City

analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action

ISSN: 1360-4813 (Print) 1470-3629 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccit20

Code unknown: Roma/Gypsy montage

Kevin Robins , Kevin Robins , Rüdiger Benninghaus , Nejla Osseiran ,

Elena Marushiakova , Vesselin Popov , Huub van Baar , Monika Metyková
, Kostadin Kostadinov , Jan Hanák , interviewed by Monika Metyková,
Brno, May 2009 , Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić , Juliette de Baïracli Levy , Adrian
Marsh , Matthieu Chazal , T.G. Ashplant , Ilona Tomova , Mariella Mehr ,
Thomas Busch , Tímea Junghaus , Thomas Busch , Tímea Junghaus , Garth
Cartwright , Carol Silverman & Sonia Tamar Seeman

To cite this article: Kevin Robins , Kevin Robins , Rüdiger Benninghaus , Nejla Osseiran , Elena
Marushiakova , Vesselin Popov , Huub van Baar , Monika Metyková , Kostadin Kostadinov , Jan
Hanák , interviewed by Monika Metyková, Brno, May 2009 , Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić , Juliette de
Baïracli Levy , Adrian Marsh , Matthieu Chazal , T.G. Ashplant , Ilona Tomova , Mariella Mehr ,
Thomas Busch , Tímea Junghaus , Thomas Busch , Tímea Junghaus , Garth Cartwright , Carol
Silverman & Sonia Tamar Seeman (2010) Code unknown: Roma/Gypsy montage, City, 14:6,
636-705

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CITY, VOL. 14, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2010

Code unknown
Roma/Gypsy montage

Curated by Kevin Robins

Taylor and Francis

Roma/Gypsies have rarely figured in mainstream social theory; they have, rather, been a
topic of ‘specialist’ interest. The aim of this feature is, in some small way, to address the issue
of Roma culture and society in a mainstream context. More than considering a neglected
group, it suggests that there is something positive and constructive to be learned from the
Roma and their experiences—something to be learned from a people who have invariably
been considered as problematical. Roma have a distinctive significance in the context of a
changing Europe, and they also merit serious consideration in urban theory. Yet they have
never figured in mainstream spatial politics. They have never received spatial justice. Through
the assembling of a broad range of contributions, mostly concerning the eastern side of Europe,
I have sought to bring out something of the broad range of perspectives and discourses concern-
ing Roma culture. The aim has been to make an argument by way of a montage, and, more-
over, to make the argument through ways of telling that expand the definition of ‘academic’.

Key words: Roma/Gypsies; Europe; cultural complexity; urban/rural; cosmopolitanism

Why Roma? A brief introduction

Kevin Robins
I’ve heard all the wild reports, they can’t be right

R
oma in Europe. The following collec-
tion of accounts does not intend to be
a contribution to Gypsyology or to
Roma Studies. Others can, of course, achieve
that far better (and a number of those scholars
contribute to this collection). The point here
has been, rather, to consider the significance
of Roma culture in the broader context of
(primarily European) culture and urban life.
To reiterate the key point: what is it that
(generally ignorant) Europeans (‘we’) could
learn from Roma culture (and from discourses
both of and about the Roma)? The point is to
de-specialise the issue … Myself, I would be
prepared to go some bit of the way with
Günter Grass (1998, p. 53) when he declares,
with the clear intention of provoking main-
stream opinion, that the Roma ‘are Europeans
in the true and full meaning of the word … the
natural inhabitants of a “Europe without fron-
tiers”’. The point is romantically inflected, of
course, but there is something important

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/10/060636-70 © 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.525073
638 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
about the point that those who now regard and
conduct themselves as the franchise-holders
for Europe could actually have something to
discover from the Roma. His point is as much
as anything to underline the hypocrisy and,
often, ignorance of mainstream European
cultural theory and practice.
To pursue the point, we might even go a little
further than Günter Grass, to take into
account, for example, those who designate
themselves as ‘Egyptians’ (Duijzings, 1997). In
the Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik’s Black
Z
[o
carn] Z
o
[ran
c]
and White (1990), we, at a certain point, follow
one of the film’s two main protagonists,
Reuben, who is a Nigerian who had been an
African student in socialistic Yugoslavia in the
1980s, as he adventitiously wanders, in Novi
Sad, into the yard of one of these Egyptians,
attracted by seeing his horse. ‘Daddy, it’s a
black man’, says the Egyptian’s son. ‘That’s
OK, son.’ So, establishing that the horse is not
for sale, for it is a livelihood, they sit and drink
coffee together. ‘You know’, says the Egyp-
tian, ‘our ancestors are also from Africa’—a
‘fact’ that he has recently discovered. They
came with King Alexander, and they stayed.
‘Those are our origins; and so here we are.’
‘Until now we registered as Albanians or
Gypsies’ (‘But the Albanians said we were
Gypsies, and the Gypsies said we were
Ashhaliya’). ‘So’, he says, through his gentle
demeanour, to Reuben, ‘we are some kind of
relatives.’ We are some kind of relatives—this
is to be pondered over. Couldn’t these lines and
directions of thought take us somewhere else in
our thinking about Europe, about its place, its
facts and its ‘facts’, and its fictions, and its
maybe beyond-the-obvious possibilities—to
what might be possible, conceivable, through
a, still-to-be-instituted, radical cultural stance?
The ‘Roma question’ cannot be a question
for Roma alone. It is simply too important—
particularly in the present conjuncture of
European cultural transformation and, often,
turbulence. Günter Grass has a useful
perspective, but of course it is a partial one. I
write this just days after the newspapers have
been reporting the ‘crackdown’ on Roma in
France. Thus:
‘Outside No 431, rue de Lyon, the
Mediterranean sun beat down on the
pavement and an old man lay in wait for the
police. Inside, behind the long grass and a
dilapidated green gate, the women were
preparing themselves for the worst. “We are
getting things ready,” one explained, pointing
at a half-packed suitcase. In among the
ramshackle sheds and squealing toddlers,
they took turns at holding a six-week-old
baby in their arms.’ (Davies, 2010)
And this ‘crackdown’ is, of course, just the
latest outbreak of what we might call a
pandemic anti-Roma assault mentality. (For a
cultural statement on this, see Žilnik’s remark-
Z
[o
carn]
able film Kenedi is Coming Home (2003), on
the ‘repatriation’ of Kosovan Roma from
Germany.) How to negotiate a way between
the dire immediate need of emergency defen-
sive response, on the one hand, and the more
ambitious—and, yes, idealistic—aspirations
of a Günter Grass, on the other? This is a
fundamental challenge in contemporary
Europe, with different inflections for Roma
and for non-Roma (gadje). And how
‘dialogue’—to use a hopelessly current Euro-
pean mantra—is possible between Roma and
non-Roma, under the present conditions, is a
further fundamental matter. For this must be
the matter of serious reconstructive interlocu-
tion. And what that means, to borrow an
expression from George Steiner (1989, p. 4), is
that the interlocutor should ‘encounter the
other in its condition of freedom’. We are very
far from being there yet …
*
National, rural, urban. How do Gypsies
belong? And where do they experience their
belonging? What is the nature of their collec-
tive and geographical locatedness? These are
strange, but constant, questions asked of
them—and raise issues that are surely of inter-
est in the pages of this journal. They are ques-
tions that seem to arise because of the
perceived sense that Roma actually don’t
belong properly in modern societies. In his
book, written more than a century ago, Les
migrations des tsiganes à travers l’Asie, the

Dutch orientalist M.J. de Goeje observed that
Gypsies ‘organise themselves differently from
us (ils sont autrement organisés que nous), and
like to live in a manner that would be intoler-
able for us in the long term’ (1903, pp. 14–15).
Thus, Gypsies exist as ‘a mixture of different
nationalities’ (p. 67). They cannot easily be
classified as this or that. They are distinguished
by their perverse ‘dualism of character’ (p. 17).
And then, actually, there is the matter of a
sheer profligacy of names signifying the
distinctions of position and pitch and orienta-
tion that exist in their life-worlds (Zott, Sindi,
Kork, Nawar, Qaratchi, Louri, Kourbat,
Ghadjar and so on) (pp. 60–73). The Gypsies
elect to organise not just their presence in the
world differently from others’ but also their
words, their lexicon, for this presence exceeds
the devices of practical and supportable iden-
tification—with unsettling consequences, it
turns out, for others. The problem for de
Goeje is that his Gypsies do not constitute an
imagined community in the way that imagined
communities should properly be imagined
(and we must surely take note of the fact that
he was writing at a time when the national idea
of imagined community had taken European
command). Their apparent ambiguities and
disorderliness confounded his standards of
cultural logic and order.
The basic category of ‘Gypsy’ obscures an
abundant, and even extravagant, world of
multiplicity and diversity of being. Thus, to
take but one recent, and regional, case, Rüdiger
Benninghaus (1991) signals the Turkish–
Anatolian complexity of things. This includes,
in addition to the Rom, the Poşa, who also call
cs]e[d
li
themselves Lom, which is also the name given
to their language (Lomavren). And then there
are the Mıtrıp (with its many variants: Midrep,
Matrib, Mutrup, Mutruf, Mirtov, etc.) who
call themselves Dom, rejecting the ascribed
Mıtrıp, and often preferring to call themselves
Kurds. And then the Karaçi (who may also be
called Quereci, Karasi, Karkut), who also
regard themselves as Dom. And this is just the
beginning of it. The designation of Gypsy/
Roma contains within it the potentiality that
inheres in multitudinous existence. The
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 639
Gypsy/Roma appellation defies the ‘imag-
ined-community’ logic of classification—
which can only ever serve to diminish what
always promises to exceed it. And yet there
have been serious endeavours to transform the
Roma into a serious imagined community—
endeavours, that is to say, to standardise
them—which means to make them make sense
according to ‘modern’ European norms. There
is a desire in certain quarters for them to exist
and function as a single unitary nation—as the
1971 World Romani Congress made apparent
with its institution of flag and anthem for the
imagined Romani nation. (And let us here note
the critique that Yaron Matras (2004, p. 74)
makes of accounts that seek ‘to maintain the
image of Gypsies as “free” of the conventional
baggage of nations and modern nation-states
…’ Note, for example, the (complicated) situ-
ation in which Turkish Roma give support to
Turkish nationalism (Gökçen and Öney,
2008). So powerful is the national mentality
that we must really doubt whether any people
can now be ‘free’ of it.)
Roma have not seemed to have a nation, nor
have they generally been accepted as having a
legitimate location in the mainstream Euro-
pean nations. In many discourses, they are
projected into another space or back into
another time. In some way, they are made to
seem, or be, unworldly. Their place has seemed
to be an elsewhere. Much has been made of
their supposed ‘Egyptian’ origins, or in more
scholarly discourses, of their Indian roots
centuries back in time. In the domain of phan-
tasy, they have been associated with a pre-
modern, and thereby a child-like, innocence.
Thus de Goeje’s casual observations (1903) on
the essential ‘lightness, lack of self-esteem, and
penchant for gaiety’ of Gypsies (p. 14). Their
identity, characterised as vagabond and tribal,
was consequently judged as residual and prim-
itive. Essentially pre-modern, they seemed to
belong geographically in the rural domain, in
another world from urbanised and industria-
lised modernity. We can still easily come
across this sentimental and nostalgic sentiment
of the Gypsy as emblem of a lost, enchanted,
pre-industrial Edenic world. As in William
640 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Blacker’s recent, going-nowhere, account of
Gypsy culture in Romania being a remnant of
a disappearing ‘old, almost medieval world’,
with its ‘happy and innocent way of life’ (2009,
pp. 9, 32; and, a precursor in the same modality,
Leigh Fermor, 1986). The Gypsy made to
stand for the imagined innocence lost to
modern industrial societies. It is a straightfor-
ward romantic trope, the rationale for which
we can by now easily and readily sociologise.
But, at the same time, a simple trope of illusion
that it is difficult to ever exorcise.
Of course, I am not saying that Gypsies did
not live and work in rural settings. My point—
and it is hardly an original one—concerns the
combined mythologisation of Roma and the
countryside. Certainly Gypsies operated
there (how could they not have?). But we have
to consider their operations from a sociologi-
cal (and socio-historical) point of view. In
social terms, in terms of the social division of
labour, the Roma have tended to operate
differently from the majoritarian populations
(and have suffered as a consequence of their
different disposition). Elena Marushiakova et
al. (2008, p. 84) have noted the complex nature
of the social and cultural relations that have
developed between Roma minorities and the
surrounding majority populations, partly, but
complicatedly, related to the economic niches
they have found for themselves. It is a relation,
they argue, that articulates elements both of
complementarity and detachment, accommo-
dation and distanciation. Necessary resource-
fulness has been associated with the
development of a certain social versatility and
variability. Maybe we could say that if society
was conceived as a grammatical system, then
Roma might be located as the shifters in that
system (a shifter being a term that has no
single, constant meaning; whose meaning
cannot be established without referring to the
message being communicated between a
sender and a receiver). This may help to
explain what is unsettling about them?
And with the rise of industrial urbanisation,
and the consequent decline of ‘traditional’
crafts and trades, the Gypsies were also able to
find claimable occupational niches in the cities.
Far from the common nomadic image of Roma
(which clearly underlies Günter Grass’s
observation), the reality is that the great major-
ity of them are sedentary and live in urban
environments, and have done so for a very long
time. They are invariably stark and difficult
urban environments, yet rendered liveable,
and more, by important associative ties (I
consciously avoid the word ‘community’):
such Roma neighbourhoods as Šuto Orizari
(Shutka) in Skopje, Fakulteta in Sofia, or Dola-
pdere and Kağıthane in Istanbul, as well as the
now demolished Sulukule (discussed below).
They are urban neighbourhoods with a certain
resonance and some kind of compelling signif-
icance. In my own experience, I would say that
they are districts, in the streets of which you—
do I just mean the gadje ‘you’?—maybe not
(and this is a point to reflect on)—find yourself
having to stop and think. What do I mean? In
the context of urban space, which is always
situated and embodied space, the ‘Gypsy
problem’ appears quite differently from the
way in which it presents itself in debates on
national identity (Robins, 2001). In the latter
case the issue exists only in an abstract formu-
lation (of identity), whilst in the former we
have to engage with an actual lifespace, and we
are, in an immediate sense, confronted with the
claim and, actually, the unavoidability, of
interlocution—which ‘we’ (the gadje this
time) may experience as a problem.
Udo Mischek (2006, pp. 161, 157) empha-
sises the role of the Gypsy mahalle [city neigh-
bourhood] as ‘the basic unit in identity
construction’ for Roma populations on the
eastern side of Europe—the region that this
collection is primarily concerned with. ‘What
is important’, he says, ‘is the mahalle, the quar-
ter that people live in. Relationships in this
quarter create a shared identity in opposition
to the “outside” world.’ Here too, in these
urban situations, the complexly aligned skills
of complementarity and detachment, of
accommodation and distanciation, with the
majoritarian citizens are exercised. Roma
work their ‘contemporary’ trades, still in
complex interaction with the surrounding
majority population—active in the recycling

