically been integrated into Hungarian-speaking society) and the Vlach Roma (who have historically lived and made music apart from ethnic Hungarians), whether a particular group is economically, socially, and artistically integrated into the surrounding community affects the development of their tradition over time. Integration of a minority population with the majority may or may not mean altering aspects of one’s own language, music, or customs in exchange for better opportunities.

Page 55 →“Gypsiness” in European Classical Music

Romani music (particularly the Romungro style) was consciously incorporated into the concert music (or “classical”) tradition of Central and Western Europe. People referred to the classical adoption of the Romungro style as the “Hungarian style”—believing that Romungro and Hungarian music were the same thing. This appropriation was part of a widespread preoccupation with foreign “others.” Until the late 1600s the Turkish (Ottoman) Empire reigned in Southeastern Europe, including most of Hungary, extending to the outskirts of Vienna. It’s not surprising that the Austrians and Germans were preoccupied with Turkish and other “Eastern” peoples during this time: this preoccupation inspired a fad of caricatured imitations of Eastern music in Western music. The point was not to portray other people’s music accurately but to present a kind of “foreignness” in music. “Gypsy music” (the Romungro style) became one of the styles available to composers of classical music in Western Europe.²¹ When discussing the stereotyped version of the people or the music, I will use the term Gypsy, even though it has pejorative connotations: this is a way to distinguish the stereotype from the lives and performances of Romani people.

European musicians typically did not imitate the Romungro style directly, but they used enough of its key features that the result was recognizable as “Gypsy.” These borrowings usually included the presence of an individual instrument or voice (often violin or clarinet) played with heightened drama or expression, rhythmic flexibility (with a tendency to speed up or slow down dramatically), and a high degree of virtuosity. We hear these elements in example 2.7, the second movement of Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet op. 54, no. 2.

Example 2.7. Joseph Haydn, String Quartet, op. 54 no. 2, second movement, performed by the Dudok Quartet. YouTube. Used by permission.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.25

(In the European classical tradition a “movement” is a self-contained section within a multisection piece of music.) Haydn did not call this work “Gypsy,” but many others have recognized Romungro features in it. A string quartet usually includes one slow movement, and it was a challenge for the composer to maintain the listener’s interest at a sedate pace. In this movement Haydn solved the problem by allowing the violin to play a highly ornamented melody that moves at a variable tempo, in the manner of the Romungro slow style.

Page 56 →In comparison to a Romani performance there is less room for improvisation in Haydn’s quartet: the piece is written down in music notation, and changes in the melody’s speed are specified precisely in the violin part. The violin’s runs of quick notes are still slower than what a Romani musician would play, but within the context of what is typical for the classical string quartet, the overall impression is still one of unusual freedom and flexibility.²² In addition, Haydn chose an ordinary minor scale (a common Western scale pattern) rather than the altered notes characteristic of Romungro performance. This music is a distant echo of Romani performance, not an attempt to faithfully recreate it. This strategy was used occasionally by later composers, too: Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet (1891) includes a slow movement that follows Haydn’s model (example 2.8).

Example 2.8. Excerpt from Johannes Brahms, Clarinet Quintet, second movement, performed by Quatuor Modigliani with Sabine Meyer. YouTube.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.26

Composers of Haydn’s time (1732–1809) frequently borrowed ideas from dance music or popular tunes. Romungro bands were gaining fame by playing in Hungarian courts during Haydn’s career, so he likely came into direct contact with their music.²³ For Haydn the Romungro style was just one of many useful musical “topics” to draw on and did not likely reflect a particular point of view regarding the Roma people.²⁴

During the 1800s, though, the stereotyped idea of the “Gypsy” began to permeate popular culture. Gypsy characters were featured in opera and operetta (such as the famous Carmen), and imitations of the Gypsy style of instrumental music flourished.²⁵ The idea of the Gypsy had symbolic value for literate Europeans who lived in and around courts and cities. They were increasingly aware that their lives were constrained by rigid customs. Many of them imagined the Roma as freer than they were: unconstrained by European rules of decorum and able to wander at will. (In this kind of thinking, “wandering” is a stereotype: many Roma were settled, but other Europeans continued to imagine them as nomadic.) Franz Liszt published a long book called The Gypsy in Music, in which he praised the Roma for having a connection to nature that urban Europeans lacked: “The pleasures invented by man can never prove other than sickly and insipid to the man accustomed to drink from the cup which Nature offers him, intending him to enjoy every drink and to relish every drop. Of Page 57 →what value are town-baubles to the man who enjoys braving the winter, and feeling the fire of his cheeks resisting its cold breath—who prefers being alone and unsheltered from its biting rod?”²⁶ Liszt noticed that Romani people were frequently poorly housed and clothed, but he insisted that these conditions merely reflected their brave refusal of European norms. To him the Roma seemed strangely separate from “civilized” society, wild and ungovernable. Their music, likewise, seemed to come from their fiery, independent souls: “The masters of Bohemian art, eminently inspired, will not submit to any laws of reflection or restraint. . . . They give free course to every caprice and turn of fancy.”²⁷ The Roma thus offered not only an attractive musical style but also a way for Europeans to imagine what it would be like to live a freer, more “natural” life—without the inconveniences of actually doing so.

