Rom sam ame! – Traditions tsiganes en Hongrie

Curatorial Note

Released by the Belgian label Fonti Musicali in 1993, Rom sam ame! Traditions tsiganes en Hongrie brings together field recordings made by Lou and Claude Flagel among Roma communities in Hungary between 1972 and 1977. Recorded in Jászkisér, Szolnok, Tiszakarád, Nagykálló, Hodász, and Öcsöd, the collection documents predominantly vocal traditions performed in Romani and Hungarian, including communal songs, laments, prison songs, vocal percussion, and forms of improvised or orally transmitted performance. The recording is particularly significant as documentation of Roma musical practices outside the professional Hungarian “Gypsy orchestra” tradition, preserving performances by non-professional community musicians in their local contexts. The anthology also occupies an important place in the later history of world music: Károly “Huttyán” Rostás and Anna Rostás’s recording “Esik az eső” was subsequently sampled by Deep Forest on Boheme (1995), raising broader questions concerning the circulation, appropriation, attribution, and commercialization of Romani field recordings. As both an ethnomusicological document and a historically situated act of external documentation, the album is valuable not only for the traditions it preserves but also for examining how Roma music was collected, framed, and circulated internationally during the late twentieth century.