of rubbish, street selling, flower vending,
begging, still making music, still making
baskets, and also, on a small scale radio and TV
stations. The mahalle is the source of initiative,
and at the same time it constitutes the locus of
Gypsy resilience and survivability. The
mahalle constitutes a life-form resource and a
mainstay of Roma existential presence. Will
Guy (2006, p. 109) observes ‘the cultures of
Roma have been interwoven with those of
people amongst whom they have lived for
centuries and with whom an acceptable modus
vivendi must be forged for the joint benefit of
all’. The city space—whether it is Brno or
Marseilles, Sofia or Rome—is now surely the
crucial forge for this vital work of social and
cultural accommodation.
*
Code unknown: a montage. The texts that
follow relate primarily to Roma cultures on
the eastern side of Europe. The primary deci-
sion, on this occasion, was not to go for a set
of academic articles; but, rather, to try to find
a different modality with which to engage
with perspectives on Roma societies and
cultures—the perspectives of Roma them-
selves, and of those who have encountered
and interacted with them. This approach was
undertaken on the basis of the idea that the
plurality of perspectives is itself a significant
phenomenon, and affords the possibility for
different kinds of insights and reflections.
The selection of texts was not planned from
the outset, but emerged as a consequence of
who and what I stumbled upon, wherever.
Rather than seeking resolution or summa-
tion, I have sought to present and to hold in
play (DJ style is how I have thought of it)
some of the diverse, conflicting and contra-
dictory perspectives on Roma culture and
society. The point has been to incorporate
something (and it can only be a very small
something—I am conscious of the fact that
there are significant gaps—this is a pilot
project) of the great variety of circulating or
available discourses: historical, ethnographic,
administrative, artistic, testimonial, lyric,
photographic, etc. What I have constructed
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 641
out of them all is a montage. A montage that
presents a range of perspectives—and, very
importantly, it seems to me, a range of senti-
ments—and, at the same time, is open to
acknowledging the (historically accumulated)
complications, entanglements and incongru-
ities inherent in the Roma agenda. Their truth
is inherent in their diversity and complexity.
Code unknown? What do I mean by that?
There has always been a peculiar kind of aware-
ness, on the part of the gadje, of Gypsy society
and culture. At the heart of this attention is the
notion that there is something different about
Gypsies/Roma, the sense that they are not at all
like other ‘collective’ cultures (i.e. not like
regular-modern ‘imagined communities’). All
too often this has been articulated in the modal-
ity of fear of difference, easily racing into
hostility and xenophobia (we have been seeing
it recently in too many parts of Europe). Alter-
natively, and more significantly, it has taken
the form of a positive fascination and captiva-
tion (as with the English Gypsy Lore Society—
see below, de Baïracli Levy and Ashplant). It
seems to me that there is, indeed, something
different—something interestingly different
from the ‘mainstream’ cultural mentality—in
Gypsy/Roma social and cultural configura-
tions. The real issue, however, must concern
what we can make of this difference—this valu-
able difference. Generally, the positive affir-
mation of Roma societies has come by way of
sentiments ranging across a spectrum from
fascination and celebration to nostalgic ideal-
isation. It is articulated, that is to say, through
a mythological modality of thought. The
imperative now, it seems to me, is to do justice
to that difference in a more rigorously socio-
political idiom—which does, indeed, mean
encountering the other in its condition of free-
dom. Code unknown: not because Roma
inhabit some mysterious and impenetrable—
maybe eternally unknowable—cultural space.
Code unknown: simply because the main-
stream European (and beyond) cannot decode
cultural forms and expressions beyond its own
limited imagination of cultural ‘community’.
Code unknown: because Roma—although the
very idea may seem strange—could help us to
642 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
think more about cultural space, from urban
space to European space. Unlevelled still, the
Roma are one of the few resources that we have
that might help us to think about the future of
European culture in better ways, on a counter-
national basis. What is it that might be thought-
worthy about the social practices and, let us say,
the social disposition of the Roma? What could
be learned from the Roma, and learned for us
all? This is the challenge for reflection in and
through the montage that follows.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Asu Aksoy for most things; to Bob
Catterall for friendship and support over
many years now (sensiz olmaz!); to Adrian
Marsh for many good conversations; and to
Andrea Gibbons for her much appreciated
help in getting all this together for City.
References
Benninghaus, R. (1991) ‘Les Tsiganes de la Turquie
orientale’, Etudes Tsiganes 37(3), pp. 47–60.
Blacker, W. (2009) Along the Enchanted Way: A
Romanian Story. London: John Murray.
Davies, L. (2010) ‘France pushes forward Roma
deportations: “they are trying to get rid of us all”’,
Guardian, 19 August.
de Goeje, M.J. (1903) Les migrations des tsiganes à
travers l’Asie. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Duijzings, G. (1997) ‘The making of Egyptians in
Kosovo and Macedonia’, in C. Govers and H.
Vermeulen (eds) The Politics of Ethnic
Consciousness, pp. 194–220. New York: St Martin’s
Press.
Gökçen, S. and Öney, S. (2008) ‘Roma and nationalism
in Turkey’, in We are Here! Discriminatory
Exclusion and Struggle for Rights of Roma in Turkey,
pp. 135–141. Istanbul: Edirne Roman Derne ği/
g[b
evr]
European Roma Rights Centre/Helsinki Citizens’
Assembly.
Grass, G. (1998) ‘True Europeans’, Index on Censorship
27(4), pp. 51–53.
Guy, W. (2006) ‘Cultural policy and cultural diversity:
the Roma of central and eastern Europe’, in K.
Robins (ed.) The Challenge of Transcultural
Diversities, pp. 99–113. Strasbourg: Council of
Europe.
Leigh Fermor, P. (1986) Between the Woods and the
Water. London: John Murray.
Marushiakova, E., Mischek, U., Popov, V. and Streck, B.
(2008) Zigeuner am Schwarzen Meer. Leipzig:
Eudora-Verlag.
Matras, Y. (2004) ‘The role of language in mystifying
and de-mystifying Gypsy identity’, in N. Saul and S.
Tebbutt (eds) The Role of the Romanies, pp. 53–78.
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Mischek, U. (2006) ‘Mahalle identity: Roman (Gypsy)
identity under urban conditions’, in A. Marsh and E.
Strand (eds) Gypsies and the Problem of Identities,
pp. 157–162. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute.
Robins, K. (2001) ‘Becoming anybody: thinking
against the nation and through the city’, City 5(3),
pp. 77–90.
Steiner, G. (1989) Real Presences. London: Faber and
Faber.

Gypsies or ‘Roma’?1
Rüdiger Benninghaus
Some reflections about political correctness,
with special reference to Germany … If I
remember correctly, the name of this sympo-
sium initially had ‘Gypsies’ in its title; later on
this was changed to ‘Roman’. This ‘develop-
ment’ is actually the subject of my contribution
today. In many countries, especially Western
ones, efforts have been made over the past three
decades to assert and push through a new polit-
ical correctness by renaming ‘Gypsies’,
‘Tsiganes’, ‘Cigani’, ‘Zigeuner’, ‘Çingeneler’
and so forth, as ‘Roma’ (‘Romanies’) or ‘Sinti
and Roma’, the specific usage ‘designed’ for
Germany and the German language. I want to
discuss here the reasons for this language
reform and its implications.
To make my point clear from the very
beginning: I myself belong to those who
think it more appropriate to retain the
specific (outsider) terms of the majority
populations for Gypsies, as they have been
used for centuries.
The main points of argument and reference,
mobilised when requesting outsiders to use
the designation ‘Roma’ can be summarised as
follows:
(1) Reference is generally made to the First
Romani World Congress in London in
1971, and to its alleged decision that from
then on all the Gypsies of the world
should be referred to as ‘Roma’.
(2) It is perceived as a kind of natural and
obvious right that the specific term used
by the group itself should be postulated
to be the only valid one.
(3) Nearly all the foreign names for Gypsies
are said to be pejorative, discriminating
and tainted with prejudice.
(4) Concerning the traditional German word
for Gypsies (Zigeuner), it is argued that
National-Socialism brought the term in
to discredit—though, at the same time, it
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 643
is stated that the term has always been
pejorative.
(5) Sometimes it is argued that the term
‘Roma’ has already become so current
that persons who do not conform to what
is posited as the politically correct termi-
nology be labelled as at least backward, if
not as racist (or, in Germany, as Nazi).
(6) When confronted with the fact that many
Gypsies themselves use the terms
attached to them by their neighbours, it is
argued that it is different when Gypsies
themselves use these terms, from when
outsiders do so.
Let us now consider each of these arguments
one by one:
(1) At the First Romani World Congress in
1971, only about two dozen ‘delegates’, apart
from a few observers, are said to have taken
the far-reaching decision for several millions
of Gypsies worldwide, that they should
thenceforth present themselves as ‘Roma’.
Even when we take later Romani World
Congresses with more participants into
consideration, the legitimacy for such far-
reaching decisions is rather weak.
Nearly all Gypsy groups, to my knowl-
edge, lack a sense of larger trans-tribal units
experienced in common, and solidarity
beyond clans, tribes, local or regional units is
largely absent. It is therefore not surprising
that no Gypsy group has a (traditional)
general name for all Gypsies. Although
several organisations for Gypsies in different
countries—which, by the way, often incorpo-
rate foreign terms in their names—have been
founded during recent decades, they are not
deeply rooted in the communities concerned.
Transnational or even world organisations
enjoy even less support from local and
644 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
regional groups. Rivalry between different
persons or groups is still widespread.
(2) There are many Gypsy groups (especially
Oriental ones) who have never heard of the
term ‘Roma’, and many more who have their
own different designations (such as Lom or
Dom in Turkey). There is no legitimacy or
justification in attaching a ‘Roma’ label to
them. Besides, this would contradict the
recognition of insider names, which is
supposedly what is being aimed at. (By the
way, the ‘original’ term for Gypsies seems to
have been ‘Dom’, rather than ‘Rom’.)
Of course, a problem arises when one really
speaks about Roma in the narrow sense (mean-
ing Gypsies who traditionally call themselves
Rom or Roma, besides their tribal name), and
not about Gypsies in general. Therefore, one
would always have to explain whether one is
using the term ‘Roma’ in a narrower or a
broader sense. We are in need of a term cover-
ing all the different Gypsy groups. And we
have such terms in the languages of the major-
ity populations that Gypsies live together
with. If it were demanded that, henceforth,
only insider terms should be used worldwide,
one can imagine what kind of confusion and
uncertainty would arise. Such a procedure is
certainly not in the interests of many ethnic
groups and nations. For example: Germans are
called Germans, although they refer to them-
selves as Deutsche, and although they are not
the only Germanic people. Although the
Alemannen form just a small part (or tribe, if
you like) of Germans, all Germans are called
Allemands/Almanlar by, for instance, French
or Turks. Even ‘worse’, Germans are called
‘dumb’ (Njemac, Nemci and so forth) in
Slavonic languages. Despite all these strange
foreign designations for Germans, I have not
heard about any protest against them.
It is much more ‘natural’ that ethnic groups
or nations are known by names given to them
by their neighbours, than under their self-
designations (in their own language). Insider
terms are often almost unknown to neigh-
bouring groups, and, as a matter of fact, desig-
nations given by foreigners commonly have
some negative, or at least incorrect, aspects. In
this way we come to the next argument.
(3) Gypsies have had a negative image for
centuries, regardless of what they were called.
Combating discrimination cannot be done by
simply attaching a different label. Prejudices
are then very likely to be transferred to the
new name. Alongside negative associations
when thinking about Gypsies, there were also
positive, often Romantic, associations
connected with them. ‘Gypsy music’ is gener-
ally highly esteemed, and newspapers, which
otherwise use the politically correct term for
Gypsies, still write about ‘Gypsy music’
(Zigeunermusik), since it has already become
a well-recognised label. In Germany, several
societies (generally connected with the carni-
val) have characterised themselves ‘Zigeuner’;
they would certainly not have done so if the
term had only a negative connotation. Not
only is nothing (positive) gained by renam-
ing, but the moral pressure connected with
this provides yet a further reason for rejecting
Gypsies. The establishment of taboos often
provokes counter-reactions.
(4) It is certainly wrong to assert that the Nazis
brought the term Zigeuner into discredit. The
Nazis had attached far more negative aspects
to the image of Jews than were associated with
them before. Nobody, however, would there-
fore demand that the name Jude be dropped
in German. Besides that, those Nazi authori-
ties closely occupied with ‘Gypsy affairs’ (the
Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle, espe-
cially) also used the designations ‘Sinti/Sinte’
and ‘Rom’. Following the logic of the guard-
ians of public virtue, one consequently would
have to reject these terms, too, as also ‘contam-
inated’. Already years ago, the federal govern-
ment of Germany decided to erect a memorial
for the Gypsy victims of the Nazi terror in
Berlin. While the Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti
und Roma (Central Council of German Sinti
and Roma) was fighting fiercely against the
term ‘Zigeuner’ in the inscription of the memo-
rial, an oppositional Sinti group was defending
the term. In order to counter the argument that
 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 645

the Nazis had discredited the name; and, as a terms to ‘Zigeuner’ (Cigan, and so forth) are
compromise, the responsible state minister of used in Slavonic languages, the term could not
cultural affairs, at one stage in the discussions, possibly be derived from ‘Ziehgauner’. By the
proposed to have the inscription in English and way, the special German usage ‘Sinti and
use the term ‘Gypsies’. This was not accepted. Roma’—a rather unusual designation for an
The conflict was finally settled by a compro- ethnic group (x and y connected with an
mise which leaves the matter of the ‘correct’ ‘and’)—reflects the fact, that Sinti do not want
designation open. See Figure 1. to be lumped together with Roma, and there-
It is just folk-etymology to trace the word fore do not want to be called by the same name.
Figures 1 Tombstone of a Kelderari in Frechen (North Rhine-Westphalia): some Gypsies have not grasped the idea of ‘political correctness’ yet (photo © Rüdiger Benninghaus).

‘Zigeuner’ back to ‘Ziehgauner’ (a vagabond

crook). To use that as an argument against the (5) The term ‘Sinti and Roma’ in Germany has
term is not simply ignorance: since similar not yet become so current that the majority of

Figure 1 Tombstone of a Kelderari in Frechen (North Rhine-Westphalia): some Gypsies have not grasped the idea of
‘political correctness’ yet (photo © Rüdiger Benninghaus).
646 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
the population could use the terms correctly
in grammatical terms (singular–plural, mascu-
line–feminine), or even know the difference
between Sinti and Roma. Thus, newspapers
very often mobilise the formula ‘Sinti and
Roma’ quite incorrectly, when referring to
some Gypsies, or even to countries where
scarcely any Sinti live. Also note that ‘Zige-
uner’ have their position in German folklore
and culture, as they certainly have in other
countries, too. One cannot replace the term
‘Zigeuner’ in proverbs, sayings, songs,
geographic names, etc. by ‘Sinti and Roma’.
One would actually make Gypsies seem much
more alien by projecting ‘new names’ onto
them than they have seemed hitherto. When,
in historical documents, ‘Zigeuner’ occur, one
cannot declare them to be Sinti, Roma or Sinti
and Roma, when no specific hints are given.
Sometimes the term ‘Zigeuner’ is also used for
Gypsy-like groups (for instance, the Yenish,
sometimes called ‘white Gypsies’).
(6) Just to give Gypsies (and not gadje—non-
Gypsies) the right to call themselves by
outsider names, would mean something like
George Orwell’s ‘double-think’. Should
‘native speakers’ who had ‘invented’ the terms
‘Gypsies’, ‘Zigeuner’ and so forth, not be
allowed to use a word of their own language,
while others should? This is certainly not easy
to explain to the average citizen.
The arguments discussed above are those
generally brought forward in connection with
the particularity of the (Gypsy) subject. But
there are certainly other reasons, ones that are
not uttered openly. Perhaps the fighters for
political correctness, both among Gypsies and
gadje, are not even fully aware of them. One
of the motivating reasons for terminological
manoeuvring seems to be to gain or exercise
power. An ethnic minority (Gypsies) and a
political minority (persons with an anti-
authoritarian ideology and a strong rejection
of the ‘establishment’) try to apply moral
pressure in a field where a ‘victory’ seems as if
it could easily be achieved. As for the
prescribed circle of gadje, another reason
might be to relieve their own conscience—in
a rather ‘inexpensive’ way—when considering
the suppression and persecution of Gypsies in
the past (and present). Besides the social–
psychological explanations for such behav-
iour, a victory, in the case of Gypsy organisa-
tions, is thought to be a means of gathering
more followers. A strengthened organisation
has a better chance, for example, of obtaining
financial resources. Some defenders of the
new politically correct term among the
gadje—ones who are actually the most fierce
‘fighters’—even admit that their designation
might not represent the ideas and attitudes of
a majority of Gypsies in this respect, but still
continue their ideological/political struggle—
a highly paternalistic ‘approach’.
I would like to finish this brief contribu-
tion with a quotation from a collection of
essays by the German–Romanian writer and
Nobel prize winner (2009), Herta Müller:
‘I went to Romania with the word “Roma”,
used it at the beginning during conversations,
and encountered a lack of understanding
everywhere. “The word is hypocritical,” I
was told, “we are Gypsies, and the word is
good, as long as we are treated well.”’
(Müller, 1997, p. 153, my translation)
A struggle against discrimination needs much
energy. One should not waste energy on a
battle about or against words, especially when
the arguments in favour are rather weak.2
Notes
1 This is a slightly revised version of a paper delivered
at the First International Roman Symposium, Trakya
Üniversitesi, Edirne, 7–8 May 2005.
2 For further discussion of the issues raised in this
contribution, see http://www.rbenninghaus.de/
zigeuner-begriff.htm
Reference
Müller, H. (1997) ‘Der Staub ist blind—die Sonne ein
Krüppel: Zur Situation der Zigeuner in Rumänien’, in
Hunger und Seide [Hunger and Silk]. Reinbek bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Women of Sulukule
Figures 1–3 Women of Sulukule.
Nejla Osseiran
The first time I visited Sulukule was the
summer of 2007. A friend who was working
for the European Roma Rights Centre
(ERRC) in Budapest had asked me to go
there and take a few pictures for an article to
be published on their web newsletter. I knew
I would go there again and again. At the
beginning some people approached me with
caution. ‘They come and take our pictures
and we never see them again!’ they said. I
promised I would bring their pictures the
next time. And I did. Gradually, I had fewer
reluctant residents. Some wanted the pictures
as a ‘keepsake’, some wanted to send them to
their husbands or sons in the army or prison.
Most of the people knew they were going to
be evicted and they wanted some kind of
souvenir or memento.
In each of the following times that I went to
Sulukule, there were fewer houses, fewer fami-
lies and children. Among the ruins the dark
shadow of joylessness was spreading time and
again. Some families were hopeful about the
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 647
place they were going to move to. Some, espe-
cially the children, hated the idea. Sometimes
I was not able to give the pictures because I
could not find the people or their houses there.
They would be gone. During this period I
learned so much from them and about them. I
realized that in time I had become their ‘Nejla
Abla’. They would be so happy to see me when
I went. They invited me in their houses and
posed for me. I would be giving them either
their pictures or pictures of people they knew
and loved. Each time I went, my heart felt
heavier. It was steadily taking the shape of a
disaster area. Most of the houses were in rubble
or completely gone. Each time I went, I felt
more hopeless and helpless … Still I went—I
felt I could not let them down. I knew they
would be waiting for their pictures and the
light I saw in their eyes overshadowed the
shame of humanity, the brutality of poverty.
I tried to keep my distance but after you get
to know those people it is very difficult to
forget them (Figures 2–5).
648 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

Figure 2 (photo © Nejla Osseiran).

Figure 3 (photo © Nejla Osseiran).

 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 649

Figure 4 (photo © Nejla Osseiran).

Figure 5 (photo © Nejla Osseiran).

