All Roads Lead to Roma
Three Takes on Modern Romani Music
Notes From A Honky-Tonk Woman – April 2024 – Number 2
Photo courtesy of composer, performer, filmmaker and historian Oliver Rajamani, shown here with Cindy Cashdollar The search for Romani music can never be a destination. It is a pilgrimage.
[Editors note: The Roma (the preferred name rather than Gypsies) are an ethnic group that dates back over a thousand years from India. Historically the Romani people were nomads who, over a period of centuries, migrated to the middle east, Eastern Europe, Great Britain among others.]
There is no single road to take us there. Some of the roads suddenly change their names, or are deliberately mismarked, to deter the weak.
You may arrive to the smell of leather, horse-sweat, woodsmoke, then eat and drink well, sing and laugh in the firelight among people who feel like lifelong, long-lost friends, maybe even family, and sleep sweetly in a wagon under the stars. But in the morning when you wake, there is nothing to prove that you were ever there. Just hoof-prints in the cold sand, and a few strands of broken hay blowing across an empty field. The wind, and Roma, say “O Lungo Drom. ” To paraphrase : “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
ON THE ROAD WITH THE VIGNATIS
The unaccompanied voice rises like the call to prayer over a dusk-pink city half as old as time, lifting like smoke from an altar, spiraling up from a sobbing petition into the ethereal ecstasy of the singer’s achingly pure upper register.
Depending upon your musical taste and background, this may sound like a mostly forgotten nigun from the vanished shtetls of Eastern Europe, or a melancholy swirl of klezmer, or Carnatic chant from Tamil Nadu, or the muezzin summoning the faithful from the minaret, or a strand snatched from the melodic skein of cultural memory carried around the world like an amulet for centuries by the people called the Roma or Romani or Romany, known by many other names including “gypsy.”
But the singer is not Roma, nor is she Indian, nor a Jew, nor a Muslim. Her name is Tracy Vignati, and the song explains ”Je Ne Suis Comme Toi” (“I’m Not Like You”), half of the Los Angeles-based duo known for the sound that she and her guitarist/composer husband Fabrice Vignati christened “gypsybilly.” Their high-energy seventh album is scheduled for release in summer, 2024, a spirited 50-50 combo of Vignati originals and iconic rock and pop covers.
Tracy and Fabrice Vignati rock the Casbah with full-tilt Gypsybilly. Photo courtesy of The Vignatis.
Tracy is American, a self-described Air Force brat with a pristine soprano range polished by classical training who matches Fabrice note-for-note on an assortment of candy-colored plastic clarinets. When we asked why and how “gypsy” music sounds the way it does, she replied, “The manouche gypsy sound is percussive in its rhythm, containing melodic, memorable themes with an uplifting overall energy. Traditionally being drumless, the rhythm guitars take on that role, giving it a different sound that is very free flowing. Writing and playing this style, simply put, makes me happy. You can’t help but smile. It can be challenging for me at times, as I didn’t grow up around it. When I was first exposed to it, I wanted to embrace it and try to figure out how I can implement it into my musical life.”
The Vignatis describe their 2009 invention of the Gypsybilly genre this way (excerpted from their website): “Rhythm guitar in Gypsy Jazz, originating in France, essentially replaces the drums due to the mobile nature of the Gypsy culture. It uses a special percussive technique of up-and-down strumming called “La Pompe” emphasized on beats 2 and 4. Gypsybilly tastefully and selectively revises “La Pompe,” coining the phrase “La Pompe Renversé” by emphasizing beats 1 and 3 in tandem with the bass as a musical signature.”
This format is present in ”Je Ne Suis Comme Toi” and many other songs written and performed by this striking duo, and this cut typifies the Vignatis’ method: as Tracy’s voice descends from the astral plane, it takes on a seductive gutbucket growl that anchors the song—and it is a love-song– in here and now. Fabrice rips into the muscular guitar phrasings with the breakneck glee of a teenage boy stealing a hotrod on the first day of summer, and he’s a master of the two-finger picking style introduced by Django Reinhardt in response to a household fire which left his left hand partially paralyzed.
Gypsybilly is not for the faint of heart. Slap and intermittent walking bass paired with a dominance of major 6th and minor 6th chords are spiced up further with honky tonk piano riffs and pedal steel that would have made Elvis himself holler for his mama. Tracy ornaments the sound with bright, jazzy flourishes on one her several clarinets. The sound is virile and big, and the effect is rollicking and rowdy, exactly the type of sound that would draw you to a town square or a street corner to catch the vibe. Intensely lyrical chromatic elements add neo-nostalgia with sweet, swooping melodic passages to offset the driving beat. When the duo crows “Let’s go!” you will wish for all the world that you could ride shotgun as part of their high-spirited, road-tripping caravan.
