Klezmorim and Gypsies in Ukraine

[Paul M. Gifford <PGIFFORD...>]

There has been a little talk concerning the relationship of klezmorim 
and Gypsy musicians.  Can anyone offer information about Gypsy 
musicians in Ukraine?  Those in Romanian- and Hungarian-speaking 
areas are well known, but those in Ukraine are not.

My impression, from various sources, is that in the Ukraine, they
were nomadic, unlike Gypsy musicians in Hungary and Romania.  An 
article in the Journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society from about 1950 
describes a family named Wais, from Volhynia, who had survived the 
Nazis by going into the forest, then after the war settled in western 
Poland, where they were the last to play the harp and cymbaly, and 
traveled around.  A man I talked to who played the cymbaly and left 
Ukraine in 1913 (this was in 1975) regarded the instrument as a 
"Gypsy" instrument, as no one in his village played it, only nomadic 
Gypsies who passed through once or twice a year.  

In Poland, there are street Gypsy bands using violin, guitar, and 
accordion, and I heard one in Warsaw a little.  They played "Ochi 
chernyya," "Ritka buza" and standards like that.  There seems to have 
been a lot of Russian Gypsy influence (singers of romances with 
guitar, etc.) in Poland and Ukraine, and there was a Polish troupe 
active in the '70s which made a record, but they left the country.

So...did Jews in Ukraine and western Poland (Belarus) play with 
nomadic Gypsies, or was it more of an association with sedentary 
Gypsies, as in Moldova, Romania, Hungary, etc.?  If Mishka Tsiganoff
was typical of Gypsies who associated or were patronized by Jews, I 
suppose he was from a nomad background, since the family in "Angelo 
My Love" was fortune tellers, and lautari and Hungarian Gypsy women 
don't tell fortunes.

Paul Gifford