650 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Roma culture and tradition
Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov
The Balkans constitute a European region
with a complex cultural and historical destiny,
involving continuous processes of mutual
interaction and integration in ethno-cultural
life and discourses. The various Balkan
nations have different origins, different
historical trajectories, different religions,
different languages, etc., but, at the same time,
across their territorial spaces, as a result of
centuries living together, a largely common
ethno-cultural system has been shaped.
Ethno-cultural merging processes have devel-
oped to such an extent that, in many cases, it
is meaningless to speak of separate, specific
ethno-cultural phenomena in individual
nations. Nonetheless, the subjective percep-
tion and rationalisation of ‘own’ culture is
now giving them ‘distinct’ ethnic dimen-
sions—and countless examples could be given
as to what are now considered to be founda-
tions, cornerstones and achievements of the
ethno-cultural traditions and modern national
ideologies of individual Balkan nations.
How do Roma and their ethno-cultural
system enter into the general Balkan cultural
context? Settlement of Roma in the Balkans
is dated differently by different authors.
Some argue that this settling took place in the
9th century, others suggest the 11th century,
and, lately, some are speaking about the
13th–14th centuries. The precise dating is of
no particular importance for our own
argument here: the point is simply that,
whichever account you choose to accept, the
Roma have been living in the Balkans for
centuries. Moreover, it should be borne in
mind that, unlike the majority Balkan
nations, the way of life of the Roma has
implied constant symbiosis with the
surrounding population. It is on this adaptive
and creatively syncretist basis that they have
become an integral, and even a necessary,
part of the overall Balkan cultural system.
This seemingly simple scheme explaining
the place of the Roma in the general Balkan
cultural context should not cause special
problems. In practice, however, when it
comes to specific studies of the Roma, things
turn out to be much more complex. Since the
Middle Ages, especially in Western Europe,
stereotypes about the Gypsies as an exotic
nation that had nothing to do with other
European populations, have been predomi-
nant. And these grew and proliferated in the
Age of Romanticism, when Gypsies became
a symbol for the rejection of the values of
Western society. And even to this day,
millions of people in the West cannot under-
stand that the Gypsies living in Eastern
Europe are for the most part not nomadic;
that they have been living settled lives for
centuries; and that large numbers of them are
relatively well integrated, with good educa-
tion, jobs, etc. It is a reality that should
suffice to counter stereotypical notions of
exotic ‘perpetual nomads’ living outside the
norms and values of the surrounding
community—but, sadly, it is a reality that
cannot be perceived and accommodated by
the detached and disengaged European
mainstream.
Unfortunately, these popular stereotypes
have also been apparent in academic research,
for example, through the creation of the
Gypsy Lore Society at the end of the 19th
century. Arguably, in the 20th century, in
certain works of Anglo-American anthropol-
ogy, the situation became even worse. For
the most part, contemporary post-colonial
anthropology set as its fundamental working
principle, including for research work
conducted in Eastern Europe, the discipline
of spending several months of ‘fieldwork’ life
in a Roma environment, and what we see as a
deliberate rejection of the overall study of the
historical, social and cultural contexts in

which the Roma live. The consequences of
this approach in Romani studies are already
manifest. Thus, for example, there are cases
of presenting the celebration of Hıdırlezi, in
the case of Islam, or the day of Dur
evdan,
in the Christian version, and of the ‘slava’
(i.e. the day of a certain saint, considered the
patron of given kin) as only Roma traditions.
In fact, the case of Hıdırlezi (the day of the
Islamic saints Hıdır and Ilyaz) and the day of
Dur
evdan (St George) in the Christian
version are particularly significant with
respect to the place of the Roma in the
broader Balkan cultural context. Significant
because the majority Balkan nations also
consider these holidays as rightfully their
‘own’, distinguishing them from their
perceived ‘others’. The reality that those
others, living nearby, also celebrate these
same festivals does not bother them—they
are able to convince themselves that the cele-
bration of the others is not the same as theirs.
In contrast to Roma, today a large part of the
ritual elements of the holiday among
surrounding majority populations has been
Figure 6 Young Gypsy girls at Festival of Kakava in Turkey, 2005 (photo © Vesselin Popov).
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 651
dropped, and the holiday has been modern-
ised—but in the past there were no differ-
ences. These days, there is a distinctive,
ritualised Romani ethno-cultural version of
the holiday, alongside the de-ritualised
majority Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian, etc.,
ethno-cultural variations, all part of the
encompassing Balkan cultural tradition
(Figure 6).
Here we can open a bracket. In recent
Figure 54 Young Gypsy
Gypsy girls in girls
dressatofFestival of Kakava
Lazaruvane ritual, in Turkey,early
Bulgaria, 200520th
(photo credit:(The
century. Vesselin
photoPopov).
is from the Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.)
years, probably as a consequence of Emir
Kusturica’s Time of the Gypsies, the image of
Hederlezi outside the Balkans has come to be
seen as a Roma-specific holiday. Moreover,
the Hederlezi song from the film entered
into the repertoire of hundreds of Romani
musical groups, and has become one of the
symbols of traditional Romani music. Ironi-
cally, the song is actually a musical adapta-
tion by Goran Bregović of a traditional cau
[e]t
Albanian song from Kosovo and the lyrics
were written by the film crew, and then
subsequently translated into Romanes.
When we talk about Romani ethnic culture,
as a version of the common Balkan cultural
652 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

tradition, we should consider a further

important factor. For a number of reasons,
the transformations occurring in the Romani
culture in their transition to modern society
are moving relatively slowly in comparison to
other Balkan nations. For this reason, the
phenomenon is often encountered whereby
Roma are carriers of traditions that have been
long forgotten, or preserved only as static
cultural heritage, among other Balkan
peoples. Thus, the ritual dance of ‘dodola’
(also known as ‘peperuda’ and ‘paparuga’)—a
rain dance—was, until the second half of the
19th century, practised among Bulgarians,
Serbs, Romanians and other Balkan nations
(and today it is still presented at many folk-
lore festivals). By the first half of the 20th
century, however, the majoritarian Balkan
nations already considered this tradition as
anachronistic. Still, however, when needed
(for drought) they will pay the (still active)
Roma to perform it, and in this indirect way,
the Roma keep the ‘live’ tradition going.
The same is the case with the ritual called
Lazaruvane, which is a socialisation ritual for
young girls (rite de passage), who dance, sing Figure 7 Gypsy girls in dress of Lazaruvane ritual,
Bulgaria, early 20th century. (The photo is reproduced
and collect presents from village inhabitants. by permission of the Archive of the Institute of Ethnology
This ritual was executed in the past by and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum at
Bulgarians, but, early in the 1920s, the local the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.)
Bulgarian population came to consider this
custom as also anachronistic, and today it can there was the presentation of a traditional
only be seen in ‘fossilised’ form at folklore Turkish wedding, from which they came to
festivals. But the Roma continued to perform learn that the ritual of hennaing the bride,
it into the 20th century (the custom is little which they always considered to be specific to
known among scholars of Romani studies, Roma weddings, is also practised by the Turks
and this is perhaps why it has not been recog- (and, actually, in the past it was also often prac-
nised as a ‘real’ Romani ritual) (Figure 7). tised by the mainstream Bulgarians).
A particularly interesting issue is when the Similarly, if someone today asked a Balkan
Roma themselves show themselves to be Roma the question ‘What distinguishes you
unaware of their traditions of living together most from the gadje?’, more often than not
with other Balkan nations; when they the first response will be that ‘our girls marry
proclaim certain ethno-cultural characteristics as virgins’. This rule was common in the
to be exclusively their ‘own’, distinguishing Balkans (and not only there historically) and
them from the ‘others’ of the majority popu- is still seen by Roma, despite the changed
lations. We were once present at a celebration conditions of the contemporary world, as a
concert, where folklore ensembles presented crucial ethnic marker, distinguishing them
the ethno-cultural traditions of different from the other Balkan peoples. This reflects a
communities living in Bulgaria. The biggest more general principle, well known in ethnol-
shock for all the Roma Christians who were ogy: cultural elements are not intrinsically

ethnically oriented, but become such when
perceived as such by the communities who
elect to make them markers of distinction
from ‘other’ communities.
What we have been arguing above should,
by no means, be considered as a bald state-
ment that ethnically specific elements of
Romani culture in the Balkans do not exist.
Of course, these elements exist, and there are
many of them. Some of them seem to reflect
the ancient Indian heritage of the Roma, for
example, the principle of the group stratifica-
tion of the community itself, and possibly
also the so-called ‘Roma Court’. Others are
the result of many complex contaminations of
various Balkan traditions, for example, the
custom called ‘chasing away the plague’, or
‘Bibija’, from the town of Vidin in Bulgaria,
which has no direct analogies in other Balkan
populations. A third kind occurs as a separate
‘Romani variant’ on the basis of a Balkan
tradition, for example, the practice of Bibija in
Serbia, which became a cult dedicated to the
Memorial work in progress
Huub van Baar
‘Auschwitz’ and the struggle for Romani
Holocaust representation. It has been argued
that, since the fall of communism, the Polish
State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau has
entered a decisively new phase. During social-
ism in Central and Eastern Europe, the
memorial landscapes of the Holocaust,
including the museum in Auschwitz, were
forcefully Sovietized and inscribed with the
often de-ethnicized rhetoric of anti-fascism
and communist martyrdom. In the Auschwitz
museum, particularly the representations of
the war histories of the Jews, the Roma and
the Poles, were downplayed. After 1989, so
the argument goes, the museum finally
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 653
Roma saint Tetkica Bibija. The distinctive-
ness of Roma ethno-cultural expression is
also particularly vividly reflected in songs and
music, where the artists’ creativity is felt
particularly strongly, as it is developed within
frames of broader Balkan musical traditions.
Combining all the different cultural
elements carried by a nation in a common
ethno-cultural system transforms it into
something that is ethno-specific and ethno-
distinctive, characteristic of this nation alone,
distinguishing it from the ‘other’ peoples
living in the Balkans. The overall conclusion
about Romani ethno-cultural tradition in the
Balkans is that it constitutes a separate ethnic
variation, equal to those of the other Balkan
nations, and part of the common Balkan
cultural tradition. The setting of equality of
the various ethno-cultural traditions of the
Balkans, and the inclusion of Roma in the
general context of the Balkan culture system,
should now be taken as a vital principle on
this eastern side of the European space.
addressed this influential ‘Sovietization’ of
war memories and histories by undoing the
previous ‘misrepresentations’.
However, unlike what the image of a sudden
representational shift suggests, the museum
had not always remained the same prior to
1989, and did not only start to change after the
end of communism. Since its establishment in
1947, the museum has been permanently
under ‘reconstruction’. Already during the
cold war, several socialist countries that had
established a permanent ‘national exhibition’
in the museum changed these installations at
various moments in time. This process of
adapting representations according to prevail-
654 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
ing ideas about how Holocaust histories and
memories should be inscribed into museal
spaces has not come to an end with the recent
establishment of new and renewed national
exhibitions in Auschwitz, such as those of
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and
Poland. Unlike the picture of a decisive
change from ‘false’, Sovietized representa-
tions to more adequate, post-Communist ones
suggests, the struggle for how the Second
World War, and the Holocaust in particular,
should be represented has not diminished, but
only intensified after 1989.
Taking the example of the new permanent
exhibition on the Nazi genocide of the
Roma, we can trace how the introduction of
previously almost absent representations of
this genocide has gone together with the
emergence of debates about how the Romani
Holocaust should be represented in the
Auschwitz museum and in Europe more
generally.1
Established in 2001, this Romani initiative
constitutes a unique part of the museum’s exhi-
bitions. For the first time in its history, an exhi-
bition has been dedicated to the suffering of the
Roma. Since it was realized by various Romani
Figure 8 Representation of Roma in prewar Poland in the Romani exhibition at the Auschwitz museum (photo ©
Huub van Baar).
organizations and initiated by the Documen-
tation and Cultural Centre of German Sinti
and Roma in Heidelberg, the exhibition can be
considered as one of the first opportunities for
Romani self-representation at such an interna-
tionally important site of memories. The exhi-
bition is located in one of the original barracks
of the camp. Its content covers the immediate
prewar histories of the Roma, their wartime
persecution, and their deportation from
various European countries to concentration
and extermination camps (Figure 8).
The exhibition has been made with great
Figure 8 Representation of Roma in prewar Poland in the Romani exhibition at the Auschwitz museum (photo credit: Huub van Baar).
care, and conveys the suffering of the Euro-
pean Roma in an impressive manner. Yet
some aspects of the exhibition invite us to
rethink its representation of the Romani
Holocaust. A large part of the exhibition is
dedicated to the history of the Roma’s perse-
cution, resistance and extermination in
Auschwitz. The exhibition is roughly divided
into two parts, a design that the exhibition’s
catalogue explains as follows:
‘The central room, which stands for the
persecuted people, does not blend in well
with the existing architecture and also stands

in contradiction to the original room in every
respect: the axes of both rooms are not
identical, here pleasant, safe forms, there hard
and severe forms, here warm, earthy colours,
there cold blue-white, here faces of people,
laughter and family life, there typewritten
documents of the captors. The wedge-shaped
steel elements as symbols of persecution and
violence dissect the central room, gliding
more or less on the invisible axes of the
original room and finally break it up
completely.’ (Rose, 2003, p. 317)
The prewar past displayed in the exhibition’s
central room is almost exclusively repre-
sented by portraits and group photographs,
for example, of families, school classes, sports
clubs, bands and small orchestras. Few
images show working Roma, and only very
few shots are from Romani villages or show
caravan dwellers. Since the displayed photo-
graphs are mainly snapshots of members of
Romani elites on their feast days, the exhibi-
tion shows peacefully living individuals and
groups all over the European countries most
of the time. Hence, the visitor passes by
images from the prewar period in which
poverty, hard times, regional differences and
national forms of marginalization and
persecution (apart from those instigated by
Naziism) are practically excluded. Particu-
larly, the lack of these national forms of
prewar marginalization and persecution
creates a radical contrast between the prewar
and the wartime period. Moreover, the
exhibition neglects how these prewar
measures and their local and national back-
grounds, as well as the varying wartime
collaborations with Nazi Germany through-
out Europe, resulted in differently articulated
forms of Roma persecution.
In fact, many European countries took
restrictive measures with regard to their
Romani populations, in particular in the
interwar period. A Czechoslovakian law
from 1927, for instance, ‘condemned the
Roma as asocial citizens, limited their
personal liberty, introduced Gypsy identity
cards, and decreed that Romani children
under 18 be placed in special institutions’
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 655
(Barany, 2002, p. 99). A Hungarian law from
1928 ‘ordained semiannual Gypsy police
raids in order to weed out the criminal and
parasitic elements from the Romani commu-
nities. As in Czechoslovakia, special regula-
tions required the fingerprinting and
registration of all Roma’ (ibid., p. 100). From
the 1920s onward, Ante Pavelić’s Croatian
cau
[e]t
Ustaše movement increasingly endangered
aocrn
s][
the position of Roma and Jews in the former
Yugoslavia. During the Second World War
the pro-Nazi Usta şe regime was responsible
acorsn[]
for the extermination of about 25,000 Roma.
Many Western European countries already
took restrictive measures against Roma and
Travelers during the migration waves at the
end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th
century. The under-representation of these
national differences and of local anti-Roma
measures in the exhibition creates the impres-
sion of a homogeneous European Romani
people, which began to suffer as soon as, but
not earlier than, the Nazi terror penetrated
the occupied countries. This impression is
intensified by the wedge-shaped steel
elements that spear the central room as if the
aggression against the Roma came merely
from the outside. In this particular concep-
tion of Romani victimhood, possible aggres-
sive elements against the Roma are excluded
from the non-German national territory and
history, and projected abroad.
The representation of the wartime period is
characterized by similar problems. By
displaying the wartime period on steel
elements, into which the related documents
and photographs are entirely integrated—the
pictures are not fixed, but reproduced on the
panels—it seems that the memory of wartime
is guaranteed ‘forever’. Nazi documents and
personal photographs of Roma that are
inscribed with the numbers to which the
Nazis reduced them mostly represent the
wartime period. By carefully displaying many
original documents, the exhibition attempts
to provide ‘a literally “documentary” past’
(Hoskins, 2003, p. 10) and suggests that this
past is really ‘history’. However, by isolating
the wartime experiences from both the
656 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
prewar and the postwar ones, history
becomes conceptualized in terms of disjunc-
tive periods. The war experiences seem to
have neither predecessors nor successors, and
the wartime period itself is represented as a
‘distant past’.
However, when we consider postwar and
current situations in many European coun-
tries, we can list several cases in which it is
questionable whether the memory of the
Roma’s war history has been safeguarded at
all. One of the most delicate examples is the
neglect by the Czech authorities of the former
Nazi concentration camps in Lety and
Hodonín, camps that were used for the sole
detention of Roma (van Baar, 2008). At the
sites of these former camps stand a pig farm
and a cottage park, respectively. The mass
graves of both Roma and Jews in Transnistria,
in today’s Moldova, to which more than
20,000 Romanian Roma were deported by the
Antonescu regime, are still hushed up by local
and national authorities. Last but not least,
the Bosnian wars of the 1990s have radically
disturbed the museum that was established in
1968 at the site of the former Jasenovac exter-
mination camp, on the border of today’s
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1991
to 1995, Serbian soldiers occupied this site.
The area was mined and a part of the
museum’s collection ‘removed’ to Belgrade.
There is yet another problem with how the
exhibition tends to periodize history and
hamper our understanding of the gradual,
rather than sudden, transition from the
everyday to the monstrous under National
Socialism, and vice versa. This problem
becomes clearer when we zoom in on the
1930s and the aftermath of the war. Analyz-
ing two other Romani Holocaust-related
representations helps to contest the sharp
representational boundaries that are drawn
between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ as well as between
‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the exhibition.
Eve Rosenhaft has recently pointed to the
existence of archives of pictures that were
taken by German ethnographers in the 1930s.
In her analysis of the materials from these
archives, she invites us to think beyond the
way in which the history of photographs of
colonial or subaltern subjects has often been
approached. Prevailingly, the gaze of ethno-
graphic photography has been understood as
an articulation of subordinating and classify-
ing power, and the photograph as a way to
express the otherness and appropriation of its
subject. Similarly, the reading of the early
20th-century photographic history of the
Roma has often been ‘a moralizing and
teleological one in which representation has
been understood as an instrument of geno-
cide’ (Rosenhaft, 2008, p. 311). Pictures of
Roma that were taken by, for instance,
German ethnographers and journalists in the
1920s and 1930s have been mostly inter-
preted in the light of their complicity with
the emerging Nazi ideology. And indeed,
photography and correlated anthropometri-
cal techniques to ‘prove’ the Roma’s
‘inferiority’ were undoubtedly integral to the
murderous form of Romani minority gover-
nance typical of Nazi discourses and prac-
tices. In this respect, the Romani Holocaust
‘provides us with a real example of a
uniquely intimate link between physical
anthropology, ethnography, photography
and genocidal violence in the foreground to
the moment of physical annihilation’ (ibid.,
p. 315).
Nonetheless, in the 1930s the boundaries
between the ordinary and the extraordinary
were more fluid, and the encounters between
many photographers and their Romani
subjects more ambivalent, than an overly
teleological reading of these relationships
would allow. To contest the image of strict
boundaries and sudden shifts, Rosenhaft
suggests, we need to revisit the delicate reali-
ties of the 1930s and analyze how, rather than
whether, the history of the Roma partakes of
a shared history between Romani and Sinti
minorities and the European majorities:
‘One thing that the textual and photographic
evidence does document is the struggle of
both Sinti and gadje [non-Roma] to maintain
or recover ordinary lives in extraordinary
times. The more closely we inspect the

