The Romany Trail, Part 2 - Gypsy Music into Europe

Rating:
Summary: Great--but missing critical bits
Review: This film, very much like its prequel, offers a great deal of respect and information concerning the Romany traditions of music and dance, particularly as they relate to the various tribes of Rom people who migrated from India to Europe. The film focuses largely on groups in Hungary and Spain and briefly touches on the Rom in other areas of Europe as well.

Here one gets an especially generous dollop of Flamenco and the bright, cheerful Rom music played in Budapest cafes. Viewers also peer into Rom family and church celebrations, at which the songs and dances are far more sombre, reflecting lives of pain and hardship, as the Rom people are asked to "move on" again and again, with only rare exceptions.

We learn of the idealistic plans to integrate the Rom people in Hungary, for example, during the communist era--that remain almost totally unrealized in the hard Rom lives. Rather, today, Rom children are still denied schooling, while their families are denied property and housing, and of course, jobs. Unemployment in Europe's Rom communities remains much higher than in the general population, owing to intense discrimination.

Thus it is that the Rom are relegated to the fringes of European society, both figuratively and in fact: their homes and villages, whether housing blocks or camps, commonly surround the edges of the towns, or in Hungary, are far from the population centers around the Tisza river, and in the plains bordering Romania. The men travel great distances for hard labor, for which they are paid menial salaries, and are housed in company quarters that often as not leave them owing large sums relative to their wages.

For all the data herein, however, not to mention the glorious music and dance, the film lacks an essential bit of history: the producer and narrator again insist that the Rom migrated of their own free will from India. But this is in fact not the case: they were transported by the Islamic jihad as slaves, and suffered 500 years of indentured servitude in the heart of Europe, after several hundred years in like condition in Armenia, Iran and Turkey. In spite of this historical oppression, however, the dignified Rom people have never taken to blowing themselves up to murder other civilians.

--Alyssa A. Lappen