roma music and resistance…


A Musical Journey in Film
December 10, 2007, 4:17 pm
Filed under: films, music, the Roma | Tags: , , ,

You cannot walk straight when the road bends. Romani Proverb

When the Road Bends…Tales of a Gypsy Caravan directed by Jasmine Dellal

This film is a story with many layers, about a director following a tour across North America as well as that of many musicians brought together from an array of countries, by World Music institute. The musical journey becomes the source of a many journeys around the world, as the director traces the lives of the five musical groups to their homes.

First a short history of the director, and her own fascination with Roma culture. Her interest in Roma culture was awakened in the 1990’s and in the year 2000 she directed her first film about the subject, American Gypsy: a stranger in everybody’s land. In 2001, WMI approached her in conjunction with the planned concert series, and asked her to consider filming the tour. In the end this became a five year endeavour, with many collaborators, including filmmakers Albert Maysles and Allain de Halleux, and a film whose

“overall aim was for the film to operate on three levels: luscious multi-camera concert film footage reveling in the musical performances; vérité scenes of musicians far away from the spotlight shot on DVCam at home in Spain, Macedonia, Romania and India; and backstage footage of the artists getting to know each other and developing friendships on the road. With the skills of cinematographers Albert Maysles and Alain de Halleuz these three elements provide a richness of texture, allowing the film’s style and structure to remain clean and simple.”

Five bands compose the musical component of the concert tour, described as

“five eclectic and compelling bands featured in the Gypsy Caravan film: two groups from Romania, Taraf de Haïdouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia; Antonio El Pipa Flamenco ensemble from Spain; singer Esma Redzepova from Macedonia; and from India, Maharaja. Their diverse, but equally captivating musical styles range from flamenco to brass band, Romanian violin to Indian folk, from raga to jazz.”

And so this variegated, beautiful pallet of music evolves over a period of six weeks on tour, as the musicians work together for the first time. Throughout the film, musical scenes filmed during the tour, live on 16mm, intermingle with footage made over the following years on journeys to various countries. These film elements remain very intimate and personal, since they were filmed on video. In an interview with Jason Whyte at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2006, Jasmine Dellal speaks of what drew her to the Roma identity, as emerging from her own experience of otherness…

“In retrospect, I think perhaps my own heritage is part of the reason why I’ve spent a decade making films with Roma (”Gypsies”). From my accent, I sound like an English woman, which I am. But I’m also Polish, Jewish and Iraqi; I grew up in England and partly in India, and I’ve lived most of my adult life in the USA. So I belong to a lot of cultures, but I’m always on the edge of all of them. One Indian friend of mine describes me as a “mixed vegetable” curry.

So, perhaps this made it more appealing to spend so many years working with Roma and exploring their culture – after all, they are the ultimate world citizens. There are Romani citizens of almost every country on earth, and yet they are almost always on the edge, rarely fully belonging to the society where they live, even though they may have been there for hundreds of years. It’s a curious insider: outsider power dilemma.”

Her words resonate strangely within my own attempt to understand this music, as a means of expression of being on the outside, the other. Amidst this experience of being outside, expulsed, declared unwanted, lacking official status, the vibrancy of life lived seems to transcend so much of what the dominant society lives. There is also the merging and amalgamations, the bridging of gaps, the linguistic journey, all these small fragments of identity that have come to mingle together.

But back to the film. Visually the journey is exquisite. Sitting in the theatre last Tuesday, a late afternoon show with only eight people in attendance, the journey began with the Romani proverb quoted above. Linearity is discarded in favour of the vacillating beauty that emerges amidst the realities of being, of living, of loss, of death, of marriage. The adamancy of the everyday life, strung between the tangible beauty of music emerging on stage, and the reflective quality of weeks spent together on tour. The footage that was made in Roumania, Spain, Macedonia and India, which offers insight into the history of the Roma, a people spread across continents, through a journey that lasted many centuries. But here we have the stories of the individual daily life. The stories evolve through images of everyday life, through the streets and homes. Stories of refugees in Macedonia, having fled Kosovo, or the funeral of Nicolae Neacsu of Taraf de Haïdouks, one of the great violinists, a wedding, portrayal of the origins of this music, which is deeply rooted in the celebratory events, the movements of everyday life.

“Though the artists where enthusiastic about their concerts being filmed, they were initially hesitant about revealing their personal lives, but they soon warmed to Dellal and her approach to filming, the results of which are beautifully crafted and detailed portraits. These intimate and revealing portraits interweave into the concert and tour footage as the film visits the musicians? Home towns and villages where we not only see suffering, poverty, and racism, but also a shared delight in family, a determination to improve life for their children and the magical spark that occurs when artists play music for their friends and families, rather than on stage.”

And so the movie seemed to me a pertinent introduction to this attempt to elucidate a musical discourse that intermingles with the complex historical development of a people group, as they wandered paths from Asia to Europe and further, to the North American continent, still maintaining a distinct sense of identity, even amidst the variety of national identities they have traversed and adapted to.

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