These beliefs about the Roma exemplify exoticism. Composers have frequently chosen to use musical ideas that convey the idea of distant places, precisely because “away” may seem more exciting than “home.”²⁸ Yet the Roma were not geographically distant from Europeans: this kind of exoticism differentiated people by skin color, clothing, music, social class, and behavior, not by distance. Perhaps because these “others” were close to home, most Europeans perceived them not as distant curiosities but as dangerous. Exoticism is a kind of imaginary thinking that crosses social boundaries: typical cases involve people with higher social status fantasizing about those whom they perceive to be their inferiors. When Romani music was incorporated into classical music, it became a way of making European classical music more exciting, with a definite flavor of having crossed a boundary to experience something dangerous.

Franz Liszt offers a particularly interesting case of blending Romani music and European classical music. Liszt was born in Western Hungary, but he learned to speak Hungarian only as an adult; most of his writings were produced in French. Still, he had intense feelings of national pride in Hungary. Liszt especially valued the virtuosity of Hungarian Romani music: although his book included a great deal of racial stereotyping, it also conveyed deep admiration for the thrilling virtuosic performances Romani musicians offered. Liszt himself was a virtuoso on the piano as well as a composer. Both in his concerts and in his compositions he tried to capture the excitement and passion of Romungro performances.

Some of Liszt’s most famous piano works are his “Hungarian Rhapsodies,” which directly imitate Romungro music. By calling these works rhapsodies, Liszt indicated that they were not piano pieces of any ordinary kind but Page 58 →impassioned, poetic musical outbursts. His Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 (example 2.9) includes both slow and fast sections, closely modeled on Romungro practice.

Example 2.9. Franz Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, performed by György Cziffra. The Masters Collection: György Cziffra (Hungaroton HCD32814-16, 2019). Courtesy of Naxos USA.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.27

In the slow section a simple melody has been decorated with ornamental flourishes and dramatic changes in tempo. The beat is stretched and compressed in the Romungro tradition, with pauses and rushing ahead for dramatic effects.

Later in the piece, we hear an amazing imitation of the sound of the cimbalom, the hammer dulcimer commonly used by Romungro ensembles. Although this music is played on the piano, a standard Western instrument, this passage sounds like the cimbalom player’s hammers quickly hitting the strings. We also hear a shift from slow, dramatic music to fast, hurried music (example 2.9, timepoint 6:00 to 7:32). Now that you are familiar with its “Gypsy” features, listen to the entire Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. At the end of the rhapsody it sometimes sounds as if it might veer out of control as it accelerates to an exciting close.

Liszt’s adoption of Romungro performance is substantially different from Haydn’s. Whereas Haydn echoed just one element, the melodic freedom of Romungro performance, Liszt aimed to capture the specific instrumental sounds of a Romungro band, as well as the rousing spirit of its performance. Although Liszt wrote about Romungro people as an exotic race, he also esteemed them enough to pay close attention to their playing and even imitated them as precisely as possible in his own compositions and performances. Liszt’s exoticism includes not only racist denigration but also affectionate admiration: a complicated blend of ideas that may be uncomfortable for us to recognize. Exoticism typically relies on this mixture of attraction and repulsion, fascination and loathing. It allows audiences to imagine contact with someone they believe is utterly different from them while also containing that contact within the frame of a performance that the audience can feel comfortable about. Liszt’s music carries with it some of the excitement and some of the distinctive features of Romani performance. It also stirs the audience’s imaginationPage 59 → about the stereotyped “Gypsies,” activating whatever prior knowledge or prejudices they carry with them. Those ideas are not separate from the music: they are part of what makes the performance fascinating.²⁹ Furthermore, these ideas are still present today. Romani musicians use this fascination to attract listeners by playing Liszt’s rhapsodies in concerts and restaurants, and commentaries on Romani music often refer to the same exoticizing stereotypes that were common among Liszt and his contemporaries.³⁰

