roma music and resistance…

First of all why?

Why write about Roma music, as a form of resistance? Why even pose the question?

It may quite simply be due to my own fascination with a music that when experienced, awakens a vivacious expression of existence, that has persistently continued to flourish throughout centuries of travelling and migrating, as a people group was repeatedly forced to move from country to country in search of a place of being.

Perhaps it was my trip through Romania, eight years ago, and the desire to simply remain, watch, listen and learn. Or the experience of caravan travelling Roma, or Sinti that would visit towns I grew up in, in southern Germany, whose way of living I envied, in my own romanticized notions of freedom and nomadic movement, and as a reaction against the confines of a society I did not fit into. Yes, perhaps it really is those long held desires to understand their survival amidst the onslaught of repeated expulsion, killing, restrictions through law, and loss, that has brought me to this little endeavour today. Hopefully it will become an interesting creative piece of thought.