‘Gypsy music’ as music of the Other in European culture

Abstract

ABSTRACTSo-called ‘Gypsy music’—music associated with the Romani people—was perceived within European culture in two different ways: as able to be assimilated and as not able to be assimilated. The first involved the incorporation of Gypsy music into the construction of the national music of certain countries, becoming thus part and parcel of the national culture. The second occurred where discrimination against Roma included their ‘exoticization’ and ‘racialization’. The former, the national perspective, is discussed by Piotrowska in the case of Hungary. The process of constructing national identity in Hungary—stimulated by political aspirations to differentiate the country within the Habsburg Empire—took a radical form in the early nineteenth century, leading to the manufacture of national symbols such as folk costumes, cuisine and music. And it was Gypsy music that served an emblematic role in that context, due also to the success of Franz Liszt's 1859 book Des Bohemiens et de leur musique en Hongrie. At the same time, and later, however, Gypsy music was defined as music composed by Hungarians but merely adopted and played by Hungarian Romani musicians. This view was fervently propagated by, among others, Béla Bartók. The discrimination against Gypsy music included presenting it as something belonging to an ostracized, exoticized and racialized Other rather than welcomed one. The balance between the assimilationist and non-assimilationist perspectives on Gypsy music reveals the broader European phenomenon of a combination of fear and fascination with regard to Romani culture. Music by the Other is both admired and despised, longed for and rejected, but never viewed indifferently.