There is no doubt that Liszt received great professional benefit from his use of Romungro music. He was esteemed as a concert performer and cheered by audiences all over Europe. Liszt’s virtuosity was legendary: figure 2.2 is a caricature of him at the piano that shows him as having eight arms, the only way anyone could conceive of his playing music so complicated and fast. This virtuosity was not only an effect of the Romungro style, for he was a stunning pianist who played many kinds of music. But Romungro music provided a vehicle for showcasing his virtuosity that became a distinctive brand for him. (The giant sword in the caricature marks him as “Hungarian,” as it was a gift to him from the Hungarian city of Pest; but the cartoonist was also making fun of Liszt’s and Hungary’s pompous nationalism.)³¹ In addition, the Romungro style was a novelty: it allowed Liszt to bring new and exciting elements to his concerts, building a distinctive reputation. Liszt’s Hungarian branding was good for business: the Rhapsodies drew people to his live performances; then he published them as printed sheet music in several different versions. Because he was an international performer with access to the music publishing market, Liszt stood to benefit financially from the Romungro style in a way that Romani musicians could not.

Indeed, the “Hungarian style” (that is, the domesticated European version of the Romungro style) flourished in European music. Johannes Brahms (1833–97) published four books of “Hungarian Dances” that sold very well. Most of them are based on borrowed tunes. The Hungarian Dances were piano pieces composed for four hands—two players sitting at one piano, playing together—a highly sociable form of music-making. In example 2.10 you can see the two players’ enjoyment as they work together to coordinate the dramatic changes of tempo.

Page 60 →

Example 2.10. Excerpt from Johannes Brahms, Hungarian Dance no. 5, performed by the Passepartout Piano Duo. YouTube.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.29

Fig. 2.2. “Liszt-Fantaisie.” Anonymous caricature of Franz Liszt, La vie Parisienne, 3 April 1886. The original caption reads: “Liszt and his saber: He has renounced it today, after recognizing that he would do more damage with just the piano and his two hands. A strange specimen of the octopus species. Eight hands at four octaves each, thirty-two octaves!!!” Reprinted in Richard Leppert, “The Musician of the Imagination,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 42.

This music is significantly easier to perform than Liszt’s virtuosic Hungarian Rhapsodies: Brahms’s pieces could be played by dedicated amateurs who had pianos in their homes. Yet they still featured the hallmarks of the “Gypsy” style: fast-moving melodies, minor keys, variable tempos, and “oom-pah” accompaniments. A passage of high fast notes near the end of example 2.10 might recall either fiddling or the sound of the cimbalom but not with the exactness of Liszt’s rendition.

It is noteworthy that composers of European classical music did not borrow all the elements of Romungro music. Some features, like fluctuations in tempo and the presence of a leading voice or instrument, were easy to accommodate. But some features of Romani music were subdued or absent in EuropeanPage 61 → classical composers’ imitations. The bright or piercing tone quality is usually markedly reduced. The non-Western scale or melody patterns used by Romani musicians were usually “regularized” into a form of the minor mode. Perhaps most important, where Romani music includes a significant amount of improvisation, classical music was a written tradition: although there is always room for interpretation, the notes and instructions for performing them are usually present on the printed page. So even though Haydn’s or Brahms’s “Gypsy” style emulates a sense of free-spiritedness, the features that make the performance seem improvised are all specified in advance.

This choice to appropriate (or take) certain musical features was probably based on what features the European classical composers found appealing, dramatic, or interesting and what features could easily be accommodated by performers on standard Western instruments. As it was used in European classical music, “Gypsy music” appropriates some features of Romungro music, but not all, and integrates them into a preexisting type of music, Western classical music.

This appropriation was designed to please Europeans who had the means to purchase printed music. Brahms’s Hungarian Dances provided a way for people who had pianos in their homes to enjoy the “Gypsy” style. Even people who would never encounter a Romani person became familiar with the style. At the same time, this feeling of familiarity could be deceiving: knowing these pieces was vastly different from knowing or understanding Romani people and different even from hearing them perform in person. Although the music might provide some knowledge of Romani music, we might say that such knowledge has been mediated multiple times. It has passed from Romani performance, through the European classical composer’s selective listening, the composition of a new version for different instruments, that version’s publication in sheet music, to its interpretation by other musicians. Much like a whispered game of “telephone,” the content and meaning has changed in the process. People at the end of the chain may understand something very different from what was expressed at the beginning.

The gap between the Romani experience and the mediated version of that experience has sometimes caused grief. Many Europeans have maintained an affection for the popular cultural manifestations of “Gypsiness” yet have expressed a revulsion for real, living Romani people.³² Though Roma have lived in Hungary for hundreds of years, society grants them much less “belonging” than it allows to ethnic Hungarians and only under certain conditions. Yet there is also a strange intimacy in the way that Romani music has been Page 62 →absorbed into the musics of Europe’s ethnic majorities. Romani musicians created some of Europe’s most distinctive national styles, and the ongoing confusion between what is “Hungarian” and what is “Gypsy” (or what is “Spanish” and what is “Gypsy”) testifies to the connections between the ethnic majority and minority populations.

One cannot say that the diasporic Romani and the majority populations among whom they live are entirely separate; neither are they fully integrated. Rather, they remain in tension with each other but tightly bound together. Like the people in Europe’s faraway colonies, the existence of Romani people allowed Europeans to define and imagine themselves as white, modern, and civilized: selves were defined against the perception of “others.” Defining some people as outsiders, however, only increased their importance in the European imagination. As Stuart Hall has said, the outsider is “absolutely destined to return . . . to trouble the dreams of those who are comfortable inside.”³³ In Europe’s persistent preoccupation with Romani people we can see how thoroughgoing this impact has been. Complex relationships of this kind are typical of situations involving diaspora.

Eurovision 2017 and Romani Representation

The preoccupation with Romani music remains evident in our time. In May of 2017 the Romani Hungarian singer Joci Pápai (YO-tsee PAP-ah-ee) created great excitement among Roma and other ethnic minorities when he reached the finals of the Eurovision song contest.³⁴ This international contest, held every year, allows each European nation (and sometimes other nations) to submit one pop song. The songs are all performed live on television and via webcast. Eurovision estimates its audience at upward of 180 million people, reaching approximately 36 percent of the viewing public in its service area.³⁵ After semifinals and finals the contest’s winner is chosen by a combination of online and phone voting from the public and juries located in the participating countries. Over the years the Eurovision contest has been a highly visible event where nations represent themselves: through a selected song each nation effectively chooses how others will see and hear it. On one hand, the need to represent the nation to others often results in the use of stereotypes of that nation; on the other hand, some artists use their performances to critique those stereotypes. A few even make direct political statements, which violates Page 63 →the contest rules. The contest is a useful way to see how stereotypes are evolving as peoples present themselves through the media.³⁶

Joci Pápai (1981–) is not the first Romani person to advance in the Eurovision song contest. Esma Redžepova (with Vlatko Lozanoski) represented Macedonia in 2013; Sofi Marinova represented Bulgaria in 2012; the group Gipsy.cz represented the Czech Republic in 2009; and Marija Serifovič won the contest as Serbia’s representative in 2007. Yet this participation has been rare. Though the contest’s organizers have mandated inclusion of minorities in the national competitions, over the past few decades Romani performers have experienced discrimination in the national contests in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, and Serbia. These performers faced a significant backlash in the press: many people argued against allowing Roma to represent their European nations.³⁷ Because of this history, media coverage in 2017 repeatedly emphasized Pápai’s ethnic identity as Romani. This fact was mentioned in every article about him. Writers implicitly framed his presence as a triumph over adversity, though the nature of that adversity went unmentioned.

Indeed, it is remarkable that Pápai was selected as Hungary’s representative. In today’s Hungary the police and other state officials routinely persecute Roma. It is not unusual for state authorities to openly state racist stereotypes as reasons for continuing school segregation and employment discrimination. In 2014, for example, a Hungarian judge characterized the Roma as “a group of people who stand apart from the traditional values of majority society, and whose lifestyle is characterized by the avoidance of work and the disrespect of private property and the norms of living together.”³⁸ Nonetheless, negative public feeling about Roma was evidently not uniform enough or strong enough to keep Pápai from winning. As the victor in the Hungarian national contest, he was chosen through a combination of public voting and a jury of popular Hungarian musicians: the final vote was the public’s.³⁹ But, as the ethnomusicologist Carol Silverman has pointed out, music has long been one of the acceptable professions for Romani people in Eastern Europe. In this context, where “Roma are powerless politically and powerful musically,” it may have been easy enough for Hungarians to accept Pápai’s performance.⁴⁰ As we will see, it is also possible that his conscientious presentation of Hungarian identity overcame objections to his ethnicity.

