corina music site

Posts Tagged ‘romani music’

The sound of Romani music is the most journeyed sound in the world having covered thousands of miles in an expedition that has lasted many centuries and has taken on the colors of all the places it has settled along the way. Romani music is probably the most enduring influence of Roma culture on other non-Roma societies. Flamenco of Andalusia owes most of its exuberance and ardor to Roma tradition. European Jazz owes much of its innovation to Roma jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt. Classic music demonstrates Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5, or Liszt’s Hungarian Dances and Rhapsodies. The Gypsy Kings have created a bandwagon effect of dance hits topping the charts for years and selling millions of albums worldwide. Finally, Roma bands are ardently hired from prominent musicians like Serbians Goran Bregovi? and Boban Markovi?, Romanian Fanfare Ciocârlia and many others.

The Romani music is a distinct field with a greatly varied content. Today, Roma musicians perform anything from folk music to Balkan fusion, Latin, jazz, alternative, classical and romantic music. Whole families of Roma musicians have been trained in playing music and initiated the training of their children to preserve their long-standing traditions. Instrumented in various ways depending on the region it originates from, the Romani music can trace its roots in Hungary, Spain, Turkey or other regions of the Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

The roots of Hungarian music encompass elements of Romani music that was instilled in the music themes of Béla Bartók and Franz Liszt. In modern times, Hungarian Romani music is often represented by the czardas and the verbunkos which are collectively referred to as ‘cigányzene’. Particularly, the verbunkos are performed at conscription ceremonies to influence young men to join the army. However, Hungarian Romani music bears unique folk elements which are for the most part without instrumentation. Roma musicians use sticks and make rhythmic groans to reproduce the sound of instruments with a technique called oral-bassing. Modern Romani musicians like Romani Rota and Ando Drom have added guitars to the Hungarian Romani music.

Spanish Romani music is broadly recognized in the form of flamenco. Although flamenco was born in Andalusia, it has been significantly influenced by the Kathak dance, the traditional Indian dance and Indian singing style that the Roma immigrants brought with them in the 15th century. Flamenco is a multidimensional art form that encompasses music, rhythm, poetry, dance and vibrant instrumentation in a visual mastery. There are various types of different palos (musical forms) in flamenco and each has different atmosphere, rhythm, theme and style. Some are danced, some are played on guitar and sang and some are only sang, which is, in effect, the soul of flamenco. However, the Andalusian Roma, known as the Gitanos, have long preserved the legacy of flamenco.

Romani music in Turkey echoes the traditional Turkish music with the clarinet, violin, kanun and darbuka and the lifestyle with gathering at the ‘taverna’, eating food and having alcohol, while enjoying the spectacle of a belly-dancer. Typically, the music is accompanied by vocal improvisation in free tempo and an instrumental improvisation (ritimli taksim) that enables the belly-dancing figures. The best known representative of the Turkish Roma musicians is the clarinetist Mustafa Kandirali.

Bulgarian Romani music resembles a lot to the traditional chalga music, while in Romania, the L?utari are the traditional Romani musicians that play at weddings, funerals and other social events. Some great examples of great Roma musicians in Bulgaria are the clarinetist Ivo Papasov, who received the BBC prize for the best clarinetist in 2006 and the saxophonist Yuri Yunakov, who is best known as the ‘wedding master’. The younger generation of Bulgarian Roma musicians is represented by kaval player and composer Theodosii Spasov and his band ‘Wild Horses’ that play an innovative mix of Balkan folk and jazz.

The Romani music is much more diverse than one can hear in the borrowed Romanticism of Franz Liszt, although it wasn’t until the revolutionary film of Emir Kusturica ‘The Time of the Gypsies’ in 1988 and the wonderful music of Goran Bregovi? that the West truly became aware of it. Despite its characteristically soulful and melodramatic vocals that are anchored by prominent glissandi between the notes, the Romani music cannot be easily defined because the Roma have lived and played music in totally diverse localities. The Romani music tends to absorb characteristics of diverse environments and sounds and embellish them with turns, runs, twists and trills producing new sounds, which are an eclectic and explosive blend of Balkan sounds, jazz and traditional Roma folk.