photographs, though, … [the more we]
become aware of negotiations at every point
in the life of each image, starting within the
frame, as subjects and photographer bring
their own intentions to the making of the
picture.’ (Rosenhaft, 2004, p. 202)
Since photographs that express the complex-
ity of these encounters between Roma and
others have hardly been included in the
Auschwitz exhibition, it inaccurately
suggests that the ways in which the Roma
were approached—even after Hitler came to
power—were unambiguously compliant
with the later genocide.
Something similar could be remarked with
regard to the relationship that the exhibi-
tion’s design suggests between the wartime
and the postwar period. In the documentary
Das falsche Wort: Die ‘Wiedergutmachung’
an Zigeunern (Sinte) in Deutschland? (The
Lie: ‘Compensation’ for Gypsies (Sinti) in
Germany?, Germany, 1987, 83 min), the
German filmmaker Katrin Seybold and her
German Sinti colleague Melanie Spitta give a
sinister image of the postwar realities of the
German Sinti that survived the war. Their
documentary shows that none of the
‘researchers’ who were involved in the so-
called Race Hygiene Research Unit—the
institute that was largely responsible for
marking the ‘unfitness’ of many ‘Gypsies’
and for the decision to deport them—were
ever prosecuted for their crimes. After the
war the same ‘researchers’ were even often
contracted by juridical and governmental
teams to ‘scientifically’ decide upon whether
the surviving Romani victims—many of
whom had been forcibly sterilized—could be
restituted. Those who had decided upon the
destruction of many Romani lives during the
war thus continued to decide upon the direc-
tion of many of their lives after 1945. By
visualizing this part of the postwar history,
and the way in which it has radically
hampered the recognition of the Romani
Holocaust, Seybold and Spitta show that the
Nazi genocide of the Roma, including the
radical consequences for its recognition,
represents no ‘distant’ past.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 657
In particular, when we take into account
the persistent postwar neglect and denial of
the Romani Holocaust, we cannot empha-
size enough the importance of the achieve-
ment marked by the current Auschwitz
exhibition about the Roma. Yet, the exhibi-
tion does not do sufficient justice to the
ways in which the maltreatment of Romani
minorities dominated, and continues to
dominate, the ambiguous approach to Roma
by European majorities. We may wonder
whether a possible future revision of the
Auschwitz exhibition on the Roma will be
able to represent these ambiguities more
powerfully.
Note
1
1
I use the term ‘Roma’ and its adjective ‘Romani’ to
indicate all the different groups, which are often
called ‘Gypsies’ in the English-speaking regions.
Hence, by referring to the Roma, I often implicitly
refer to the Sinti and other Gypsy groups who
prefer to be distinguished from the Roma.
References
Barany, Z. (2002) The East European Gypsies. Regime
Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoskins, A. (2003) ‘Signs of the Holocaust: exhibiting
memory in a mediated age’, Media, Culture and
Society 25(1), pp. 7–22.
Rose, R., ed. (2003) The National Socialist Genocide of
the Sinti and Roma. Catalogue of the Permanent
Exhibition in the State Museum of Auschwitz.
Heidelberg: Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum
Deutscher Sinti und Roma.
Rosenhaft, E. (2004) ‘A photographer and his “victims”
1934–1964: reconstructing a shared experience of
the Romani Holocaust’, in S. Tebbutt and N. Saul
(eds) The Role of the Romanies: Images and
Counter-Images of ‘Gypsies’/Romanies in European
Cultures, pp. 178–207. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press.
Rosenhaft, E. (2008) ‘Exchanging glances: ambivalence
in twentieth-century photographs of German Sinti’,
Third Text 22(3), pp. 311–324.
van Baar, H. (2008) ‘The way out of amnesia?
Europeanisation and the recognition of the Roma’s
past and present’, Third Text 22(3), pp. 373–385.
658 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
A Gypsy from Klenovec
Monika Metyková
A while ago, I was asked to check some-
thing out at the Museum of Romani
Culture in Brno, in the Czech Republic.
That something was a manuscript by a
certain Ján Cibula, held in the museum’s
collection. I was no stranger to Brno, so it
appeared to be a straightforward task. I
even knew some people who worked in the
Museum of Romani Culture. But I wasn’t
at all familiar with the museum; I had only
visited it for the first time many years after
its foundation. And in my wanderings
through Brno, I hardly ever passed through
the city’s Roma neighbourhood, I knew the
city, but didn’t know the Brno ‘Roma
scene’.
Figure 9 Ján Cibula (source: Museum of Romani Culture, Brno).
I had never before heard of Ján Cibula
(Figure 9). The museum’s librarian and
archivist were most helpful, and I soon
discovered that Cibula was a major figure in
the Romani movement. He donated his
private archive—manuscripts, letters, essays,
speeches, photographs, newspaper cuttings—
to the museum in Brno. Luckily for me, most
of the items in his archive were written in
Czech and Slovak; however, Romani, Russian
and German were also represented. It was
enough to look at the list of the archived items
to know that I was encountering a remarkable
life story and a passionate character.
The facts of his life are fairly straightfor-
Figure 9 Ján Cibula (source: Museum of Romani Culture, Brno).
ward, though unusual: Cibula was born in

1932 in Klenovec in Slovakia to a large
Roma family. He completed his study of
medicine in Bratislava in 1957, and in 1968
moved to Bern in Switzerland, where he set
up a medical practice. Apart from Western
medicine he soon took up acupuncture and
also, interestingly, music therapy. In 1979 he
was elected as the first president of the
Romani Union (Romano Internationalno
Jekhethanibe). His work on behalf of the
Roma took him to a variety of international
settings, from New York to India, and even
led to a Nobel Prize nomination. Roma
cultural heritage and the betterment of
Roma’s lives (understood very broadly)
were foremost on his agenda. He also
campaigned tirelessly for increased knowl-
edge of the Roma Holocaust and financial
compensation for its victims.
The story behind the facts, as told by
Cibula and documented in the archived
materials, is exceptional. His education as
well as his work experience in various (albeit
friendly socialist) countries are anything but
typical of Roma of his generation and origin.
He and his family survived the Nazi persecu-
tion of Roma in Czechoslovakia, and young
Cibula even managed to attend school. He
recalls the bizarre circumstances of his early
school years—as long as he hid every time a
school inspector showed up, he was allowed
to attend classes. Although the Czechoslovak
communist regime claimed to provide
opportunities for any ‘good’ socialist citizen,
a young Roma studying medicine in the
1950s was a rare phenomenon.
The reasons behind Cibula’s emigration do
not transpire from the documents I had access
to. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in August
1968 resulted in a wave of migrants, a number
of whom settled down in Switzerland.
Cibula’s political views and involvement with
the Roma took a new turn there. A communi-
cation from Bern:
‘Already during my studies in former
Czechoslovakia, when we survived the Nazi
holocaust, I tried to fight hatred, racial
humiliation and discrimination against
Gypsies, which continue to exist even
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 659
today.… I imagined Switzerland as an ideal
country, in which to search for justice and
solutions to the already mentioned
problems. Despite this, I was humiliated here,
right here, where democracy rules.’ (Cibula,
1997, p. 2)
Reading Cibula’s memoirs and various items
in the archive, what emerged were three prin-
cipal themes that seem to have dominated his
thoughts and played a crucial role in his life
and relations with others.
Music is a thread that runs right through
Cibula’s life story. He was brought up in a
family of musicians—his ancestors were
probably musicians at the royal court in
Hungary. He recalls how, towards the end of
the Second World War, a provisional hospital
was set up in the school he attended. Not
surprisingly, the hospital lacked medication
and anaesthetics, so his father and his band
played in the cause of distraction while
surgeons operated on patients. Needless to
say, their contribution to the surgery was not
exactly the band’s voluntary choice. Cibula
acknowledges that music, together with his
family and his medical practice, represent the
focal points of his life.
He used music as a therapeutic device, but,
more than that, even as a means of conflict
resolution. In 1987, a nomadic Roma protest
was to take place in Geneva. It was not
granted permission, however, and the Roma
and their caravans ended up blocking the
highway near Basel. Cibula was approached
by the United Nations to negotiate a
solution. He recalls in his memoirs that the
situation had deteriorated so much that no
amount of reasoning would have helped—so
he decided to negotiate by means of his
violin. When, in 1985, he received the City of
Bern Award (as only the second foreigner in
the prize’s history) he did not use words, but
violin music, to express his gratitude.
Cibula resented much of the ‘scientific’
study of his kin, and had ongoing passion-
ate disagreements with Gypsyologists. For
him, their detached scientific attitude could
not result in valid knowledge about the
Roma:
660 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
‘If one wants to take the study of Gypsy life,
and issues linked to it, seriously, the
approach should not be only professional;
this way of life must also be studied with love
and with the whole heart. This is the only
way in which it is possible to establish a
relationship with these people, who are very
complicated, and who have become very
sensitive due to their historical experience.’
(Cibula, 1971, p. 2)
A lecture that he attended on Hungarian
Gypsy music not only prompted him to
write an indignant protest note, but angered
him so much that he stormed out of it. He
complained that the lecture—organised by
Études Tsiganes, and held in Paris in 1971—
was not scientific and serious enough, the
Gypsiologist in question not having studied
authentic Gypsy music, but rather music that
was played for tourists in the bars and cafés
of Bratislava and Budapest. Cibula wrote at
length on issues linked to Gypsy music,
making the argument that much of it is still
hidden from the public at large, and insisting
that it must be considered in the broader
context of Romani lives.
Activism on behalf of the Roma represents
the third theme that frames the story of
Cibula’s life. His leadership of the Romani
Union lasted only two years, and he stepped
down disappointed about infighting among
the Union’s members. The fact that work for
the Roma would be hindered by fellow
Roma fighting for power apparently caused
him much pain. However, he continued—
what he saw as—his mission for the Roma.
His correspondence bears witness to his
energetic and widespread campaigning
related to the Roma Holocaust. In the second
half of the 1990s—after failing to gain
support in Germany—he began campaigning
in Switzerland for an acknowledgement of
the Roma Holocaust and financial compen-
sation for victims. Estimates of the numbers
of Roma and Sinti Holocaust victims vary.
Cibula refers to more than a million Roma
dying in concentration camps. This endeav-
our—perhaps not surprisingly—again
brought disillusionment to Cibula. National
and international Holocaust organisations
that he approached failed to appoint Roma
representatives on their boards.
References
Cibula, J. (1971) Protest Cikána proti zasedání ‘Les
études tsiganes’ v Paláci Chaillot, Pa ř í ž , 17. kv ě tna
ca
r[orn] zca
[orn] e[cao
rn]
1971, zvlá š t ě proti př edná š ce o hudbě
csa[orn] e[cao
rn] ca
ro
[rn] csa[orn] eca
[orn]
madarsk y̌ ch cikánu° [A Gypsy’s Protest against the
ya
[ecu]t nug
i][r
Meeting of ‘Les études tsiganes’ in the Chaillot
Palace, Paris, 17 May 1971, Particularly against the
Lecture on the Music of Hungarian Gypsies]. Brno:
Roma Museum.
Cibula, J. (1997) Zingaro eclipse—Môj portrét a
ž ivotné dielo pre Rómov [Zingaro Eclipse—My
zca
o[rn]
Portrait and Lifelong Work for the Roma]. Brno:
Roma Museum.

How I was converted from Islam to
Christianity
Kostadin Kostadinov
My name is Kostadin Radev, born in 1982, in
one of the most beautiful towns in the world,
namely, Dobrich, in the north-east part of
Bulgaria. I am a Roma, living in a community
of Romany speakers, but which uses the
Turkish language, as well. We are referred to
as ‘Millet’ (a word that is different from the
same word in Turkey, where it means
‘nation’). In our situation ‘Millet’ (with a
capital ‘M’) denotes a person who is a Roma,
speaks Turkish and generally perceives
himself or herself to be a Muslim. All my
family and relatives from my father’s side
were Muslims. As far as I remember, we were
not deeply committed to this religion, but we
were considered by others as Muslims. The
villages in the region are not ardently reli-
gious, not well grounded in its fundamental
tenets, but still Islam shapes the broad iden-
tity of the group. Religion is something that
Roma people are attached to. It doesn’t
matter to what extent they are aware of the
fundamental principles or doctrines of their
religion. They just believe.
I was part of this community, sharing the
same views and orientation as others, until
the age of 10. In 1992, my family and I took a
journey to the town of Kotel, to visit my
mother’s relatives. It was here that I was to
have the experience of conversion. This small
town is situated in the very middle of the
country, surrounded by mountains. The
predominant religion is Christianity. And
until 1990, only Orthodox Christianity
existed as an official religion. In 1990 some-
thing miraculous happened—the political
dikes burst and inundated Bulgaria. The
ensuing flood was called freedom, which was
political, social and religious. It was on the
basis of this miraculous transformation that
Evangelism began to flourish in our state.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 661
This was the period called ‘Revival’, when
people from every corner of Bulgaria found
themselves becoming witnesses to God’s
manifestation. Some of them had a personal
encounter with Jesus, and talked about the
Kingdom of Heaven; thousands of disabled
people were healed; and dead bodies were
brought back to life. God’s mercy was
poured out, and the Holy Spirit was given to
those people who decided to renounce their
old and corrupted ways of life and belief, and
to follow Jesus. People began to speak in
unknown tongues. What was occurring was
like what happened after the Ascension of
Jesus Christ, as written in the second chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles. Christians with
their inspiration in that Christian lineage are
called Pentecostalists. Through their repen-
tance—which is experienced as a need, not as
something obligatory—they receive God’s
mercy and forgiveness. They enter into direct
contact with God—without the mediation of
priests and clergy.
In 1992, while I was in Kotel, I heard a lot
of testimonies dealing with God’s grace.
People were so exalted, so full of energy, and
weeping with happiness. They were
constantly talking about the Holy Spirit, and
about Jesus Christ—about His life, His death
and His resurrection. One day, I was at my
grandmother’s home, and many people came
into the living room. They were all calling
each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, and appeal-
ing to us to receive Jesus as the Saviour. I
escaped into the next room, and shut the
door behind me. Then something miraculous
happened to me. (I didn’t then dare to share
this with anyone, lest I should be thought
crazy, or a loser.) As I closed the door after
me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus
Christ face to face.
662 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
It didn’t occur to me at that time, nor did it
for some time afterwards, that it was wholly
a mental or spiritual state of experience. On
the contrary, it seemed to me that I saw Jesus
as I would see any other man. He said noth-
ing, but looked at me in such a manner as to
make me fall down at his feet and pour out
my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child, and
made such confessions as I could with my
choked voice. Then I received the mighty
baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any
expectation of it, without ever having the
thought in my mind that there was any such
thing for me, the Holy Spirit descended upon
me in a manner that seemed to pass right
through me, body and soul. The sensation
felt like a wave of electricity, transmitted
through and through me. It seemed to come
in waves and waves of liquid love—I cannot
express it in any other way. No words can
express the wonderful love that entered into
my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love, my
heart gushing out. These waves came over
me, and over me, and over me, one after the
other, until I cried out ‘I shall die if these
waves continue to pass over me … Lord, I
cannot bear any more.’ Yet there was abso-
lutely no fear of death inside me.
When I awoke in the morning the sun had
risen, and was pouring a clear light into my
room. I could hear an interior voice speaking
to me. Not through my ears—it was more
like a radio inside me that had suddenly
switched on. The voice was both intimate
and authoritative, and it filled me. Instantly
the baptism that I had received the night
before returned upon me in the same manner.
I knelt by the bed, and again wept aloud with
joy. It seemed as if this morning baptism was
accompanied by a gentle reproof, and the
Spirit seemed to say to me, ‘Do you doubt?’ I
cried, ‘No! I do not doubt, I cannot doubt.’
It had now become impossible for me to
doubt that the Spirit of God had taken
possession of my soul. The voice then said:
‘You think that your life is your name, your
personality, your history … You think that
your life is the fact that you are alive, that you
breath in and out, that life courses through your
veins. But that is not your life, I am your life. I
am the foundation of everything in your life.’
I got upon my feet, feeling very shaky. It had
been like sitting quietly in your living room
when the roof is being blown off. I didn’t
have any doubt who the ‘I’ was that was
speaking to me, and it seemed that He
already understood me profoundly.
I could now see and understand what was
meant by the passage, ‘Being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ.’ My sense of guilt had
dissipated, and the burden of my sins was
lifted from me. Through this revelation, I felt
myself justified by faith and, instead of feel-
ing that I was a sinner, my heart was so full of
love that it was overflowing. My cup ran over
with blessings and with love. Of this experi-
ence, I said nothing at the time, nothing to
my family, or to anybody else.
Is it possible for this to happen to a 10-
year-old child? Yes—it happened to me.
And I do not feel ashamed to share this story
with you, because it is a source of life spirit.
From that moment on, I have felt an
immense peace that I never could have felt
before. It’s as if a heavy weight has been
taken off of me. Nowadays, I frequently
attend my church and testify to what Jesus
has done in my life. I am not afraid of speak-
ing the Good News among my Muslim
friends. Jesus is the reason I have now come
to be marginalised, and even rejected, from
my ethnic group. I don’t care. I have found
the true life, and I am ready to share it with
anyone. Some of my friends, who rejected
me before, came to Christ themselves, and
can now testify how God was revealed in
their own lives. God loves you, and He waits
for you to open your heart and to invite
Him to enter.