The 2017 Eurovision Song Contest took place in Kiev, Ukraine, with the widely advertised theme, “Celebrate Diversity.”⁴¹ The international public Page 64 →relations director for the event, Viktoriia Sydorenko, explained: “It’s all about Europe: each country is so different, but at the same time comes together by sharing common values. This diversity of cultures makes us stronger as we complete each other.”⁴² Ironically, in preparation for the arrival of thousands of visitors to the contest, the Kiev City Council burned several Romani neighborhoods that were visible near highways and railways, permanently forcing about 350 people from their homes and rendering them destitute. Volodymyr Netrebenko, who backed the effort, explained: “We, as the titular nation, should do everything in our power to create a safe environment for all citizens in the territory of Ukraine”—thus relying on the stereotype that Roma are dangerous criminals and firmly excluding them from the category of citizens.⁴³ The city council glossed over this persecution using xenophobic stereotypes; they called it an effort to “Clean the city” or “Protect your house, neighborhood, your city, your land.”⁴⁴ The city of Kiev thus ensured that visitors would not see Roma people—except for Pápai—while in Kiev to enjoy the contest.⁴⁵ An activist, Sergey Movchan, has accused Ukraine of using the Eurovision Song Contest to set up a false face—claiming to “celebrate diversity” when in fact the government has suppressed many aspects of diversity.⁴⁶

For the contest Pápai wrote his own song, entitled “Origo” (origin). His performance, seen in example 2.11, begins with singing in Hungarian that alludes to the four-line pattern of an “old-style” Hungarian folk song, a celebrated part of Hungarian ethnic national heritage.

Example 2.11. Joci Pápai, “Origo,” Eurovision Song Contest 2017. YouTube. Courtesy of Eurovision.

Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855.cmp.30

This choice is significant because many Hungarians have hypothesized that this style of song existed in Hungary before the influence of Roma: it is the music they imagine as “purely” Hungarian.⁴⁷ Yet in the song’s words Pápai makes reference to the stereotype of Roma as travelers: “I was born to be a wanderer.” From the first 30 seconds of the song a Hungarian audience receives mixed signals of both Hungarian and Romani identities. The audience outside Hungary would be unlikely to recognize any allusion to folk song; to them, the words about being a wanderer (stereotypical Rom) probably seemed the more potent message.

After two verses (timepoint :26), Pápai uses the same plaintive tone for the song’s chorus. According to Pápai, “the chorus is Romani but it doesn’t actuallyPage 65 → have a specific meaning. The Jálomá part. It is just a way gypsies use their voice in music all the time.”⁴⁸ Though vocables are associated with fast music for dancing among the Vlach Roma, here Pápai uses them in a slower pop song to make the song sound more “Romani.” The tune is not Romani, however; it is shaped much like the melody of the Hungarian verse. During the chorus a dancer becomes visible. The dancer’s bare midriff and her swaying hips are reminiscent of the “belly dance” style associated with Turkish and Balkan Roma. Her costume includes a wide skirt, with which she makes sweeping movements: these movements are common in stage portrayals of “Gypsies,” as are her “hand flower” gestures. By drawing on several well-known ways of presenting the Roma from different places, the dancer presents a Romani folksiness in a general way that many Europeans would recognize.⁴⁹

Next (timepoint :45), the energy of the song increases with the introduction of a dance beat. A violin also enters, an evident reference to the Romungro tradition; at the same time, Pápai also uses a water can as a percussion instrument, a common practice among groups that popularized the Vlach Roma tradition among the general public. The violin is more restrained than one would expect from a virtuoso. It is repetitive, as one expects in a popular song, but it does include ornaments that hint at the style of playing one might hear in a Hungarian restaurant. Over the dance beat we hear a repetition of the verse, the chorus, and the violin interlude, which now includes a very brief couples’ dance for Pápai and the dancer: reminiscent of the Hungarian national dance called csárdás, this is another element that looks “traditional” or “folk-like.”

