Re:A QUERY

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

Susan Lerner <meydele (at) ix(dot)netcom(dot)com> wrote:
 
> Czechoslovakia, as well as the US and te British Isles, the only reference 
> to gypsies in Ukraine (or even Russia) is: 1933, Sergievskij, M.V., Book 
> Review of Gypsies of the Ukraine, Journal of Gypsy Lore Society (ser.3) 
> 12:52-54.  Good luck!
> 
Also in that same journal (maybe from 1950) is an article by Jerzy 
Ficowski which talks about the Wais family from Volhynia, which 
survived the War by escaping to the woods and at the time were 
itinerant musicians in western Poland. Ficowski wrote a nice picture 
book about Polish Gypsies, but it's of course in Polish. 

I've found references to nomadic Gypsies in Belarus during the 19th 
century as musicians, but in western Ukraine the musicians seem to be 
sedentary. One old cymbaly player I once met, who was born in 1893 
and left there in 1913, said that nomadic Gypsies who appeared in his 
village annually were the only ones who played the instrument (this 
man learned to play it in the '20s in Manitoba). In Belarus today, the 
Gypsies are not known for music, at least according to Belarusians I 
talked to in Mogilev.

Paul Gifford

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+