Fabrice was born in the French Alps in a little town called Aix-Les-Bains. His axe of choice is not the expected Selmer-Maccaferri acoustic, but instead a host of electric and acoustic instruments, often splashed with the black-and-white checkerboard motif (think of Van’s slip-ons circa “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) which is the artist’s retro style signature.
Fabrice rocks a Gretsch, Gibson 335, Danelectro for power, and his Dell’Arte Gypsy Jazz, and a Yamaha acoustic, as well as banjo and ukulele, for a more countrified sound. Fabrice comments, “Gypsy jazz guitars are unique in their construction with smaller holes, yielding a distinctive, resonant sound, crisper and more metallic, a little bit like a Dobro guitar. This supports the rhythm playing, the famous ‘La Pompe.’”
“Gretsches and the Gibson 335 are extremely versatile, and the Bigsby tremolo is a very unique Gretsch trademark. Danelectro are great guitars for extremely clean tones, especially for slide techniques, and to double up rhythm guitar tracks,” says Fabrice. Tracy adds, “Anyone who chooses to play this style is someone who doesn’t mind a serious challenge and has a karmic connection to it.”
Tracy and Fabrice create a dynamic fusion of manouche, jazz, rockabilly, pop and country. Photo courtesy of The Vignatis.
But is the sound “authentic”? This is a question on par with the most insoluble of Talmudic riddles (“How long is a piece of string?” “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Oy!). Ethnographers of every musical genre devote lifetimes of bickering over the Authenticity Question. And, in the case of Romani music, all paths lead nowhere, ultimately, while they circle the globe.
The term “gypsy” is a word created by English speakers in Britain, referring erroneously to the origin of the nation as being Egyptian (Roma people are, in fact, genetically identified as arising in India on a millennium ago). Other terms used to describe Romani, the German “Zigeuner,” for instance, translate to “untouchable.” The Asiatic heritage of Roma, like the ancestry of Judaic tribes, neatly positioned both of these minorities as alien, non-European races in the Reich’s Aryanism campaign of “racial hygiene.” To “gyp” became a pejorative verb associated with Romani interactions with the gadjo (non-Roma) world. As with any persecuted ethnic minority, harmful myths abound. But unlike most other cultures, Roma people themselves continue to propagate many of these myths, often justifying behaviors that might be termed antisocial at the very least.
The most enduring of these is the legend of the stolen nail. For decades, perhaps centuries, a Roma trope has been that, as the arrested Christ was being crucified, a gypsy stole the nail intended for his heart. This story has been offered as justification for an off-the-grid lifestyle which includes theft. Another half-truth is that some Roma families resist conventional education for their children. The usually proffered reason is the argument that the inability to read or write exempts an individual from legal action in a Western court of law (not true, incidentally). Equally likely: for generations, Roma children were barred from schools, just as Roma families were (and still may be) shunned from society at large.
On the surface of things, not all of the Othering-folklore seems negative. Consider the fiery “gypsy” wenches of popular literature, notably Bizet’s Carmen and Hugo’s Esmerelda. And who can forget “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” and “Dark Lady” as crooned by a sloe-eyed Cher. Just as the term “gypsy” may conjure stereotypically a person of dubious ethics, the trade-off is the fantasy of an unfettered, bohemian life unimaginable to most ordinary people. (Just add a single hoop earring, a rose in your teeth, and a tambourine.) Consider the Raggle-Taggle Gypsy-O as immortalized by The Waterboys and many others. In this tune, a monied woman decides to jump the fence, and asks:
What care I for my goose feather bed,
Blankets thrown so comely, O?
Tonight I lie in a wide-open field in the arms of the raggle-taggle gypsy-O!
Later versions, like the “Gypsy Davy” iterations by Woody Guthrie in the 1940s, depict the lady of the nobleman’s house shedding not only property and materialism, but her own maternity: Guthrie’s lyrics detail her abandoning her baby as well as her house, land, only-wedded lord, and her money-O. Here, although cast as infinitely appealing, the gypsy influence is portrayed as a direct threat to the established social order.
Two factions emerge in current Roma life. The more vocal is the movement among Roma to set the record straight, to the degree that this may be possible. This movement demands reparations for the Porrajmos (“the devouring,” the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Roma and Sinto population), a dialogue led by the brilliant Romani-British activist and scholar Dr. Ian Hancock, among others. Hancock’s book, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution, was the first to conclusively document the enslavement of Roma in Europe, and today his role as a watchful elder and shepherd to the Romani people remains the touchstone for 21st century Roma cultural activism.