Believers in their own ways
Jan Hanák—interviewed by Monika Metyková, Brno, May
2009
I met the Catholic priest Jan Hanák in the
parish house in Zábrdovice, a neighbourhood
in the Czech city of Brno. Jan is in his mid-
30s, a parish priest, but also a documentary
filmmaker, a broadcast journalist, a univer-
sity lecturer, and the national chaplain for the
Faith and Light movement that embraces
people with mental disability, their parents
and friends. Although I have been a friend of
Jan’s for a number of years, this was only my
second visit to his parish. I walked to the
parish house through Cejl, the main street in
the Roma neighbourhood, and had a stroll
around the river Svitava (Figures 10–12). The
imposing Baroque church and parish house
are visible from a distance, and so is the run-
down Zetor factory bordering on the parish
Figure 10 Corridor of house decorated with paintings by Gypsy children, Cejl, Brno (photo © Anna Krahulcová).
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 663
garden. The view sums up major phases in
the history of Zábrdovice: a Premonstraten-
sian monastery was established here in the
13th century, and abolished in the 18th
century, and then turned into a military
hospital (still in use). A hundred years later,
the neighbourhood became the heart of
Brno’s industrial revolution.
Monika Metyková: How did you get to be
working in the Zábrdovice parish?
Jan Hanák: It’s a very prosaic story, really. I
was born in Brno, and for me—just as for
anyone else from Brno—Cejl was the part of
town you never set foot in. Roma were part
664 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Figure 11 The postman arrives, Cejl, Brno (photo © Anna Krahulcová).
of the reason, but, in addition, this was an
industrial neighbourhood, and not exactly a
pretty one. So I rarely got near this place. But
then I was ordained a priest and, the bishop
opted to send me to Zábrdovice. So I was
somehow steered into it. Though I must
say—and this is true for the majority of us
from Brno—that I was uneasy about this
neighbourhood. There are a large number of
stereotypes associated with the district. And,
although I was born in Brno, discovering this
neighbourhood was full of surprises. I found
out that this was a very traditional, urban,
Christian-democrat parish. We have a church
hidden here that looks grey on the outside,
but once you enter you find outstanding
pieces of Baroque art—it happens to be the
most valued early Baroque building in Brno.
Naturally, the discovery also involved
encounters with Roma. It is interesting that
the river Svitava, which runs between our
church and the Roma neighbourhood, acts
very much like a psychological barrier. This
side of the river is hardly a Roma district, while
the other one is sharply, very explicitly Roma.
This also applies at the other end of the Roma
neighbourhood: if you walk on Merhautova
Street, in front you have the Roma, and behind
you find one of the best residential areas in
Brno. The Roma were part of this parish
earlier, mainly since 1945 when they replaced
the Germans, but nonetheless the parish was
managed in a traditional manner. When you
look at the birth register, an interesting source,
you find a number of Roma baptisms even
under the totalitarian regime. However, a big
break occurred in 1999, when my fellow
priest, Jiří Rous, arrived here, very much with
o
carn
[]
the aim of devoting himself to the Roma. He
initiated great things: the non-profit organisa-
tion, Children’s House, in Zábrdovice, clubs
for vulnerable children, kindergartens, etc. I
arrived in 2003 when things were already well
under way.
Since my arrival here, one of my duties has
been to prepare parents for their children’s
baptisms. The majority of these are Roma
children—as we have about 450 white parish-
ioners, while right next door there are a couple
of thousand Roma, whom you actually do not

see in the church, apart from a few exceptions.
They are believers in their own way, and I
would certainly not ridicule their approach;
on the other hand, I wouldn’t idealise it either.
But as far as baptism is concerned, it is true
that they are at a stage when all their children
are baptised at a young age. This means that
many people approach me. Recently I
counted how many—in my six years here I
have actually baptised about 500 children.
MM: What about the rise of Pentecostalism
among the Roma? You are a Catholic
priest—how do you feel about the
competition now from Pentecostalism?
JH: Naturally, the Roma are interested in
Pentecostal expression, it fits their temper.
Jubilant joy, dynamics, rhythm, loud music,
emotions of this kind … On the other hand,
they need a liturgical church, rituals, and
what is interesting (says Jiří) the church of a
o
carn
[]
woman-mother—hence Mary’s church.
Pentecostals do not give them any of this. So,
for example, here in Zábrdovice Roma
consider themselves Catholics, and they defi-
nitely are all baptised etc. They are Catholics,
but they have no problem with going to a
Salvation Army prayer meeting, which is
kind of Pentecostal. It comes and goes; some-
times they attend more Pentecostal meetings,
at other times they prefer a prayer with a
priest at the altar, something like a confes-
sion. But they are above all Catholics, defi-
nitely. I would say that, should Catholic
liturgy be the same here as in equatorial
Africa, they would be happiest—they would
have the rituals as well as the emotions.
MM: You mentioned the stereotypes linked to
the neighbourhood …
JH: One example would be the stereotype of
‘You come here, they see you, and then they
mug you or beat you up’, something like that.
These things really do happen. It has
happened in the parish house as well—hence
the security bars on the windows. They are
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 665
there because they make sense. Sometimes we
have really great Roma children, here for a
couple of years, and then suddenly one goes
crazy in his head and he steals something.
They have various reasons for doing this, and
I am not saying that it’s because they are poor;
no, really, they go crazy in their heads, just as
we can, though for different reasons.
However, I’d say that the majority of the
Roma do not behave like that. One can hardly
quantify this; but I feel as if I almost had statis-
tical evidence, since I meet a large number of
Roma who have their children baptised.
A large number of Roma work regularly,
but another stereotype is that they are benefit
cheats. Yes, there are large numbers of people
here who are on benefits, and many of them
do abuse the system—maybe they work ille-
gally, or they don’t get married, because as a
single mother you have easier access to bene-
fits, and so on. These things happen.
According to another stereotype, when
you get here the Roma automatically attack
you. I think this is not exactly the case. They
behave in a different way, the patterns that
they follow are different, and one must know
how to decode them. Roma require much
less personal space, so sometimes the kids
run around you and bump into you, or
something like that, and you think that it’s an
attack. But they don’t see it that way. At
worst they try to provoke you, and it may
seem somewhat harsh, but in the end it’s just
fun. It’s important to be able to shake it off,
not to take such stuff seriously, and this
really works; they are then much more will-
ing to admit you among themselves.
MM: How about the stereotype according to
which Roma are born musical?
JH: It’s not just a stereotype, they are very
musical. Now that you mention it, I remember
how a few years ago I somehow finally under-
stood it with my heart. Martin, the sexton, cele-
brated something here in the parish house.
There were lots of people—Roma—and guitar
music was pouring out. I entered the ballroom
666 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
and there was a Roma boy playing the guitar,
and the music was beautiful, not only was it
pure—that goes without saying—but it had a
spirit. When you entered and saw that boy with
the guitar, you suddenly realised that it was not
a boy playing the guitar, but that the boy was
the guitar, and the guitar was the boy—they
seemed linked together, and that is really the
case. When there is a Roma pilgrimage here,
we have Roma singing and playing fiery music
in the magnificent Baroque church. But it is
not just this tempo—we had Roma women
singing a psalm, beautiful, resounding voices,
elongated singing. There are a variety of ranges,
not just the one that we are mainly used to.
MM: I recently read an anthropological study
making the case that Roma customs and
rituals are significantly adjusted to those of
the majority society. Do you see this
happening here?
JH: I think it’s quite important to point out
that we have two Roma groups here, and they
differ rather significantly. There is a group of
Roma—they are sedentary Roma. None of
them are really so-called Czech pre-war
Roma, because the latter didn’t survive the
war—they are Roma from eastern Slovakia,
where they lived sedentary lives in settlements
for centuries. And, although we might
perceive them as different, they have to a large
extent taken up our lifestyles. Essentially, they
live what we see as our own way of life; we can
understand it, including the rituals. I don’t
think that their rituals differ from ours. Yes,
of course, in terms of their family ties, the
extended family, but as far as Christian rituals
or sacraments are concerned, I would almost
say that they are not different—but rather they
mobilise what we have been abandoning. Our
society, the majority, the native Czech one,
has abandoned, or is abandoning, what
prevailed here before. I think that now, in a
way, these sedentary Roma live our traditional
patterns, very traditional ones, what we see as
traditional. This, for example, means that a
child is baptised as soon as possible after birth.
It is true that not many Roma get married,
but the reason is not that they do not care, that
they would want one day to go their separate
ways, not at all. It is actually because they
abuse the benefit system. When two people
come to you to have their child baptised, and
you see that the child has the father’s name,
although they are not married, then this
clearly signals something. And I always half-
jokingly ask them when they’ll get married.
They respond that they have plenty of time,
while I say, well, now you’re baptising your
fourth child—maybe the time has finally
come. They tend to link the church with the
state, and they do not want to be married
because of social benefits—so they do it their
own way. And, in the majority of cases, I
believe that they understand that the relation-
ship is for a lifetime. The families work—it is
really a paradox—in formal terms; the major-
ity of them cohabit but in reality these are
marriages. I would, of course, like them to be
married sacramentally in the church. That is
why we also baptise the children of unmarried
parents; it is an affirmative action in practice.
However—and now we come to the
second Roma group—there is a small group
that is called Vlach Roma, or Vlachs. Vlach
Roma arrived here in the 12th century from
the Balkans, and that is a completely different
route, and these are the Roma who are self-
contained, who were until relatively recently
nomadic, and their physiognomy is also
different. And this is the problematical group.
They are impenetrable; they will only marry
within the group. I know that when I talk to
sedentary Roma we understand each other, I
know that they understand what I’m saying.
While I think that with the Vlach Roma we
exist in separate worlds. With sedentary
Roma, I accept their manner of Christianity,
which is not entirely by the book—but I trust
them. This is not the case with the Vlach ones.
For them Christianity is magic, and magic for
me has nothing to do with Christianity. For
them—at least, the way I see it—Christianity
is a sort of a magic trick. I know that they will
come to the meetings prior to the baptism
ceremony because I want them to come, but

in fact they do not care. They want to use
me—or, actually, abuse me—they are super-
stitious. They know—and that is superstition
and not faith—that they want the baptism or
the funeral, that they have to have it, for, if
not, then they will be cursed for four genera-
tions—but they don’t respect me. A while ago
I came up with this image: they do not under-
stand me as a father, as a priest, as someone
who accompanies them in their spiritual lives.
They see me as a kind of Zeus, as a super
power that can help them, or, indeed, hurt
them. And if sometimes we talk about a Roma
funeral in grand style, then it will be for the
Vlachs. The other Roma take this occasion
seriously, of course, but they are more
restrained; while the Vlach Roma splash out
millions—not tens or hundreds of thousands,
but millions—at a funeral or a wedding. These
are huge sums of money—they are very rich
because of drugs; today they are the most
important group dealing in drugs in Brno.
I think if there is a foreseeable chance of
connecting the two groups—I mean the
Roma and the majority Czech population—
Figure 12 Graffiti in Gypsy house, Cejl, Brno.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 667
then I see it with the sedentary Roma, and I
think that, in this case, it is no longer a ques-
tion of initiating the process, it is already in
place, it is already happening in certain ways.
The supermarket Interspar, nearby in Cejl,
and which we nickname Romspar, is an
example. When it was opened, I felt like a
minority for the first time in my life, and the
Roma made up the majority. They pushed
the shopping carts around graciously, a
Roma girl weighed the lemons, it was a
really good experience.
I think, however, that this is not about to
happen with the Vlachs. They just have their
own very clear system. If I define culture as a
system of values and a legal system, etc., then
it is irreconcilable with the Vlach Roma,
because they have what is effectively a caste
system. It matters which family you are from.
You can see this because sometimes it
happens that, at a wedding, a man takes up
the woman’s surname—though this actually
isn’t so common—because he is marrying
into a higher caste—and yet the woman is
completely subjugated …
668 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

CV II

Hedina Tahirovi[caćecu očrn]i[caćecu

]t Sijer[ca ]t

CV II (Romanes) CV II (Bosnian)

‘Bijandilem ande Germanija. ‘Rodjen sam u Njema čkoj. c[aorn]

Dzivinas ande Holandija. Ž ivjeli smo u Holandiji.

Zco
a
[n
r]

Nashas ande Belgija. Preselili smo u Belgiju.

Ansurisardem. O ženio sam se.
zc[a
orn]

Zaposlio sam se: sakupljao sam staro

Cherdem buchi: chidem phuro sastruno pe željezo po ulicama.
zc[a
orn]

dromende. Rodilo mi se prvo dijete.

Bijanda mo angluno chavo. Ja sam sakupljao staro željezo. z[caorn]

Me chidem phuro sastruno. Rodilo mi se drugo dijete.

Bijanda mo dujto chavo. I dalje sam sakupljao staro željezo po
Durder chidem phuro sastruno pe dromende. ulicama.
Bijanda mo trinto chavo. Rodilo mi se treće dijete. ca
[ecu
]t

Von oprisarde man te chidav sastruno. Zabranili su mi da sakupljam željezo. z[caorn]

Rodem azhutipe. Na dije mandje. Tra žio sam pomoć . Nisu mi je dali.
zc[a
orn]

Naj man papira (lila)! Nemam papira!

Thaj durder chidem phuro sastruno pe I dalje sam sakupljao željezo po ulicama, z[caorn]

dromende, so aver te cherav. šta drugo da radim.

ca
so[rn]

Von akushle mrni “Rromani dej” thaj chun- Psovali su mi “cigansku majku” i pljuvali po
garde pe mrne mujeste. časti.
c[aorn]

Me akushlem len. Branio sam se.

Von phande man ande phandipeste. Strpali su me u zatvor.
A naj-man papira (lila)?! Nemam papira?!
Mi Rromni cherdarisarda: dzeli kataro udar
Ž ena se zaposlila: prosila je po kućama.
dziko aver udar thaj mangla.
Z[ca
orn] ca
[ecu
]t

Rodilo nam se četvrto dijete.

Bijanda mo shtarto chavo.
c[a
orn]

Ona je i dalje prosila po kućama.

Mrni Rromni durder mangla kataro udar
ca
e[]cut

Psovali su joj “cigansku majku” i pljuvali po

dziko aver udar.
časti.
Von akushle laki “Rromani dej” thaj
ca
o
[rn]

Bje žala je.

chungarde pe lako mujeste.
z[caorn]

Strpali su je u zatvor.
Voj mangla te nakhel.
A nema papira?!
Von phande las ande phandipeste.
A naj-la papira (lila)?! Tražio sam posao: nisu mi ga dali.
zca
[orn]

Rodem buchi: na dije mandje khanchi. Nemam papira!

Naj-man papira (lila)!
Nemam djece bez papira.
Naj-man chavore bizo papiri.
Nemam posla bez papira.
Naj-man buchi bizo papiri.
Nemam hljeba bez papira.
Naj-man mahno bizo papiri.
Mora te dzav durder. Moram dalje.

Kaj? A kuda?
Naj-amen papiri! Nemamo papira!
Kaj bizo papiri!’ Kuda bez papira?’
 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 669

CV II

‘I was born in Germany.

We used to live in Holland.
We escaped to Belgium.
I married.

I got a job: I gathered old iron on the streets.

I got the first child.
I gathered old iron.
I got the second child.
I still gathered old iron on the streets.
I got the third child.
They forbade me to gather iron.

I asked for help. They didn’t help me.

I don’t have my papers.

I still gathered old iron on the streets, what

else could I do.
They swore at my “gypsy mother” and they
spat at my honour.
I tried to protect myself.
They imprisoned me.
But I don’t have identity papers?!

My wife started to work; she begged at the

doors.
I got the fourth child.
She still begged at the doors.
They swore at her “gipsy mother” and they
spat at her honour.
She tried to escape.
They imprisoned her.
But she doesn’t have identity papers?!

I asked for job; they didn’t give me a job.

I don’t have papers!

I don’t have children without identity papers.

I don’t have job without papers.
I don’t have bread without papers.

