Re: Gypsies

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

"Robert Cohen" <rlcm17 (at) hotmail(dot)com> wrote:

> In that case, how come we have the cultural image of the "wandering Gypsy"?  
> Am curious -- Robert Cohen
>
No doubt nearly all were nomadic at one time, but over centuries most
settled down. Traditions vary from country to country and I don't all 
the situations, but at least in Eastern Europe, the groups that play 
music for weddings, etc., are sedentary in that they traditionally 
live in their own neighborhoods in cities or villages. They have 
nothing to do with the groups that follow other occupations by 
tradition. Some of those groups are sedentary, others are nomadic, 
but in any case whatever music they might play is not professional.

Members of the groups that are musicians may not actually make money 
playing music, but all the males learn an instrument as children. The 
Gypsies that lived in a Hungarian neighborhood in Detroit would give 
you the impression that they only played music for a living, but in 
reality worked in factories, etc., and played on weekends in 
restaurants and bars. 


In a Gypsy neighborhood in a small town in southeastern Romania I was 
in for a few days, there would be lautari (musician) families, mostly 
interrelated, living near _ursari_ (bear-leader) and _calderuri_ 
(coppersmith) families, interspersed, but the lautari didn't seem to 
have much personal contact with the other groups. However, they might 
marry outside the social group on occasion.  The family names of the 
lautari indicate that some of them had other occupations in the past, 
so obviously it's a fluid situation. On the other hand, in that town, 
I met a couple of brothers whose name was Muscalgiu (meaning "player 
of the _muscal_, the old Turkish name for the panpipes), who played 
accordion and trumpet.

On the other hand, in the more distant past, there were itinerant 
beggar musicians (such as in Germany in the 18th century), "highway 
fiddlers" in England, and poor Jews were part of this economic niche.
Apparently there were certain towns or villages in central Europe 
where playing wedding music was a hereditary occupation, and until 
the early 19th century, family members from these towns traveled 
widely to play for events. So maybe itinerant Gypsies adopted this 
occupational specialty (certainly in Hungary they did so from Jewish 
musicians) because it fit with what they were already doing.

Paul Gifford 








 > >From: "Paul M. Gifford" <PGIFFORD (at) flint(dot)umich(dot)edu>
>> 
> >It should be noted that Gypsy musicians (whether in Hungary, Romania,
> >or Ukraine) are sedentary.

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