While this activism is righteous and long overdue, its call to transparency is not universally heeded by the Roma. While most minorities clamor to be seen and heard, some of the world’s Romani population prefers to operate at least in partial shadow, often identifying as Italian, or Lebanese, or…whatever the occasion requires. A seeming reluctance to join the world which has for so long enslaved and scorned them, likening them to rats, bedbugs and fleas, persists as a central enigma in the ambiguities of modern Roma life.
BUILDING THE ROMA GUITAR WITH TOMMY DAVY
Tommy Davy is a young composer, guitarist, and luthier who grew up in the workshop of his father, a violin-maker, in Southern California. He and his wife violinist Luanne Homzy are two of the three members of Trio Dinicu, the third player being Roma jazz bassist, vocalist and guitarist, Frank Anastasio. The trio’s name honors Romanian Roma virtuoso Grigoras Ionica Dinicu, admired by mid-century talents as diverse as Heifetz and Grappelli as the master of the golden age of the Parisian-Russian cabaret style – see his “Hora Staccato,” oft-played by Heifetz, as reference.
CAPTION: Trio Dinicu, named for Romanian Roma virtuoso Grigoras Ionica Dinicu. From left, Tommy Davy, Luanne Homzy, Frank Anastasio. Photos courtesy of Tommy Davy.
Tommy Davy is not formally trained, nor is he Roma. As a kid in Laguna Beach, he learned the drums in elementary school and played Top 40 tunes as a teenager. It wasn’t until the 2000 NAMM Show that he first heard Django, and everything changed in that instant. Today, he’s an ardent fan and booster for Eddie South, an African American violinist who performed with Reinhardt and Grappelli and was known as “Black Gypsy,” commenting that the Rom experience parallels that of African Americans in many respects.
He describes his own playing today as “gypsy style,” which he explains “…is really an amalgam of styles. For instance, we have countless stories of Mozart hearing music he described as Turkish, and how this Turkish music influenced his composing. But I think it’s more likely that what Mozart heard were gypsy musicians playing Turkish content. The same can be said of Liszt, with Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-Sharp Minor.”
Many of the guitars that Davy restores and builds follow the Selmer-Maccaferri template: “grand bouche” (“big mouth,” meaning large, D-shaped sound-hole), wide floating bridge, gently arched (not carved) French spruce soundboard, ladder-braced top and back. The super-lightweight laminate used in the instrument construction is not a cost-cutting move but rather a “…way of moving more air while you play. The use of laminate was designed to isolate the top. An arched or bent pliage top, much like Neopolitan mandolins, and laminated back and sides, make the sound reflect outward as much as possible, so the attack of the guitar is quite immediate. The first examples were originally intended for classical guitarists and jazz musicians, built with Maccaferri’s internal resonating chambers to be very present and loud guitars.”
Jazz guitar frame in Tommy Davy’s Los Angeles workshop.
From Tommy Davy’s collection.
He points out that “…Reinhardt didn’t start playing the 14-fret model seen in photos until the 1930s. Django was using a 12-fret grande bouche guitar, proving that it’s not just a rhythm guitar.”
Gypsy Jazz guitars. All photos courtesy of Tommy Davy.
Davy says “People’s reactions to this sound can be surprising. I’ve heard it described as nasal, crunchy, and just plain weird, and they often object to the abrasive, raspy scratchy texture of Eastern European fiddle-playing. When you’re playing impossible music, something’s got to suffer,” says Davy, who calls gypsy-styling “extremely acrobatic.”
Not coincidentally, these reactions mirror common criticisms of bagpipes, an instrument which tracks its dissonant drone and whine far east of the bonny braes and banks of Scotland to the ancient Middle East and India. The “Oxford History of Music” mentions the earliest-known depiction of the “agony bags” as a thousand-year-old Hittite carving, and historians speculate that, while Rome burned, Emperor Nero tootled on a set of proto-bagpipes rather than “fiddled.”
The life of a travelling performer is notoriously unstable, and nowhere moreso than in the world of gypsy jazz. “There’s the risk of exoticizing,” says Davy. “The gypsy legend versus the Roma reality is very much romanticized. The pandemic was tough for everyone, but it absolutely wiped out generations of historic Roma performance in Budapest. The big clubs and restaurants closed down, concerts stopped, everything shut down, and now some the best musicians in the world are playing for tourists, playing on the cruise ships.”