I have to go far away.

But where? Previously unpublished poem; Romani,

We don’t have identity papers. Bosnian and English versions all by Hedina
Where without papers?’ Tahirovi[acću aočcrn]i[aćcu
e]t Sijer[ e]t.
670 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
The allure of Sulukule (1952)
Juliette de Baïracli Levy
… I set forth for Sulukule. The Gypsy quar-
ter is situated upon one of the seven hills of
Istanbul and is a fantastic place of unpaved
mud streets and minute houses, like some
strange elfin town when seen—as I first saw
it—in the hazy blue gloaming of a Turkish
winter. Every inch of the hillside is covered
with tiny hut-like tenements: unstable mush-
room places of wood and corrugated iron
and clay, with tiny candle-lit windows shin-
ing out upon the garbage-strewn alleyways
and open drains.
It was a piece of Gyspsy luck for me that
on my first visit to Sulukule I should meet
with the chai [young woman] Nadide Tek
and that she should take a liking to me and
invite me to her home. I followed her along
pathways ankle-deep in slime and mud and
then entered one of the elfin huts of
Sulukule. For me it was a house of delight
and every minute that I spent there was
unforgettable. I found once more in Turkey
the Gypsy life that I have known in the cara-
The Gypsies of Sulukule
Adrian Marsh
A thousand years of Romani cultural heri-
tage. The ‘Egyptians’ are described by
Byzantine authors in the 12th century as
‘soothsayers and sorcerers’ who told
fortunes and performed magic, but there are
earlier tantalising references to groups in
Constantinople called ‘Adsincani’ at the
vans of England and Provence and the caves
of Spain. The place thronged with brown
folk—the lithe, exciting Gypsy people; there
was the song of the crackling fire, and its
golden flowers spraying out into the dark
places of the room; and the old, familiar
music of the herbalist’s knife, as Djeylan
Tek, the mother of the family, cleaned the
great pile of roots and leafage filling the large
baskets at either side of her. She sat upon the
floor, the youngest of her nine living
daughters, Selman, sleeping against her
breast. (Djeylan had borne three sons also
but they had died in infancy.) When Selman
awoke, the mother gave the babe her brown
shrivelled breast while she worked on at her
herb-cleansing.
Excerpted from Juliette de Baïracli Levy
(1952) ‘The Gypsies of Turkey’, Journal of
the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd Series, No. 31
and reprinted here with permission of the
Gypsy Lore Society.
court of Basileus Constantine XI Monoma-
chus (AD 1042–55), who are usually identi-
fied with Gypsies. It would seem that the
Emperor requested assistance from this
group, who are described as descendants of
Symeon the Magician, and as a ‘Sarmatian
people’, to rid the royal hunting park of

ferocious beasts that were killing the game
animals kept for the Emperor and his guests
to hunt. The park was located nearby,
outside the walls in the area known as the
Mesotechion or ‘middle part’, and this section
of the Theodosian walls contained the ‘Water
Tower’ (Sulukule in Turkish), built by the
River Lycus (now buried beneath the Istan-
bul Metro). The meadows around the river
provided an obvious place to camp for what,
at that stage, was almost certainly a nomadic
group living in the black tents that later trav-
ellers and pilgrims passing through the
Byzantine Empire elsewhere record as the
dwellings of the ‘Romitoi’ or ‘Romiti’ (from
whence the modern ‘Romanlar’ stems).
These people were known by the Byzantines
as ‘Atsinganoi’ (giving us modern terms such
as ‘Tsigan’) or ‘Egyptians’, because of their
supposed connection with magic, and it is
from this latter term that we derive the
notion of ‘Gypsies’, a corruption of the
Greek ‘Aigupta’ (Egyptian).
Other references to Gypsies in the Byzan-
tine Empire are to be found, but none that
specifically describe their characteristics in
more elaborate terms, as these are generally
from the pens of church writers keen to stop
the citizens of Constantinople seeking to
have their fortunes told or to receive magical
remedies from the Egyptians. There is a clear
indication that they spoke a distinct
language, which one Byzantine writer, in
1415, described as a ‘babble’, unintelligible to
the surrounding populations. There are refer-
ences to acrobats, bear-leaders and shoe-
makers in the sources that demonstrate a
variety of occupations, though none referring
to Gypsies as musicians specifically (though
clearly the bear-leaders and acrobats may
have employed music as part of their acts). It
would seem therefore that the association of
music as a speciality of the Sulukule quarter
is a product of the Ottoman period, after the
conquest in 1453 of Constantinople.
The Ottoman period is an important point
for the cultural heritage of the Sulukule
neighbourhood as the community main-
tained a strong tradition that this area was
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 671
given to them after the taking of the city in
May 1453; the Conqueror Mehmed II was
supposed to have awarded this for the efforts
of the Gypsy troops in their first attack
against the Azı Kapi, or Gate of the Assault
(now on the edge of the Sulukule quarter),
clearly using them as ‘shock-troops’ to be
followed by the attack of the janissaries. This
tradition provided the local community with
the basis of a claim to historical occupation
since 1453, though by the population counts
undertaken during the early Ottoman period
in Constantinople/Istanbul, the numbers that
resided there were at first quite small. The
repopulation of the city in the 25 years
following the conquest brought large
numbers of Gypsies from Anatolia to the
area and increased the population of the
Sulukule neighbourhood rapidly. The posi-
tion of Gypsies in the military organisation
of the Ottomans, as metal-workers
(especially in the Tophane arsenal complex),
drovers, grooms and horse-trainers, porters,
powder-makers, fletchers, tent-makers and a
host of auxiliary roles, was an essential one in
the huge machinery that prosecuted the
campaigns of conquest engaged in by the
Ottoman sultans and their armies. The most
obvious position was one that European
observers commented upon (and sometimes
recorded in illustrations), that of musicians
leading the armies (a role that remains today
in the modern Turkish army for many
Gypsies undertaking their military service).
The tradition of music-making and the
training of children in the Gypsy community
through the guild system produced musi-
cians and dancers of the highest quality,
servicing the elites of the palace and pashas’
households throughout the Ottoman period.
These dancers and musicians were highly
paid and extremely important in the daily life
of the sultan and his court. Gypsy women
also worked as musicians (in the closed
harems of the palaces), storytellers, seam-
stresses and washer-women for the palace,
acting as mediators with the external world
for the secluded women of the palaces and
residences. Coffee-house puppeteers and
672 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
purveyors of folk tales, the Gypsies occupied
a specific and organised place in the complex
ethnic and social mosaic that was Ottoman
society. Music and dancing were so synony-
mous with Gypsy identity that even groups
of Armenian, Greek and Jewish dancing boys
and girls were known as ‘Gypsy’ by dint of
their occupation, and we find the evidence of
these performers in numerous Ottoman
miniatures that depict the festivals, proces-
sions and feast-days of the Ottoman calen-
dar. The masters and mistresses of their crafts
were located in the Sulukule quarter, where
the system of educating and training was
carried out through a complex ‘apprentice-
ship’ process that saw young children
progressing to accomplished and respected
musicians and dancers, then with age, to the
leaders and teachers of the next generation.
Not only were Gypsies in this neighbour-
hood the dancers and musicians but horse-
dealing and carting also played a valuable part
in the local economy. Porters and basket-
makers too lived in the area, close by the huge
markets of the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian
Bazaar, and in the reign of Ibrahim I the guild
of basket-makers paid for the reconstruction
of the pavilion that now bears their name on
the shores of the Golden Horn (1643, the
Sepetci Kasrı). In the city itself, Gypsies were
part of the numerous street-traders that plied
their wares in the neighbourhoods and on the
highways. The undercurrent of prostitution in
the district was, however, a constant theme in
Ottoman legislation from the 1530s onwards,
suggesting that each measure had little practi-
cal effect.
The importance of Sulukule as a centre for
high quality music and dance remained even
after the fall of the Empire in the early 20th
century, with the new Republican elites being
catered to by the professionals in the quarter.
The decline of the area began in the 1960s with
changing fashions and tastes that saw more
‘liberal’ sexual attitudes undermining the
traditional notions of propriety that these
entertainments had previously observed; and
the insalubrious nature of these, coupled with
a growing urban phenomenon of narcotics
abuse (general in all societies in this period)
further contributed to the decline of the neigh-
bourhood. A first series of demolitions took
place in the mid-1960s, associated with a
dramatic programme of Haussmann-style
urban ‘modernisation’, and resulting in a
fundamental shift of the quarter, both
geographically and from its old basis of cater-
ing to the elites to a more populist market. But
a cycle of poverty and deprivation had begun
with the moves, and the declining economy in
Sulukule was further undermined. Increas-
ingly the ‘new’ neighbourhoods of Neslişah cs]e[d
li
and Hatice Sultan (modern Sulukule) became
identified with social problems that were not
being addressed by the local or other author-
ities, and the Gypsy population became
further marginalised and limited by a narrow
and predominantly negative series of stereo-
types. The final chapter in this process took
place with the suppression of all the forms of
entertainment in the neighbourhood in the
mid-1990s, following an infamous Beyoğlu gb
ve[]r
police chief being relocated to ‘deal’ with the
population, reducing the entire Gypsy
community to abject poverty and immisera-
tion. Such conditions only worsened the situ-
ation whereby certain sorts of crime flourished
and alienated further the wider Romani popu-
lation of Istanbul and elsewhere, who
perceived Sulukule to be full of Çingeneler (the
most pejorative form of ‘Gypsies’), as opposed
to themselves as Romanlar.
The cultural heritage remained in the neigh-
bourhood and the community, however, with
the music and dance aspects remaining very
much alive. The historical heritage of Sulukule
was one that stood as the oldest Romani settle-
ment, and as the place where Gypsy identity
was first moulded and formed in the complex
shifts of time and empires. However, the final
complete destruction of the housing that was
occupied by Romani people took place in
February–March 2009, though much had been
demolished prior to this. The campaign that
was launched to save the area was ultimately
unsuccessful, despite the fact that numerous
challenges were mounted in the local courts
(and are still being pursued), and most recently

(August 2010) the European Court of Human
Rights has accepted the case brought by Istan-
bul advocates, the European Roma Rights
Centre and the Sulukule Romani Association
on five counts of discrimination; a remarkable
event as the Court does not normally accept
cases that are still in progress in the local
courts. In this, the Romani community has
been successful in its resistance to both the
local Fatih municipality and the state-initiated
Turkish Mass Housing Administration (TOK I[dot
İ). In the wider context, the confrontation
] Sulukule, studies have been undertaken by
between the community and the authorities
pitted the state against the weakest and most
vulnerable section of Turkish society, and
carried with it undertones of the conflict
between the conservative religious political
elements profoundly antagonistic towards
those perceived as irreligious, undesirable and
expendable.
The campaign could not extend beyond a
narrow support base amongst the wider
Romanlar communities, for the reasons
already stated—the ‘Gypsies’ in Sulukule
were ‘beyond the pale’ for the rapidly mobil-
ising majority of Turkish Romanlar, who
sought to demonstrate their religious
commitment to Islam (‘We are not Çingene,
we are kibar ve temiz—polite and clean, civi-
lised—Romanies’, was how one activist put it
in Adana), to the Turkish state and its anti-
minority policies (that have since radically
altered with the Turkish Government’s
democratically intended ‘Roma opening’)
(Roman açılımı initiative of late 2009–2010)
and to distance themselves from the Euro-
pean Roma rights movement. The Sulukule
Gypsies also adopted an antithetical attitude
towards the internationalisation of the
campaign, and didn’t wish to link the events
in the neighbourhood to similar anti-Gypsy
policies and initiatives in Dale Farm (UK),
Sofia (Bulgaria), Bologna (Italy) and else-
where, thereby losing the possibility for valu-
able support from the wider Roma rights
campaigns that sought to connect. Elements
of this movement were involved (notably the
European Roma Rights Centre, the European
Roma Information Office) and the European
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 673
Green parties organised a meeting in Brussels
that provided a platform for the Association
leadership to debate with the Mayor of the
Fatih municipality, but little emerged from
this initiative and no firm connections were
established with the broader movement at a
grass-roots level. In frequent meetings and
interviews, the topic of Sulukule was one that
was unknown to the majority of audiences I
spoke to during the years 2005–2009.
Many theses have been written about
urban geographers and planners (members of
the Bartlett School of University College
London submitted one alternative plan for
sympathetic redevelopment of the commu-
nity c.2007), and countless journalists,
documentary filmmakers, photographers and
artists became involved in various ways,
mostly in the context of the anti-gentrifica-
tion movement, the anti-globalisation move-
ment or because it became ‘fashionable’ for
non-Romani people to associate themselves
with this beleaguered group of Gypsies in
Istanbul, an increasingly popular destination
for the alternative arts, dance and perfor-
mance ‘crowd’ since 2002. This aspect of
internationalisation was perhaps the least
successful: it provided ‘material’ for non-
Romani researchers, journalists, artists, film-
makers, dancers and others, but the benefits
for the Sulukule Romanlar are less clear—the
trade-off was an unequal one that is so
frequent in the case of Romani and non-
Romani interactions. In fact, a number of
emergent ‘Roma experts’ came to be interloc-
utors and interpreters of the Romani
community (or, more frequently, the Romani
men in the community) and the campaign
became one of a process of unequal cultural
exchange rather than political mobilisation.
The hard work of a few dedicated activists
was ultimately unable to stop the demolition,
with a campaign that perhaps became domi-
nated by the narrow cultural concerns and
expressions of non-Romani activists and a
Romani elite who, by and large, were uncom-
fortable with the notions of asserting Romani
rights, as part of the larger resistance to the
674 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

assault upon Romani communities in Turkey 5366 for ‘Urban Renewal’ over other poor
and elsewhere in Europe. Such hesitancy communities, demonstrates that the planners
proved a weakness in the long run, together in municipal authorities see the Gypsies as
with a lack of coordination with other urban the least resistant ‘path’ and the most ‘desir-
renewal demolition projects that have able’ to remove. It may be that, with the
destroyed Romani neighbourhoods in Istan- recent government Roman açılımı initiative
bul and across Turkey over the past few years to improve the situation for Gypsies in
(Küçükbakkalköy and Kağıthane in Istanbul; gb
[evr] Turkey, such measures will be checked, and
Türgüt Reis in Mersin; Sür için in Diyarbakır; the Sulukule campaign will maybe have had
and others) in what has been, anecdotally at an impact upon such views and notified
least, a sustained effort to remove Gypsies municipalities that such communities will not
from prime development areas in the older go quietly nor unnoticed. It may also be that
city centres and ‘decant’ them to locations Romani communities will increasingly self-
many kilometres away. The predominance of organise, self-mobilise and determine, to a far
Romani neighbourhoods that have been greater extent, their own campaigns in the
subjected to the controversial 2005 Law No. future …

Last scenes/last poses: Sulukule erased

Figure 8 Corridor of house decorated with paintings by Gypsy children, Cejl, Brno (photo credit: Anna Krahulcová).

Matthieu Chazal

Sulukule—the wanton erasure of Sulukule— more than this. The last poses also capture the
has been a major and symbolic issue in the human vitality and resilience of the Roma
urban politics of Istanbul in recent years (as people of Sulukule—the exuberance of the
Adrian Marsh makes clear). Matthieu Chazal children (Figure 15), the vivacity of the
has spent a great deal of time there, photo- ‘yellow bride’ (Figure 20). Above all, we have
graphing the progressive destruction of the a sense of the strength of character, even the
neighbourhood. His images record the life of stoicism (Figures 16, 17, 19) in the images of
the Roma people and the death of the place. the women of Sulukule—as we also have in
They are of the inhabitants of Sulukule as the photographs of Nejla Osseiran (and no
they try, in desperate and extreme circum- doubt—despite her romantic, Gypsy-lore
stance, to hold their lives together. These last perspective—this is something that Juliette de
scenes document what, as a consequence of Baïracli Levy also beheld in the early 1950s).
ongoing enforced demolitions, comes to What the photographs of Matthieu Chazal
resemble a war-zone (Figures 13 and 14). make apparent is the complex nature of the
And they record the human cost of living in reality of Sulukule, and particularly of its
such a devastated landscape (Figure 13), a moment of approaching destruction.
landscape that may induce the desolation and
madness of suffering (Figure 21). But there is Kevin Robins
 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 675

Figure 13 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

Figure 14 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

676 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

Figure 15 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

Figure 16 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 677

Figure 17 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

Figure 18 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

678 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

Figure 19 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).

Figure 20 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).


