Band of gypsies

Rock ‘n’ rollers and filmmakers have appropriated Romany chic for decades.

Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards revelled in a flamboyantly earringed outlaw gypsy cool throughout the late ‘60s. Dylan’s ‘One More Cup Of Coffee’ dripped images of psychic knife-throwing tarot-dealing renegades. The Gypsy Kings, the most notable successors to Belgian pioneer Django Reinhardt, established flamenco as a major force in the World Music pantheon, and Emir Kusturica’s Time Of The Gypsies (whose soundtrack was recently pilfered for the Borat travesty) was acclaimed as an arthouse masterpiece. Johnny Depp played brooding gypsy performers onscreen and flew Romania’s Taraf de Haidouks into Hollywood to play at the imprinting of his palms on Sunset Boulevard. The Roma people may have suffered genocide, persecution, poverty and social pariahdom over the past millennium, but the image of the honourable gypsy brigand has remained an enduring symbol of romantic bohemia.
Until relatively recently though, the actual source music so integral to Roma culture has remained a minority interest to all but the most intrepid music devotees. Award-winning New Zealand journalist Garth Cartwright is one such pilgrim. Published in 2005 by Serpent’s Tail, his book Princes Amongst Thieves was part Beat escapade, part musical travelogue, and provided vivid insight into the history and culture of the Balkan states, featuring interviews conducted with many of the leading exponents of the music. It was undoubtedly one of the finest music books of recent years, earning a much deserved paperback reprinting this month.
This reissue coincides with the increasing popularity of Gypsy sound system club nights and live shows by Balkan acts such as Fanfare Ciocarlia and the Kocani Orkestar, not to mention Balkan and klezmer-influenced acts like Albuquerque’s A Hawk And A Hacksaw. Just last month at Live Earth, Madonna – a zeitgeist magpie if ever there was one – invited Eugene and Sergey from Gogol Bordello, the mongrel Ukrainian/Russian/Israeli/Ethopian/American gypsy-punk outfit based in New York, onstage for a souped up ‘La Isla Bonita’.
“She’s been directing some film about them just around where I live in Peckham, and it’s going to be an absolute turkey I’m sure!” Cartwright chuckles.
Roma musicians, Cartwright says, are somewhat bemused about the newfound chic this centuries-old music has acquired.
“All this time they’ve been made to feel second class and they’re suddenly fashionable,” he says. “They’re musicians who’ve trained from childhood to entertain people and do it well. In certain parts of Romania, if they’re not happy with your composition or you can’t play a certain song, you’ll get beaten up on the spot. The Balkans are wild.”
Cartwright’s crackling descriptions of the music (accompanied by an exhaustive discography, bilbiography and filmography) evoke the raw energy of regional musical dialects the world over, from the Tuareg players of Mali, the deep dub of Trenchtown, the flying horsehair of after-hours Connemara bars, or the jazz devilry of New Orleans in the late 1800s. In fact, some of the most tantalising passages in the book speculate about the influence of Roma brass ensembles on Big Easy big bands.
It’s also social music, by turns joyous, funky, melancholic and unruly. The raw power of indigenous Roma sounds (as opposed to the technoed up turbo-folk variation) exposes the homogenised, digitalised, Pro-Tooled nature of most radio-friendly modern rock for the joke it is. iTunes sells music as the in-flight earphones soundtrack to your own solipsistic film, and the upshot is, where once there was convenience food, there is now convenience music. By contrast, the rowdy Balkan combos documented in Princes Amongst Men make their money from weddings, christenings, funerals and bacchanals.
“Like Ireland was, I suppose it’s a community thing,” Cartwright says. “It’s hard work to master your instrument. But you’re right, there is this thing of your iPod allowing you to choose the soundtrack to your environment. I’d rather hear what’s going on around me: people making noise on the street or a sound system playing Jamaican tunes. These days in the west it’s just part of our consumption and doesn’t seem to have any greater meaning, which is why it’s so connected with celebrity culture, especially in the UK. (Legendary cartoonist and blues/folk aficionado) Robert Crumb says what has happened to music in the west is a cultural crime on a par with the rainforest. It’s like an epidemic. Think of the regional music culture of the US – a lot of it’s gone now. But certainly in the Balkans, music is about communication and celebration. It’s so powerful, the soul of human culture.”

Princes Amongst Men is published by Serpent’s Tail. Fanfare Ciocarlia play the Pavilion Threatre, Dun Laoghaire on Saturday August 25 as part of the Festival Of World Cultures.