They have many names. Thousands of books have been written about them. Their impact on the planet is inestimable. Their contribution to music is permanent. Deep within the psyche of any non-gypsy there is a vestige of a personal encounter.
When a person recalls that fleeting image they might feel a strong desire to learn about gypsies. If this happens to you, go to the library or to a book shop and find a book by Roger Moreau entitled The Rom: Walking in the Paths of the Gypsies. There are many books written about gypsies but much of their content is conjecture or worse, it is romantic fluff.
When I was ten years old, I lived in Louisiana. My father knew a family of gypsies. He took me to stay with them for several days. There was a dancing bear, a boy my age, and an older girl whose eyes haunt me down to this day like the memory of the track of a shooting star. We posed for a photograph. The gypsy, my father, the bear, myself and the boy. In the photo, the tip of the gypsy's cigar is touching the bear's fur and a little cloud of smoke is curling up.
The gypsy's wife was a kind and energetic woman. She gave blue bath-towels and clothes pegs to her boy and I. We dressed in the towels and began to play Superman. She warned us that we might break our legs when she saw us leaping from the roof. We spent the entire day leaping from the roof. We did not break our legs and we were delighted to have proven our prowess and demonstrated out excellent luck.
Their small dwelling contained a big colourful hammock which hung from the ceiling. It was bulging with cartons of cigarettes, cans of food, shoes and other useful items that the children had stolen. During the remainder of my visit, I suffered unrequited love for the gypsy's eldest daughter. She possessed the beauty, grace and numinous potential of a female ocelot glimpsed through a break in dense foliage.
She took us to see a band playing on a little stage set up in a clearing in the woods near their trailer camp that first night. I watched her dancing barefoot to Louisiana renditions of Pictures of Matchstick Men and You Keep Me Hanging On. She wore new stolen jeans, a red paisley bandanna in her hair and tied her blouse with a knot rather than use the buttons. The guitar man was her beau and he was red hot that evening. She hydrated him with green lemon juice bottles of water we'd brought from her trailer.
Thirty years after that visit, I became inexplicably obsessed with the Rom. I read books on the subject for a year. I used the knowledge gained from each book in choosing the next book. During this time of study, I saw the movie Latcho Drom. It was a wonderful film and it greatly enriched my knowledge. I discovered that the Kino Café on Cambie Street in Vancouver that featured gypsy music was only a short walk from my apartment on Main Street.
I began to develop gypsy radar and became hyper aware of them in my city like a silent tidal wave. A tidal wave that has been noticed by irate shopkeepers for countless generations. I started to see patterans on the side of alleyways. These are marks that are placed by the first gypsies to arrive at a town which guide the others who follow.
Academic books I read contained socioeconomic analysis models. I read other wonderful books written by men who had been adopted by the gypsies. Those authors were in love with the gypsy soul and their books were a valuable resource to a student of gypsy culture. Those books contained wonderful descriptions of the Rom and many European gypsy legends. I highly recommend such a book written by a man named Bercovi.
I began to noticed that all of the books were vague on several important questions. It also became apparent that some authors had invented answers. Others admitted that they could not answer those questions. My curiosity was intense. I eventually realized that no book I had read had the answers. I began to study another subject. Many months later at a bookshop, I saw Roger Moreau's book, The Rom and immediately purchased it knowing that I was going to be rewarded for my lengthy study by having those questions finally answered.
Here are the first words I found inside, "I have read the book twice with growing emotion. I felt like I had been there with my ancestors, one thousand years ago. I laughed and cried. I bled with them as they started the longest migration in history. I believe this reconstruction of events is closer to our essential truth than any theory. It will remain for a very long time, maybe for ever."
-Bibi Anisa, the Secretary General of the West European Romany Kris
Since the time that three nomadic tribes in India called the Lohar, Banjara and Kanjar were transformed into the Rom, they have been misunderstood. Their genesis itself is a thing of prime conjecture. Roger Moreau read all of the books available and he asked all of the pertinent questions. He too was unsatisfied with the answers. He decided to find the truth for himself. From that journey grew his book. Roger's book is more valid than many stacks of other books about gypsies.
Roger employed a wholly unique and effective method of overcoming obstacles on his quest to discover the truth of the gypsy people. He went to India and then he traveled the route of the original exodus of the gypsies. The events that occurred on that route represent the unanswered questions that I mentioned earlier. Roger's method of research would be perfectly understood by a gypsy or by any aboriginal person. But most scientist would not take it seriously.
Roger was guided by his spirit. I think that success smiled upon Roger because his heart was pure. Roger's intuitive exploration was rewarded with physical evidence! The world owes a debt to the Rom and in my opinion, Roger has begun to pay it. I define a gypsy as a human that is not yet domesticated. We need the gypsy to remind us of our own essential nature and abilities. To remind us of who we were before we were tamed. Before we chose a false sense of safety over the fragile freedom that comes with self responsibility and strong community.
The language of the Rom reveals a different reality. A reality older than the reality of people who choose to congregate in herds and to hoard. An American once said, "Anyone who trades liberty for security, deserves neither." The Rom have never had the benefit or option of security. It is important to know that liberty is bought with blood and sweat. I wish you good luck on your own gypsy quest. Though you may not have started it yet, the day will come when your heart is in tune and you too will hear their music and feel their magic everywhere.
fin