Figure 21 (photo © Matthieu Chazal).
Gypsy lore Picaro
T.G. Ashplant
Describing the Zagundzhis, a Gypsy tribe
whom he encountered in Bulgaria in 1913,
Scott Macfie declared (1916, pp. 8–9):
‘They are Gypsies par excellence: in them the
Gypsy character, which among more
sophisticated tribes is wrapped in a habit of
Gentile (Gadzho) respectability, stands
proudly forth, naked, unconscious,
unashamed. They are … children; with a
child’s indifference to public opinion, a
child’s unquestioning acceptance of destiny, a
child’s instinctive timidity, a child’s sudden
outbursts of rage and equally sudden
recovery of temper, and at the same time a
child’s unreasoning happiness and a child’s
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 679
responsiveness to sympathy.… Lithe as
panthers, strong as lions, playful as kittens,
affectionate as dogs, one loved them as one
loves a dog.… They are scarcely human—but
they are the most beautiful of animals.’
Here is the romantic Other fully fledged:
instinctive and natural as children or animals,
the Gypsies are located in fantasy outside the
bounds of humanity. Such stereotyping, not
uncommon in the writings of Macfie and his
fellow Gypsylorists, represents a form of
Orientalism rooted in envy and desire, rather
than fear and hatred. Yet the dynamics of
imagination and identification to which such
680 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
desire gave rise, and their impact on the work
of the Gypsylorists, are complex and not
simply negative. In 19th-century Britain, a
powerful literary tradition, from Walter Scott
to George Eliot, used the figure of the Gypsy
as the ‘Other within’ to explore problematical
aspects of contemporary society—including
national identity, increasing industrialisation
and urbanisation, and gender roles. This
depiction of the Gypsy way of life, construed
as affording a glimpse of an alternative (desir-
able or threatening) to the growing centrality
of the urban and the industrial, could never-
theless lead to a disconnection between such
literary representations, and the actual people
supposedly portrayed. Hence Deborah Nord
(2006, p. 17) has posed a crucial question: ‘Is
it possible … to champion the Gypsies in
their oppression without engaging in the
potentially distorting process of personal
identification?’
In 1888, a group of enthusiasts formed the
Gypsy Lore Society (GLS). They were
strongly influenced by this literary tradition,
and especially by the key figure of George
Borrow, whose writings—which had power-
fully shaped perceptions of Gypsy culture,
and the meaning of the encounter between
Gypsy and gadjo (non-Gypsy)—the Gypsy-
lorists both celebrated and reinterpreted in a
more romanticised vein. Nevertheless, they
also sought to put Gypsy studies on a new,
more scientific basis. Aligning themselves
with contemporary developments in philol-
ogy, anthropology and folklore studies, these
mostly amateur scholars aimed at both a
greater rigour and a degree of institutionali-
sation of Gypsy studies. In the latter aim
they were at first unsuccessful: the GLS
lapsed after four years. But 15 years later, in
1907, John Sampson, Liverpool University’s
first librarian and a major philologist of
Romani, revived the Society. He secured the
services, as its secretary, and editor of its
Journal, of Robert Andrew Scott Macfie
(1868–1935), a Liverpool businessman—a
director of his family’s sugar refinery, and an
active member of the Liverpool Scottish, a
volunteer infantry battalion (for his biogra-
phy, see Ackerley, 1935; ‘Memories’, 1935;
Ashplant, 2007). Though not himself a major
scholar, Macfie was the driving force behind
the GLS’s successful second incarnation,
commissioning and editing a wide range of
articles, and encouraging research to fill
gaps in Gypsy studies (Mayall, 2004).
As someone whose deepest interests lay not
in business but in the arts, music and scholar-
ship, and as a man attracted to other men at a
time when the expression of same-sex desire
was illegal and harshly prosecuted, Macfie in
early adulthood had created a practically and
psychologically acceptable way of life through
positioning himself liminally. While carrying
out dutifully his responsibilities as a business-
man, in his free time he threw himself first into
the male comradeship of the Volunteers, and
then into the scholarly yet bohemian world of
the GLS. The Gypsylorists’ embrace of Gypsy
culture was a reaction against the strictures
and formality of middle-class life, a celebra-
tion of a healthy rural (rather than decadent or
hustling urban) way of living. Life in a caravan
on the open road fitted into the ethos of some
progressive cultural circles around 1900.
Macfie evoked this Edenic/utopian vision, in
describing to a correspondent what he would
encounter were he to visit a Gypsy village in
Eastern Europe at the end of winter (Macfie
to Stone, 5 May 1914):
‘there will be thousands of Gypsies feasting
…, celebrating the arrival of spring and the
resumption of nomad life after a comfortless
winter within the four walls of a house.… if
you were to walk through any of the Gypsy
villages which are found on the outskirts of
every town, you would be invited—no
matter who you were—to accept
hospitality.… Each family would have
sacrificed a sheep, with rites which are
certainly not Christian nor even, I think,
Mohammedan; and placed a golden
Napoleon in its mouth. They would make
you sit down, give you wine and raki
(spirits), and, selecting the daintiest morsels
from the stew, place them in your mouth,
feeding you in a way you have never been fed
since you left the nursery. All feuds and
quarrels are suspended during the festival,

and there is of course music and dancing, and
wild joy among the Nations of the Road who
are about to return to their home …’
In 1913, Macfie was invited to visit Bulgaria
by Bernard Gilliat-Smith. For Gilliat-Smith
(1883–1973), his first encounter with Gypsies
had represented freedom from his stiflingly
respectable upbringing. Now a junior British
diplomat, he had also become a prolific and
scholarly contributor to the Journal, tran-
scribing, translating and annotating Bulgar-
ian Gypsy folk-tales collected from different
groups whose dialects he had learned. After
visiting Athens and Salonika, Macfie arrived
in Varna in mid-May 1913, and visited vari-
ous Gypsy encampments, sometimes accom-
panied by Gilliat-Smith. His six-week stay in
the Balkans culminated in his using the fear
of being trapped in the country by the immi-
nent outbreak of the Second Balkan War as a
‘pretext’ to make his way from Varna to Ruse
on the Danube frontier with a band of
Gypsies, disguised as one of them. On his
return to England, he published both a short
description of his whole visit to the Balkans
in the Journal (‘Balkan Notes’), and a fuller
account of his journey in disguise—With
Gypsies in Bulgaria (WGB).
WGB reveals the complexity of Macfie’s
multiple (dis)identifications. His views of the
Balkans are based on prejudgment and igno-
rance (speaking neither Turkish nor any
Slavic language, he could converse only with
Romani-speaking Gypsies). He was utterly
dismissive of the Bulgarians and their
attempt at nation-building following inde-
pendence in 1878. His positive attitudes
bifurcated. He admired the Turks, both as
former rulers under whom—he asserted—
Bulgaria had been (and would still be) better
off, and as Muslims (deeply antipathetic to
Christianity, he celebrated Islam as an essen-
tially practical religion). But the central iden-
tification of the text is with the Gypsies.
Initially, he was drawn to the Zagundzhis, a
group of Mohammedan Gypsies with whom
he hoped to make his journey. Gilliat-Smith,
in his later synoptic account of the Gypsy
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 681
tribes of North-East Bulgaria, classified them
as nomadic Moslems, converted to Islam two
generations earlier (but hardly practising
their formal faith), living almost entirely by
begging in towns. He gave a lively account
which made it clear why they appealed to
Macfie as well as himself: proud of having no
trade, their needs reduced to bare necessities,
displaying a child-like playfulness, they were
‘the most happy-go-lucky set imaginable, and
in their rags and poverty appear to be the
happiest of all Gypsies to be met with in the
Balkans.… [T]hough superstitious, [they] are
entirely free from the trammels, both social
and religious, which beset members of other
tribes of Gypsies.’ (‘Petulengro’, 1915, p. 19)
When, however, their community leader
refused to support Macfie’s plan, he turned
instead to a group of Christian Gypsies, who
did agree to take him. Gilliat-Smith described
these Grebenáris as a nomadic Christian
group who circulated over Eastern Bulgaria,
and across the border into Romania. Suppos-
edly living by making combs from cattle
horns, in fact they were skilled horse rustlers.
Though Macfie was initially disappointed
with their apparent respectability, he warmed
to them once he discovered their true
nature—horse-thieves whose wives stole the
chickens that provided their daily dinner.
During the journey, he formed an intense,
erotically tinged romantic bond with Turi,
the son of the group’s leader. This attach-
ment enabled Macfie to construct this
dimension of his text as a celebration of the
antinomian. The Gypsies’ successfully
concealed law-breaking (horse rustling,
chicken stealing) parallels his own hidden life
of outlawed desire. While avoiding participa-
tion in their schemes, he identifies fully with
these law-breakers, taking immense pleasure
in persuading the Bulgarian mayor of a town
where they camp to (wrongly) set aside his
initial suspicion of them.
The power of the British tradition of
literary representations of Gypsies, and espe-
cially of Borrow’s writings, is evident both in
Macfie’s text (at every level from its overall
682 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
narrative arc to specific tropes) and in the
way he appears almost to have shaped his life
to its frame. Nord (2006, p. 71) describes
Borrow as having invented the persona of the
Romany rye ‘who devoted himself to the
preservation of Gypsy lore and abandoned—
even for a brief time—settled English life for
a nomadic sojourn among the peripatetic
Gypsies, a kind of Romany fellow traveller’.
Macfie could be said to have compressed this
experience into the single week of his jour-
ney in disguise. The ambivalent attitude of
Borrow’s protagonist Lavengro towards
worldly success, and his rejection of the plot
of masculine ambition, offered a template
within which Macfie could situate his own
alienation from the world of business.
The figure of the Gypsy could be used to
challenge and displace conventional models of
masculinity; in the Gypsy family romance,
‘the son can be said to overcome his father
through rejecting a certain idea of mastery and
opting out of conventional manly success’.
Lavengro’s identification with Gypsies, and
especially their language, offers an escape
from oedipalisation: ‘It takes him beyond the
search for paternity and lineage … to the
discovery of fraternity.’ Macfie’s text too can
be seen as portraying the ‘masculine world of
the picaresque tradition’, which ‘celebrates
fraternity and eschews heterosexual domestic-
ity’ while ‘reproducing the cross-class nature
of the picaro’s male companionship’ (Nord,
2006, pp. 13, 86, 91). Alienated from his father
by the expectation that as eldest son he would
enter the family business (an alienation rein-
forced by religious differences), and close to
his mother (whose death when he was 28
affected him deeply), Macfie transposed this
family constellation onto his Gypsy compan-
ions. He despised Turi’s father Petrika, the
group’s leader, as boring and unadventurous,
while admiring and celebrating the cunning
and energy of his mother, Totana. His
burgeoning friendship with Turi was
constructed partly in a shared quasi-adoles-
cent defiance of the impositions of duty
towards ‘the old man’; and his desire was
consummated in their becoming po-phral
(blood brothers). The Bulgarian journey, and
the encounter with Turi, constituted a psychi-
cally charged arena within which Macfie could
express and explore patterns of affection and
affiliation constrained in his everyday life.
The GLS founders were the first genera-
tion in Britain whose fascination with
Gypsies became part of a wider bohemian
way of life. Key members in Liverpool,
including Sampson, Macfie and the painter
Augustus John, belonged to a bohemian
milieu of academics and artists around the
University Club. Several prominent Gypsy-
lorists led lives characterised by ‘sexual
heterodoxy’ and ‘the self-conscious uncon-
ventionality of their personal styles’ (Nord,
2006, p. 131). Macfie’s narrative can be read
as a same-sex variant of the dominant hetero-
sexual trope of the exotic, seductive Gypsy
woman found in their writings. The culmi-
nating moment is an erotic epiphany in the
Turkish bath in Razgrad. He perceives Turi’s
‘dark and muscular body’ as
‘an ancient bronze statue that had been part
of the building ever since the good Turk
reared it in the centre of their town, between
the mosques, houses of God, to be a temple
of cleanliness, temperance, and health … it
seemed as though one of the three thousand
statues which were erected at Olympia to
commemorate athletes, had been discovered’.
(Macfie, 1916, pp. 88–89)
Turi’s portrayal here could be seen as parallel
to the alluring but static representations of
Gypsy women analysed by Nord: ‘Wordless
and motionless, they possess the erotic
power of the odalisque’ (2006, p. 144). The
‘ancient bronze statue’ would then form a
still more passive counterpart to the silent,
unmoving odalisque.
Such a reading of Macfie’s writings empha-
sises those dynamics of projection and iden-
tification which construct and constrain the
Other as a fantasy object serving only to
fulfil the needs of the observing/desiring/
writing subject. Macfie’s psychic, familial,
social and economic circumstances, and the

literary and scholarly traditions in which he
participated, combined to create a vision
(gaze) in which his celebration of the
Gypsies’ otherness, his envy of their freedom
from the constraints of rationality by which
his life is bound, positions them as other than
themselves. Turi, a Christian Gypsy horse-
thief, is transmuted into a Greek athlete, a
Muslim genius loci.
Nevertheless, there is another dimension
to this relationship. At times Macfie, like
some fellow Gypsylorists, also revealed an
awareness of projections and identifications
involved, and his own investment in them,
which tended to overlay the reality of
contemporary Gypsy life in Britain with
imagery of a rural idyll. More importantly,
those same processes which led to romantici-
sation and distortion of Gypsies and their
culture, also channelled the energy which
fuelled the GLS’s drive to record and
preserve Romani language, songs and stories,
and to challenge negative stereotyping and
the legislative proposals it supported. They
led Macfie to his unflagging efforts to record,
analyse and publish, through the Journal,
accounts of historical and contemporary
Gypsy language and culture. Moreover, in
contrast to developments elsewhere in
Europe, especially Germany, where Gypsies
were being classified within the new disci-
pline of criminology as inherently criminal,
and coming under harsher controls, Gypsy-
lorists resisted efforts to settle or convert
Gypsies, and refuted allegations of general
law-breaking (Heuss, 2000; Mayall, 2004).
The degree to which projection and identi-
fication shaped perception of the Gypsy
Other varied. One could contrast Gilliat-
Smith’s and Macfie’s shared enthusiasm for
the Zagundzhis with their respective attitudes
to the Grebenáris: the former amusedly
observant but detached, the latter passion-
ately engaged. In WGB, Macfie’s celebration
of his Gypsy companions as skilful law-
breakers parallels (and subtly proclaims) his
own status as outside the patriarchal policing
of desire. The text, closing with his sorrowful
parting from Turi and a painful ‘relapse …
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 683
into civilization’ (WGB, p. 139), has become a
narrative of thwarted romance. Nor was this
personal bond fleeting. On his return to
England, Macfie, learning that Turi had been
arrested on a (probably trumped-up) charge
of murder, paid for a leading Bulgarian lawyer
to defend him. Macfie’s desiring perception
linked him to Turi as a (blood) brother Other.
The centrepiece of ‘Balkan Notes’ was a
Latin footnote describing an obscene enter-
tainment with simulated homosexual sex that
Macfie and Gilliat-Smith had witnessed in a
Gypsy café in Varna. Macfie was determined
to see into print a statement (however guarded)
that sexual desire between men existed (and
always had). He wrote to Gilliat-Smith (15
December 1913) that recent publications in
Classical scholarship opened the possibility
that the Gypsies had preserved a performance
which was ‘a direct descendant of the Thracian
mysteries, from which the Greeks borrowed
the worship of Dionysus, & from which there-
fore issued Greek dramatic art’.
Macfie’s liminal self-positioning, as a resis-
tance to patriarchal pressure and sexual
outlawing, led him to a fraternal affiliation
with the equally liminal Gypsies. This
produced a commitment to Gypsy studies and
(during the intensified liminality of the foreign
journey in disguise) a romantic bonding. That
journey in turn provoked two publications, in
which encounters with Gypsies are held to
show that love and desire can exist between
men. Taken as a whole, Macfie’s writings
range from a fully stereotypical romanticisa-
tion, through awareness of a more complex
and troubled contemporary reality, to what
might be termed a ‘creative misreading’ in
which encounters with Gypsies make possible
an oblique critique of British attitudes to
gender and sexuality, and friendship across the
boundaries of nation and class.
References
Ackerley, F.G. (1935) ‘Friend of all the world: a memoir
of Robert Andrew Scott Macfie’, Journal of the
Gypsy Lore Society (3rd series) 14 [Special
number], pp. 5–43.
684 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Ashplant, T.G. (2007) Fractured Loyalties: Masculinity,
Class and Politics in Britain, 1900–30. London:
Rivers Oram.
Heuss, H. (2000) ‘Anti-Gypsyism research: the creation
of a new field of study’, in T. Acton (ed.) Scholarship
and the Gypsy Struggle, pp. 52–67. Hatfield:
University of Hertfordshire Press.
Macfie, R.A.S. (1914) ‘Balkan notes. By Andreas’,
Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society New Series 7(1),
pp. 41–59.
Macfie, R.A.S. (1916) With Gypsies in Bulgaria, by
Andreas (‘Mui Shuko’). Liverpool: Henry Young &
Sons.
Reciprocity, a memory
Ilona Tomova
When I was a little child, my parents used to
send me to my grandparents’ village to spend
the summer. The village was a small one,
isolated at the foot of the Balkan mountains,
in the north-eastern part of Bulgaria,
scattered on three distanced hills. My grand-
parents lived in the first house of the last
neighbourhood.
There were only old people left in the
village. The younger ones moved to the
towns in the 1940s and 1950s, during
the collectivisation of the farmland. And
since the village was small and distanced
from all important administrative centres,
neither the control nor the care of the
Bulgarian Communist Party was noticed
there. There wasn’t even electricity or
water—we were using gas lamps and were
bringing water from wells and springs. Left
all alone, the old people developed a brilliant
system of mutual assistance and care, which
was automatically introduced to every
newcomer. They provided their living with
the crops from their land and the products
they got from their animals. Pensions were
low, but all the people were breeding several
extra pigs, calves and lambs, which they were
Mayall, D. (2004) Gypsy Identities 1500–2000: From
Egipcyans and Moon-Men to the Ethnic Romany.
London: Routledge.
‘Memories of R.A. Scott Macfie, by his friends’ (1935)
Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (3rd series) 14
[Special number], pp. 47–110.
Nord, D.E. (2006) Gypsies and the British
Imagination, 1807–1930. New York: Columbia
University Press.
‘Petulengro’ [Gilliat-Smith, B.] (1915–16) ‘Report on
the Gypsy tribes of north-east Bulgaria’, Journal
of the Gypsy Lore Society New Series 9(1),
pp. 1–54.
selling to the local cooperative farm in order
to gain some supplementary income.
The village was so insignificant and poor
that there weren’t even any Gypsies in it.
However, several Gypsy families (always the
same ones) would arrive every spring, in
order to work as shepherds and herdsmen.
My grandfather placed his father’s old empty
house at their disposal, totally for free. All the
villagers were paying a small sum of money to
the shepherds for the animal care, and in addi-
tion were providing them with food—twice a
month, according to an arranged schedule.
In those days when Aishe, the shepherd’s
wife, came with her small daughter in order
to take provisions from us, my grandmother
used to wake me early in the morning, when
it was still very dark. I then had to sweep the
yard and the rooms, to water the flowers, to
churn up butter and to bring water, all before
the arrival of the guests. They used to come
at about 7 o’clock. While I was doing my
duties, my grandmother was milking the
cows, cooking delicious meals, gathering
fresh vegetables and lots of fruits from the
garden. Then she and Aishe would talk for an
hour or so, while the little girl and I were