He says, “In Holland, ever since the 1960s and 1970s, college kids have played gypsy-style music, busking and whatnot. There, it’s seen as old-school, kind of corny and campy. Almost parody. This is not good for the future of this music, and the gypsies I know see the writing on the wall. Because none of it was really written down, we are at extreme risk of losing this aspect of a complicated culture forever, and I feel like I myself am in the crosshairs of gadjo and Roma.” He’s unbothered, however, by any protest of appropriation. “It’s true that I have met some gypsy musicians who insist that I can’t possibly know what it takes to play this music, and that their knowledge is literally in their blood. I understand and agree that I have not had their life-experience but saying that only Roma can understand and play this music is effectively saying that you are not allowed to feel joy, because you’re not gypsy.” He shrugs off the caveat, noting that his wife Luanna “…figured out these crazy, complicated violin parts with absolutely no foreknowledge, all by listening. Really listening.”
And still, the allure persists. “I’d say to guitarists out there that if you’re really dedicated to knowing this music, you have to know the people. You need to start learning how they think. Strange as it sounds, prowl around YouTube. Call the person who posts really great videos. The hand-postures, the rhythms are different than, you know, the Berklee technique. Get yourself a nice, chunky plectrum pick. And you have to go out and find live music that’s performed in this style. There is no substitute for the closeness of that experience. Ask the musicians how they do it. Of course, they may not be willing to tell you.”
FAR BEYOND “AUSTIN CITY LIMITS” WITH OLIVER RAJAMANI
Oliver Rajamani is an Austin-based musician, filmmaker, composer, cultural advocate and historian who studies and documents the Indian roots of Romani music, including Flamenco.
Oliver Rajamani lives in Austin, and says he is amused when locals approach him in Spanish. “I take it as a compliment,” he says, “it makes me feel at home here.” A composer, guitarist, and protector of musical traditions of many kinds, Rajamani was persuaded to move from New York to Austin in 1994 by his friend, the linguist, historian and human rights advocate Dr. Ian Hancock who teaches at the University of Texas, Austin.
Rajamani grew up listening to his father’s record collection which included Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole. Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, and The Ventures. As a guitarist, Rajamani has duetted with talents as diverse as Willie Nelson, Edie Brickell, The Gipsy Kings, and Robert Bly, providing accompaniment to readings of Rumi. Today, Rajamani is as much a keeper of the old stories, deeply invested in exploring the roots of Romani culture, as he is a boundary-crossing musician. Two projects consume much of his attention: “Romani Lone Star,” a documentary shot in Spain, India and Texas scheduled for completion in 2024, and “Flamenco India,” a multi-media educational venture exploring the Indian roots of Flamenco.
Rajamani comments, “Flamenco is the music of the Romani people in Andalusia. The art form identifies itself as Spanish, and people recognize and comment on Arab, Moorish and Muslim elements, but the Indo-Aryan roots of Flamenco predate Islam by thousands of years, placing the original source of this tradition in southern India.”
He shares that his grandmother came from a tribal background with roots in Tamil Nadu, located on the southernmost-tip of the Indian peninsula which has been a place of human civilization since 15,000 BCE according to archeologists.
In 1931, poet Federico Garcia Lorca wrote about Spanish composer Manuel de Falla who spearheaded the national effort to keep the essence of Flamenco alive:
“The ‘Cante Jondo’ approaches the rhythm of the birds and the natural music of the black poplar and the waves; it is simple in oldness and style. It is also a rare example of primitive song, the oldest of all Europe, where the ruins of history, the lyrical fragment eaten by the sand, appear live like the first morning of its life. The illustrious Falla, who studied the question attentively, affirms that the gypsy siguiriya is the song type of the group ‘Cante Jondo’ and declares that it is the only song on our continent that has been conserved in its pure form, because of its composition and its style and the qualities it has in itself, the primitive songs of the oriental people.” (Editor’s note: The outdated term “oriental” is used here simply to remain consistent with Lorca’s original wording.)
Rajamani writes, “The closest representation of what Flamenco’s ‘Cante Jondo’ originates from is the ‘Oppari’ of South India…the passion of Flamenco can be seen in many Indian dance forms, though in India it takes on a more royal and lighter approach while in Flamenco it takes on a more aggressive, heavier approach. The rather stylized tension that Flamenco artists emulate in their music and dance is a clear sign of a persecuted people showing their persistence in life. Romani Flamenco lyrics carry a heaviness of pain, loneliness and protest which is similarly found in African American music.”
He adds, “The influence of Arab music found in Flamenco is deeply misunderstood as an Arab or Jewish creation to Flamenco. The truth lies in the fact that Arabs and Jews had their own classical and religious music in Andalusia, while Flamenco was clearly performed by the Romani…the latest influence on Flamenco comes from the African slave rhythms of rumba which was transported from the Spanish colonies to Spain and adopted and interpreted by the Romani community. The pop band Gipsy Kings is a good example of this.”
He studied tabla-playing as a boy, but the artist is mostly self-taught, without formal training. Some of his original musical compositions revealing the deep Indian-ness of Flamenco include “Thani Rupakaria,” utilizing the Indian seven-beat “Rupak tal” with Flamenco’s “Solea por Buleria” form; ‘”Teen Thal-Atte,” utilizing the Indian 16-beat “teen tal” with Flamenco formats; and “Japam,’” original pieces in five-beat cycles. He has named these in Tamil, the language of Tamil Nadu, for the feelings of loneliness (“Thani”), a lullaby (“Thal-Atte”), and a prayer (“Japam”).
Photos courtesy of Oliver Rajamani and friend
He says that the purpose of his “Flamenco India” project is…”to educate people about exploring its many roots. We want to show the storyline and the timeline. It all gets a little confusing, especially in this academic quest for purity. For example, Romani are not a presence in India, although ’Romani’ is a common surname there. There’s also confusion about where and when in India the ancestors of modern Romani got their start. Rajastan was the gateway out for Indian people fleeing religious oppression of Islam. The ‘Oppari’ predates the invasions. Linguists link the migration out of India with the north, but the south maintained its older musical origins, whereas the north became musically changed.”
He cites the fact that in Spain, Flamenco was perceived as a low-class diversion which slowly became fashionable, if still considered somewhat louche among the upper crust—similar, perhaps, to white Americans going to Harlem “…in ermine and pearls,” as Rogers & Hart wrote in 1937. “Roma were and still are a sort of hunter-gatherer culture,” he says. “They may be less nomadic than in times past, but they continue to be incredible innovators. They don’t simply put a spin on existing music, they innovate new expressions. They can be chameleon-like, blending when they want to. Moreso than ever before, their music is a survival technique in modern times.”
And Rajamani is much more than an archivist. In Austin, “nada” literally means nothing – “de nada”– but Rajamani’s devoted practice of what’s called Nada yoga is something quite different. This ancient Indian system seeks inner transformation through the use of sounds, tones, vibrations, also called “nadas.” The heart chakra is central to the practice. “When we study atoms, we see that nothing is actually as solid as it appears. Everything is bouncing around all over the place, and vibrating at different frequencies, and not just audible sound. This is the essence of our manifest world, and why a live music experience can be so powerful in terms of bonding. Music can go deep. It touches places that other therapies can’t.”
Today, assimilation may be viewed as a subtler genocide, an erasure, threatening Roma life, although thanks to Dr. Hancock, Austin currently is the location of the West’s most extensive resources related to Romani history and culture.
“…like a band of gypsies, we go down the highway…” Oliver Rajamani and Willie Nelson, on the road again.
Rajamani comments that in Austin, many Roma he meets are fair-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed (talk about deep cover). And so the lyrics of “Gelem, Gelem,” the Romani cultural anthem written by Serbian Romani musician (also spelled “Djelem, Djelem”) Žarko Jovanovic in 1949, seem especially poignant today:
Opre Proma, si bakht akana
Aven mansa sa lumnyake Roma
O kalo mui thai e kale yakha
Kamav len sar e kale drakha”
(“Rise, Romani! Now is the time.
Come with me, Roma, from all over the world.
Dark face and dark eyes,
I want them like dark grapes.”)
While cultural militants, artists, geneticists, ethnologists and experts of many kinds collectively champion the Roma cause, the future is unclear. Some contemporary examinations of Romani life, like TLC’s garish “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding,” may be part of the problem.
Hindu scripture in the Maheshwara Sutra informs us that Lord Shiva dances blissfully as he re-creates the cosmos through sound, playing 42 tones on his drum as the heartbeat that brings the universe back into existence. Perhaps for Romani, their much-cannibalized, much-plagiarized and largely misunderstood music serves a similar purpose: to restore all that is lost so that their fragile world stays intact. Perhaps knowing more clearly where they “come from” will allow for a more self-determined future for modern Rom—crystal ball, palmistry and tea leaves / coffee grounds readings optional.
While the gadjo (or gadzho, also called gorger, gorgio, altii, ceilalti) world may never truly understand why the Romani culture, often stubborn, defensive and evasive, behaves as it does, frequently choosing to remain in the role of outlaw or at least outlier, our knowing even a small part of their vastly textured history makes it clear why the Roma must keep on singing.