Then Pápai begins to rap (timepoint 1:52). It is a distinctive sound, as Hungarian is a percussive language with long and short syllables. With the change to rap the tone of Pápai’s delivery shifts from plaintive to angry. Here Pápai’s first-person lyrics use a rhetorical strategy from the American and worldwide tradition of rap music, outlining his own biography as a struggle and demanding recognition. Pápai’s music is his God-given “weapon,” he argues, a power that expresses grief but also inspires fear and respect in others: “you hear my melody and you already know my name.” At the end of the rap, at the words “tears of thousands are streaming down my guitar,” the dancer drops to the floor, looking distressed; Pápai cradles her face, lifting her up and appearing to comfort her, and she returns to her dancing. Although this is probably the most political moment in the song, its meaning is conveyed obliquely: nowhere are Roma referred to in the lyrics, and nowhere does Pápai articulate the specific grievances that elicited the “tears of thousands.”

Page 66 →“Origo” offers the listener a remarkable blend of traits. In three minutes it manages to convey a strong sense of Hungarian tradition to Hungarians, while also signaling a transnational Romani identity and membership in the international pop music industry to a broad swath of international listeners. Reviews of Pápai’s performance called attention to its “Gypsy” elements: this part of the blend was meant to be legible internationally, and it was.⁵⁰ Yet the song does not represent a particular strand of Romani tradition; rather, it mixes Romani elements from many places to make a more generic, more “universal” Romani identity.

Although Pápai’s performance may have raised the visibility of Romani people, it did not inform audiences about their continuing struggle for equal rights. With its conspicuously blended styles, Pápai’s performance can be understood as a purposeful “Celebrate Diversity” event. After selecting a Romani man to represent Hungary, Hungarians and the Eurovision Song Contest can claim to be inclusive and multicultural, even as the persecution of Roma continues all around them. The musical visibility of Roma is promising, but it may not deliver a meaningful change in circumstances.

The media studies scholar Anikó Imre has described musicians like Pápai as being “suspended between the global media and the nation state.”⁵¹ To gain access to an international platform, Romani musicians have had to conform to particular expectations. Imre describes how state officials and music industry executives have “hand-picked” exemplary performers to elevate to fame but also required that these performers distance themselves from their Romani traditions in favor of a broader kind of appeal. Sometimes this has meant singing in Hungarian instead of Romani, singing patriotic songs about the Hungarian nation-state, or playing demeaning roles.⁵² The performers may be well paid, and they may also gain entry to the international market, for their music has become an identifiable commodity on the world stage. Some, like Pápai, have succeeded in combating certain stereotypes (dirtiness, criminality) but not others (wandering, exoticism).⁵³ The romantic stereotypes are also a valuable selling point: popularizing “Gypsy music” has meant capitalizing on those stereotypes, which only reinforces their power.

The same musical and personal flexibility that has long been a survival strategy for the Romani diaspora is again in evidence here: to make their way, Roma have adapted, performing the roles asked of them by different patrons. Those patrons now include the Eurovision Song Contest, the nation-state of Hungary, patriotic or nationalist Hungarians, and online buyers of “world beat.”

Page 67 →It has been difficult for the Roma to break out of their limited roles as outsiders. They are spread among many lands, some have no language in common, and the laws and policies of the different nation-states where they reside vary widely. Nonetheless, using the human rights frameworks of the European Union and the United Nations, during the past 60 years Roma have organized an international movement to advocate for themselves.⁵⁴ This movement has meant a change in how some Roma see themselves. Instead of identifying only with people in their own local groups, they are seeking the connections among different groups of Roma throughout the diaspora—beginning to think of themselves as a nation without a state, even a “virtual nation.”⁵⁵ Along these lines Pápai’s decision to reference a variety of Romani musical and dance elements may be based in political as well as ethnic solidarity. This larger group identity is more visible to outsiders and therefore more effective in advocacy.

The international Roma movement has attracted funding from international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Within and alongside that effort some Romani musicians have found ways to use their distinctive appeal to address social problems.⁵⁶ The Athe Sam (We are here!) festival, held annually in Budapest between 2007 and 2011 and sporadically since, blends music, theater, film, and visual arts with panel discussions and educational events about Roma history, culture, and politics. The festival includes both Romani and non-Romani performers, and it has been marketed to tourists as well as locals. This, too, is an effort at visibility: gaining the understanding and trust of neighbors far and near might encourage those neighbors to support the movement for Romani civil rights. By using the arts to bring people into a more direct conversation about citizenship and rights, these musicians are moving out of the entertainer’s role and into the role of advocates. As of this writing, the progress of this agenda remains uncertain: because government officials often regard Romani voices as politically oppositional, these forms of public expression remain tentative and subject to censorship. Yet some continue these efforts, hopeful that they can shape a dialogue about what it means to be Roma in diaspora within a multicultural Europe.⁵⁷