Les gitans

Curatorial Note

Recorded by ethnomusicologist and field recordist Deben Bhattacharya, Les Gitans assembles recordings made across Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, France, Spain, India and Bulgaria, juxtaposing Roma and Hungarian repertories, Balkan music, pilgrimage sound from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Andalusian Gitano flamenco and South Asian field recordings. The album is valuable as a document of mid-twentieth-century transnational field recording, but its title and organization also reflect an older comparative ethnographic tendency to group culturally distinct mobile and marginalized populations under the broad category of “Gypsies.” In particular, the recordings of Indian snake charmers and Gadolia Lohars should not be interpreted automatically as documentation of Romani communities. The LP is therefore significant both for the musical traditions it preserves and as historical evidence of the ways “Gypsy music” was constructed and presented within European ethnographic and world-music publishing.