Music, City and the Roma under Communism

Anna G. Piotrowska

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781501380822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Etnomusicologia

This book highlights the role of Romani musical presence in Central and Eastern Europe, especially from Krakow in the Communist period, and argues that music can and should be treated as one of the main points of relation between Roma and non-Roma. It discusses Romani performers and the complexity of their situation as conditioned by the political situations starkly affected by the Communist regime, and then by its fall. Against this backdrop, the book engages with musician Stefan Dymiter (known as Corroro) as the leader of his own street band: unwelcome in the public space by the authorities, merely tolerated by others, but admired by many passers-by and respected by his peer Romain musicians and international music stars. It emphasizes the role of Romani musicians in Krakow in shaping the soundscape of the city while also demonstrating their collective and individual strategies to adapt to the new circumstances in terms of the preferred performative techniques, repertoire, and overall lifestyle.

Part One

City and Music

1.1

The Tradition of Music-Making in the Streets

Since medieval times, various Romani groups of Central and Eastern Europe have chosen occupational niches that allow them to sustain their wandering lifestyle.¹ Amongst others, as commonly known, they resort to public performances – for example dancing, singing and playing musical instruments, often treating them as a source of income. The Roma were not land owners, so they could not participate in the agricultural economy, instead they adjusted – already in medieval times – to the division of the labour market by avoiding the pressures of a single economy and specializing in tasks fitting their itinerant lifestyle, for example, seasonal employment (e.g. during harvests or planting),² dabbling in metallurgy (as smiths) as well as excelling at patenting medicine and horse-trading, whilst gaining recognition for their crafts. The Roma inclined towards professions delineating them from settled populations,³ and evolved what could be tagged as the ‘Gypsy economy’, which hinges on self-employment and close collaboration of whole clans (extended families). Finding appropriate economic segments and avoiding open competition with other groups, the Roma managed to consolidate their position as a middleman minority,⁴ often assuming the role of an intermediary between various social strata.⁵ While adjusting their products to the current needs,⁶ they tended to disseminate their goods and to provide services at considerably lower prices, virtually monopolizing certain sectors,⁷ amongst others they became widely recognized as urban performers.

The position of town musicians

Already in the Middle Ages the Roma were known as excellent entertainers, for example, fortune tellers, tamers of wild animals (e.g. bears), musicians. Their appearances in European cities provided an alternative for city dwellers accustomed to municipal musicians. The Roma were even visibly distinguishable, ‘different from autochthonous vagabonds’,⁸ although they were similarly treated to those who ‘belonged to the streets’, possibly even as social deviants on par with other migrating entertainers. While wandering amusers never constituted a very homogenous group,⁹ they all remained outside of the legal, social and religious system and thus were perceived as outcasts, even criminals and rogues who lived on the fringes of the society. Indeed, the troupes of wandering entertainers often accommodated social misfits from different walks of life,¹⁰ who were stigmatized as social pariahs and street urchins, amongst others, by the means of their attire. The number of travelling performers were augmented in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the mobility of the poor increased, leading to attempts to legislate their status.¹¹ These entertainers were still treated unequivocally as ‘Judas’ children’, accused of spreading sleazy lies,¹² and associated with delinquencies, as – for example – even ‘juggling could, in fact, be used as a means of cozenage and, first and foremost, for cheating at cards and dice’.¹³ Because of their wandering lifestyle, which was connected with infiltrating various communities, these entertainers became suspected of spying (a certain Wondreton was tried in Paris in the 1380s for an attempted poisoning of the King of France, Charles VI¹⁴). The ambiguous reception of travelling musicians also permeated popular tales in Central Europe, for example, the story featuring a mischievous rat-catcher, the Pied Piper of Hamelin.¹⁵ Negative attitudes towards all people without fixed abode strengthened at the turn of the sixteenth century, as reflected in publications appearing at that time, for example, Das Narrenschiff (1494) or Liber Vagatorum (c. 1510), which depicted wanderers as thieves, robbers, cheats and so on.¹⁶ The situation of travelling musicians performing in towns changed when the perception of the relation between poverty and work altered in the sixteenth century, and new forms of coordinating the relief of the poor (previously taken care of by religious bodies and pious individuals) were introduced.¹⁷ The binary pattern discerning between the poor ‘in need’ and ‘not in need’ (i.e. worthy or unworthy of the help) was endorsed.¹⁸ Accordingly beggars were entitled to alms providing they were indigenous citizens, while wandering vagabonds or entertainers did not qualify for municipal help and their stays became forbidden in many European cities. The negative attitude towards vagrants ossified, entailing further mistrust shown to itinerary groups, including the Roma. While the new politics restricting the forms of organized help stimulated further antagonisms between city dwellers and vagabonds, the travelling musicians became classified as representatives of the poor and providers of music for the poor.¹⁹ Buskers were thus categorized as beggars (or quasi-beggars), although they arguably occupied a liminal position balancing on the threshold between financial stability and the lack thereof. But as a result of the consolidation of the status of a musician as a professional, urban street musicians became associated with music of a lower artistic quality. The growing gap to educated – professional and self-taught – dilettante musicians grew, ossifying the image of buskers as beggars. That picture was promulgated in the literature, for example in the story Der arme Spielmann (1848) by Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), or musical productions, such as the bouffonerie musicale of 1855, Les deux aveugles (The Two Blind Men, alternatively The Blind Beggars) by Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880). Similar liaisons were alluded to in The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which was elaborated two centuries later by Bertold Brecht (1898–1956) and Kurt Weill (1900–1950) as Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), which introduced – in the prologue – the figure of a street singer. The image of buskers as beggars, pick-pocketers or at least mere nuisances petrified all Europe in the nineteenth century, with prominent citizens such as inventor Charles Babbage (1791–1871) of London complaining about their presence in the streets.²⁰

