Tom Spratt 0923958

Personal Response: Stewart, M. 1989. True Speech: song and the moral order of a Hungarian Vlach Gypsy Community.
In his article, True Speech: Song and Moral Order of a Hungarian Vlach Gyspy Community, Stewart looks at song in a community of Rom gypsies. For gypsy men, this is called true speech. In a statement that is evocative of Bells hierarchical understanding of ritualization (Sacred is only sacred by virtue of it not being profane), Stewart notes that Rom men create an ideal communal world in contrast to their daily fractiousness in the act of singing. Stewart makes this assertion in the opening of his text. However, he does not dedicate much time to explaining the lead up to the singing. He leaves the reader to wonder how do these group songs come about? Do they need to be radically and forcefully set apart from everyday life, as we have seen in studies of ritual (where ritual space and action needs to be dramatically set apart from everyday life). This would be my first critique of Stewart. In stating that language/song has the ability to create the ideal, this gives language a large degree of agency. Stewart states "Yet song more than any form of communication moves the Rom and when a singer in the second song cried out Dont Cry' he did so as tears clouded his eyes. We must ask the question, what is causing this emotion? Is this the idea, the words that the song contain and meaning they evoke? Or is it the song itself? Is it form or content that has the power? Does the song only have emotional power because and in of itself or does it only have emotive power because cultural sharing and togetherness is so much part of the gypsy life already? The article made me think of Maya Mayblins work on Suffradoras. The Suffradoras in Mayblins text forcibly hyperbolize the suffering in their life. I wonder if this is the same for the gypsy communities songs. Are they faked drama? Stewart states that there is no polyphony in gypsy songs. This is precisely what the Rom try and avoid. But just by saying it is avoided does not mean that it does not exist? Should we as anthropologists not try to record what people think as well as what they do? Stewart never gives the reader any idea of the universality this phenomena. I believe it is of interest to note how common these songs are to vast gypsy communities. Is this only particular to one group of gypsies? Or are these songs tradition, where the words do not change that much because they are a product of tradition?