Romani Music

Romani music has no single sound. In the Balkans it is brass-band music with tuba bassline and trumpet flurries; in Romania, multiple violins with a leading primaș improvising in the taraf ensemble; in southern Spain, the gitano substrate beneath flamenco. The thread linking the regional dialects is rhythmic placement — phrases that circle around the beat rather than lock to it — and a tendency for emotional intensity to spike on cue.

Romani populations trace their origins to northwest India, leaving sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries and reaching Europe via Persia, Anatolia and the Balkans by the fourteenth. Moving between settled societies, they took on roles as professional musicians, absorbing local idioms and reshaping them. Forced sedentarization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not erase the music's portability and improvisational habits. The 1990s world-music boom internationalised acts like Kočani Orkestar (Macedonia), Taraf de Haïdouks (Romania) and Esma Redžepova.

On Esma Redžepova's Čaje Šukarije (1971), notice how the singer holds and releases notes — the technique combines Ottoman maqam practice with Balkan vocal projection. On Kočani Orkestar's Siki Siki Baba (1997), follow how the brass section moves as one mass. On Taraf de Haïdouks's recordings, track when the lead violin departs from the tune and where it rejoins.

Čaje Šukarije first, then Siki Siki Baba — the contrast between Macedonian Romani vocal and Macedonian Romani brass shows the regional spread inside a single country.

Esma Redžepova, the Queen of the Roma, adopted and raised dozens of orphaned children; when she died in 2016 the Republic of Macedonia held something close to a state funeral.