Urban Romani musicians

The alleviation of professional musicians presented the Roma with the opportunity to improve their status as professionals by organizing their own musical bands and offering high-quality musical services. Thus, the Romani musicians capitalized on their fame as archetypical self-made men and harbingers of new musical trends, enjoying the prerogative of travelling almost without any limitations. As they enjoyed several occasions for spreading new aesthetic standards,²¹ they became instrumental in facilitating the transregional exchange of trends,²² spreading around the latest musical fashions. While transforming their public music-making into one of the most ‘subtle forms of identification and construction of identities’,²³ legitimizing their contacts with non-Romani auditoriums, the Romani musicians also exploited music as a means of enhancing their social standing.²⁴ Although as wandering musicians they had been treated with condescension and depreciated, the situation changed amidst the political upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which shaped the European cultural and political landscape for the next decades. The alleviated treatment of musicians proved to be both an excellent point of entry into mainstream society and a form of self-assertion for the Roma. The Romani musicians seized the opportunity for emancipation and adroitly exploited the threats posed by rapidly progressing social processes such as urbanization, democratization, and so on, which additionally were stimulated by the political and economic situation. The Roma proposed music as an answer, soothing the anxieties of the emerging urban societies while presenting their concerns and angst through their music in a perfect camouflage of muffled voices. It can be speculated that the Roma instinctively adhered to music-making to advance their public image, especially as music – in their orally transmitted culture – traditionally served as a language of expression, at the same time as being a potent tool to share experiences and to release frustrations, allowing them to escape the patent monotony of daily routines, etc. By performing music, the Romani communities constantly reinforced their feelings of togetherness and fellowship, which are of particular importance in cultures marked by fragmentation and dislocation. But by transforming that intimate experience into a public performance, the Roma transgressed their own communities and became perceived as fully fledged musicians. In the late eighteenth century they organized musical bands, which mushroomed in the whole region of Central Europe and whose competency was quickly acknowledged in scholarly publications, for example, by Ján Matej Korabinský in Geographisch-historisches und Produkten-Lexikon von Ungarn (1786), by Martin Schwartner in Statistik des Königreichs Ungarn (1798), or Georg Palković in Známost vlastí uherské (Treasures of the Hungarian Homeland) printed in Preßburg in 1804. The fame of the Romani for their exceptional musical abilities affected several established authors writing about the Roma in the early nineteenth century.²⁵ In general, the Roma were described as predisposed towards music, while the image of Romani mu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgement
• Prologue: In the Circle of Official and Personal Memories
• Part 1 City and Music
• Part 2 Roma and Communism
• Part 3 The Story of Corroro
• Epilogue: Post-1989 Reality
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint