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GYPSIES IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN

ED-CD 065

The huge and geographically closed historic area specified in the title is now shared by Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia. This album features the vocal and instrumental folk music of the gypsy communities living in this territory. The majority of these communities still reside in villages, some of them have transformed into urban communities, but a small number of them still lead a nomad life. The recordings were made in the dwelling places of the informants, in their original environment (field recordings), and the majority of them are unrepeatable either because the performer has already died or has moved to an unknown place.

As the scientific classification of gypsy music on the basis of its genre, style and history has started only recently, we attempted to show its diversity and variedness by arranging the recordings of the album in a way that vocal lyrical tunes and dance tunes, religious songs and songs of customs and instrumental dance tunes follow each other. From this territory, this is the first compilation of gypsy music where one can hear instrumental tunes as well. Referring to – and misinterpreting – the statements made by Béla Bartók and Sándor Csenki, gypsy folklore research, for a long time, considered that only the vocally performed tunes were part of the folk music of the gypsies living here. Since then, during the collection and in-depth classification of the instrumental traditions of the Carpathian basin, it has become clear that in most places (for example in Transylvania and the Transdanubian region), the repertory of professional gypsy musicians features a lot of tunes that serve definitely the musical needs of gypsies. Therefore these tunes constitute an organic part of the gypsy music culture.

The material was edited and the foreword was written by Ferenc Kiss.