eating, or picking flowers, or playing in the
meadow.
One year, one day, however, everything
went wrong. My grandmother was kept busy
in the garden, and it was my grandfather who
came to wake me up. The previous night I
had read in my bed until very late, and in the
morning it proved very hard for me to open
my eyes. My grandfather came into the room
for the second time, pulled my hand gently
and, in order not to wake up my brother,
whispered:
‘Get up, it’s past 5 o’clock, you won’t be
ready for Aishe’s arrival.’
I just turned my back on him. He pulled at
me again:
‘Get up, my child, it’s time …’
‘Oh, grandpa, in a while …’
‘Get up, my child, get up!’
‘And what will happen if I get up in half an
hour? I just won’t sweep this morning!
Aishe won’t even notice! Why should we do
all these preparations? Big deal, Aishe’s
coming …’
He froze. Then he turned around quietly and
went out of the room. I heard him talking to
my grandmother: ‘Tane, what’s going on
here? What kind of person are we bringing
up in our house? It’s a scandal!’ My grand-
mother hurried into the bedroom, she was
pale, and she repeated several times: ‘What
have you done, my child? How could you?’
We met Aishe and saw her off. My grand-
father came back in the evening. He didn’t
say a word to me. He asked my grandmother
to serve his meal in their bedroom. The house
became icy silent. Grandpa didn’t utter a
word; he was angry, and no one else dared to
talk. On the third day following, in the
afternoon, he spoke to my brother:
‘Listen, my child, I’ll tell you a story … A
long time ago, during the Middle ages, the
Popes in Europe invented a special system for
collecting money—the indulgence. If
someone committed a sin, it was no longer
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 685
enough to confess in order to get absolution
from the priest—he had to buy indulgence …
But it wasn’t that way here … God loved us,
and that’s why he sent us people—the
Gypsies … You have to welcome them, to
listen to what they say, and to help them as
you can, and God will be happy that his
people are nice and treat each other equally
and that his will is respected … Only
immoral people can leave an orphan without
food, or a guest without respect, or treat
others with haughtiness …’
I was standing with my head down, and just
wanted to be invisible …
My grandfather didn’t speak to me for
three very long weeks … It took me much
more time to accommodate, in my own
mind, the moral system of reciprocity that
ruled in this small mountain community.
Actually, people there didn’t at all look at the
shepherds’ and herdsmen’s provision with
food as at a payment-in-kind. To provide
families without a cow with milk and diary
products, and those without vegetables or
fruit with the missing products was vitally
important for the survival of the person or
the family, and neighbours always voluntar-
ily and graciously provided these services as
long as they were needed. Roma families
received the same kind of treatment as every-
one else in the village would. They paid back
with the same coin. When my grandfather
badly cut his leg and wasn’t able to walk
three kilometres to buy the bread for all of us
and for his brother’s widow, Aishe’s husband
did it for us, for almost a month. If the men
gathered to chase wild boars or wolves in
order to protect their crops or herds, the
village shepherd would join them even
though he personally didn’t suffer the
animals’ encroachments. Even the acts that
we, the children coming from the cities,
regarded and understood as ‘begging’, had a
quite different meaning for the local people.
They were convinced that Roma asked only
good people for money, food or dress, and
that their blessings for the generosity of the
givers were sufficient payment—because
they would be accepted by God.
686 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

‘Kein Meer lag uns zu Füssen’

Mariella Mehr
‘Kein Meer lag uns zu Füssen, ‘O dorav naj paša mare punre, ca
so[rn]

im Gegenteil, wir sind ihm Aman leske naklam,

mit knapper Not entgangen, als Sar phenol pe,
uns—kein Unglück, sagt man, kommt allein— —ni jek bibaht kokoro ni resel—
der stählerne Himmel ans Herz fesselte. O sastruno devel pea mare ile pelo.

Umsonst haben wir an den Schädelstätten

Gote kaj si e šere nange, ivjake o
carsn[]

um unsere Mütter geweint,

Amen amare dajenge rujam
und tote Kinder mit Mandelblüten bedeckt,
Thaj e mule čhaven e mandeleske patrnca
ca
[orn]

sie zu wärmen im Schlaf, dem langen.

učhardam,
ca
[orn]

In schwarzen Nächten sät man uns aus Te tataras len, an sajekutno suno.
um dann in den Morgenstunden,
die Erde von uns Nachgeborenen An kale rać a čhuden amen
ca
[e
cu]t ca
[orn]

leerzufegen. Thaj napal an detharinake sahata

E phuv amendar, nevebijandendar ču či ca
[orn] ca
[orn]

Noch im Schlaf such’ ich Dir Wildkraut und meken.

Minze; An suno rodav tuke vošenge čara thaj menta ca
so[rn] ca
[orn]

Fall ab, Auge, sag ich zu Dir, rupuni;

und dass Du nie in die Gesichter sehen sollst, Nikana an lengo čham te na dikhes, ca
[orn]

wenn ihre Hände zu Stein werden. Te lenge vasta bara kardona.

Darum das Wildkraut, die Minze,

Godoleske e vošenge čara, e menta.
sie liegen dir still auf der Stirn,
Von pe ćo čikat pašljon,
ca
[ecu
]t

wenn die Mäher kommen.

Für alle Roma, Sinti und Jenischen,
für alle Jüdinnen und Juden,
für die Ermordeten von gestern und die von
morgen.’
Kana e aindzara resena.
Sa e Romenge, Sintenge thaj Jenischenge,
sa e Judenge, save si mudarde arati thaj
save tajsa avena mudarde.’

* *
 ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 687

‘No sea lay at our feet,

instead, we’d only just managed
to get away when
—never rains but it pours—
the starry heaven nailed us to its heart.

We wept at the place of skulls

for our mothers—without hope.
We strewed almond blossom on dead
children
to warm them in their final sleep.

They sow us in the blackest night

To sweep the earth clear of us—the future
Generations—when morning comes.

Even sleeping I search out wild herbs and

mint
For you. Pluck out my eyes, I say
—let us not see into their faces
when their hands turn to stone.

Here, the wild herbs, the mint.

Placed on your brow for when
The reapers come.

For all the Romany, the Sinti and the

Jenische
for all the Jewesses and Jews
for all the murdered of yesterday and
tomorrow.rlsquo;

From Mariella Mehr, Nachrichten aus dem

Exil, Klagenfurt/Celovec: Drava Verlag,
reproduced by permission of Drava Verlag;
Romanes translation by Rajko Djuri[aćcue]t; English
version by Ron Butlin and Regi Claire.
688 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Publishing and promoting Roma literature
Thomas Busch
The quantity of writing, past and present, on
‘Gypsies’ is matched only by the dearth of
space and attention accorded to literary texts
written by Roma themselves. One of the few
publishers to have made it their business to
publish books by Roma authors on a steady
basis is Drava Verlag of Klagenfurt/Celovec,
Austria. The interest in minorities and
linguistic diversity relates, in large measure,
to the history of the publishing house itself,
which grew out of the Nazi-era movement of
active resistance against the National Socialist
Germanisation policy and the expulsion of
the Slovenian-speaking population from
Carinthia.
The first thing to appear was the 1993
work by literary scholar Beate Jordan,
Geboren bin ich vor Jahrtausenden [I Was
Born Centuries Ago], which was for many
years the only monograph to deal systemati-
cally with important authors and works of
Roma literature. The first book from the pen
of a Roma author published by Drava was
the two-volume life story of the musician
Mišo Nikolić from Serbia (… und dann
o
carsn
[] ca[ue]t
zogen wir weiter [And Then We Moved On]
and Landfahrer [Vagrants]). The foreword
was provided by Mariella Mehr, a writer of
Yenish origin from Switzerland, who
achieved wide fame and literary recognition
largely through her novels. Several of her
books took as their central theme the
inhumane policy pursued in Switzerland into
the 1970s, of which she herself was a victim,
which consisted in systematically taking the
children of the ‘travelling people’ out of their
families and putting them into children’s
homes or foster families. Three volumes of
poetry by Mariella Mehr followed: Nachrich-
ten aus dem Exil [News from Exile], Wider-
welten [Counterworlds], Im Sternbild des
Wolfes [Under the Sign of the Wolf], two of
them with translations into Romani.
Together with her fellow writer Veijo
Baltzar, a member of the Kale community in
Finland, Mariella Mehr was also one of the
driving forces behind an international gather-
ing of Roma authors. This was made possible
by Dragoslav Dedović, a Drava author from
ca[cue]t
the former Yugoslavia, who managed to win
over the Deutsche Welle radio station, which
employed him as a journalist, to the idea of
such a meeting. It was held at Cologne in
November 2001 (with organisational support
from Drava) under the title ‘Vorba le
Romengi—The Voice of the Roma’, bringing
together for the first time representatives
of contemporary Roma literature from
Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland,
Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic,
Serbia and Belarus. This initiative was
extended the following year, in July 2002,
when the founding congress of the Interna-
tional Romani Writers Association (IRWA)
was held near Helsinki. Over some years—
while they could still fall back on Finnish
government funding—the Association
attempted for the first time to raise the profile
of Roma literature, scattered as it is over
many continents, countries and languages,
and to do so in a strictly literary, and hence
non-ethnicising, context. The project of
publishing a selection of Roma literary works
in Romani and other European languages
under the title ‘The Romani Library’, which
had also been discussed in Cologne, ulti-
mately fell through (despite an excellent eval-
uation report by the expert committee) on
account of the European Commission’s
unwillingness to provide financial backing.
Publishing houses from five member states
were involved in the project.
Despite this, Drava Verlag went on
publishing books by Roma authors, includ-
ing Ilija Jovanović (Dromese rigatar—Vom
ca[cue]t
Wegrand [From the Wayside]) and Jovan

Nikolić, who is regarded today as one of the
ca[cue]t
most eminent of literary writers of Roma
extraction (Zimmer mit Rad [Room with a
Wheel] and Weißer Rabe, schwarzes Lamm
[White Raven, Black Lamb]). Besides these
books, five other volumes have appeared,
The First Roma Pavilion (Venice 2007)
Tímea Junghaus
An event of historical importance marks the
beginning of the Roma Cultural Movement in
Europe, the First National Exhibition of
Autodidact Gipsy Artists in 1979, organised
by Ágnes Daróczi and hosted by the Pataki
Community Centre in Budapest. This
exhibition raised international awareness,
generated enthusiasts and supporters of Roma
culture, and had a long-lasting propagating
effect on Central/Eastern European Roma
cultural production. The third such display, in
2000, was still organised in a museum of
ethnography (in Budapest), rather than an
institute of contemporary art—as if the exhib-
its were the exotic objects of an alien civilisa-
tion. Serge Poliakoff, Otto Mueller, even
Sandra Jayat, were welcomed to the artistic
context they actually lived in, the avant-garde.
In the second part of the 20th century we
finally find the odd creative Romani writer,
artist or film director making self-representa-
tions, but when (after 1971) Roma artists
claimed greater artistic recognition, their
works were still relegated to the status of
collective (i.e. folk, popular) manifestations
of Roma culture, of exotic Roma objects.
When the artists were not reduced to
anonymity, their fate was circumscribed by
being presented, over more than three
decades, in marginal institutions that did not
have the necessary infrastructure for contem-
porary artistic creation and exhibition. In
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 689
comprising orally transmitted fairy tales,
stories and songs. The Austrian-based
project embraces speakers of diverse varieties
of Romani, young academics with Roma
backgrounds and scholars with linguistic and
ethnological leanings.
1985, Sandra Jayat organised the Première
Mondiale d’Art Tsigane, the first world exhi-
bition of Roma artists, at the Conciergerie in
Paris. The exhibition was again an interna-
tional success, which did not manage to
break into the art scene, but its significance
was in keeping Europe’s Roma artists
inspired, and the creative production that
was stimulated was outstanding. The initia-
tors of these internationally acknowledged
events were pioneers, but the time was
evidently not yet right.
Between 1980 and 1990, ‘social inclusion’
became an important pan-European agenda,
with a particular focus on the situation of the
Roma population, and although it did not have
a component of ‘cultural inclusion’, it
prepared the ground for the second, and more
momentous, wave of the Roma Cultural
Movement. The establishment of the First
Roma Pavilion at the 52nd International Art
Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia—is the
climax of the process that began in Central and
Eastern Europe in the mid-1990s, when the
interpretation of the cultural practice of
minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift,
commonly referred to as the ‘cultural turn’
(Figure 22). With the introduction of the idea
of a cultural turn, the notion of cultural
democracy also became crystallised in the
debates carried on at various public forums.
Civil society was gaining in strength, and civil
690 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6

Figure 22 The First Roma Pavilion at the Venice Contemporary Art Biennale, 2007 (photo © Nihad Nino Pu šija).

politics began to appear on the scene, both of artistic cultural discourse. When Roma
prerequisites for cultural democracy. This intellectuals defined one of their chief
shift of attitude derived from concerns specific missions as the exploration and presentation
not only to ethnicity, but also to society, of Roma art, and the removal of stereotypes
gender and class. And with it came an interest and prejudices from the image of the Roma,
in exploring the history and value of Roma they only expected to face a scarcity of
culture. Not only had it become obvious that resources and very difficult circumstances
the arts are laden with stereotypes about the under which to realise their ideas. What they
Roma, but also that the very principles of did not anticipate was that the international
cultural classification characterised the visual cultural scene and transnational cultural
art of the Roma in anachronistic and offensive policy would become sensitive towards, and
ways—as naive, barbarian, primitive, primor- interested in, the same cultural issues and
dial, archetypal or autodidactic. Roma art was problems that they were concerned with,
being evaluated solely by non-Roma experts, and that this context would even be apprecia-
who excluded it from official canons on the tive and supportive. During this second wave
grounds that it was outdated, merely illustra- of the Cultural Movement, Roma artists have
tive or, at best, nostalgic. been successful participants of several interna-
Roma artists rarely had the opportunity to tional contemporary art events.1 However,
Figure 19 The First Roma Pavilion at the Venice Contemporary Art Biennale, 2007 (photo credit: Nihad Nino Pusija).

experiment with new techniques, and they for Roma artists, acknowledging their identity
could exhibit only in community centres, and cultural heritage is still a double-edged
venues that are marginal from the perspective sword, despite the fact that the increasingly

vigorous discourse on Roma identity and
representation, together with the appearance
of Roma cultural experts, has begun to
dismantle this sophisticated machinery of
cultural oppression.
By now, Roma culture has generated such
interesting new phenomena as the Museum of
Romani Culture in Brno, a professionally
installed museum space with multiple func-
tions and a carefully elaborated strategy of
presenting the history of Roma representa-
tion accurately and engagingly. Most of the
museum’s staff are Roma, and it is a place
where everyone in the populous Brno Roma
community can spend time constructively.
The building is decorated by a large mural,
painted by David Zeman and his team: the
Roma Road is screaming for recognition, with
vigorous oranges, reds and blues. Similarly
momentous are those attempts that present
Roma artists in the official spaces of contem-
porary culture. The 2004 exhibition ‘Hidden
Holocaust’ was the first in Hungary to open
the gates of Mu°csarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest,
u[dac]bl
that bastion of contemporary art, to Roma
artists. This was in effect the first time that
Roma artists (11 in all) could exhibit in an
official space of contemporary art, and could
use the infrastructure of the institution to
realise their works. A glimpse at the exhibits
of the ‘Second Site’ show, held in London in
March 2006, will also help to convince us that
the way we are now invited and allowed to
think about Roma visual art has changed irre-
versibly: a paradigm shift has finally occurred.
Despite the many demonstrations (institu-
tions, exhibitions) of the advantages of
acknowledging the culture of the Roma
minority, of how it improves the image of the
Roma in society and the self-esteem of Roma
individuals, however, it is still being debated
as to whether there is any need for exclusively
Roma institutions, spaces and events. Thus,
there have been questions as to whether there
was a need for a Roma Pavilion at the 2009
Venice Biennale.2 The answer may involve
another question: without creating an inde-
pendent Roma Pavilion, how is it possible to
introduce Roma artists to the international art
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 691
scene and the Roma community? The Roma
Pavilion did not reinforce the segregation of
the Roma (it was not a ‘cultural ghetto’) when
it represented Roma culture as distinct from
national cultures. Identity-based cooperation,
as in the case of this Biennale, is necessary, not
because we have a ghettoising or separatist
agenda in the representation of Roma culture,
but because Roma representation does not
have a well-developed infrastructure that can
be relied on, and because there has been exten-
sive evidence that contemporary Roma art has
not been able to find its niche of representation
within the existing national structures.
There is no other way that Roma artists
could have access to the infrastructure neces-
sary for international appearance: exhibition
spaces, a communications campaign, a
contemporary arts institution that manages
logistics, etc. Of course, in an ideal world
Roma artists would be able to exhibit in any
of the European pavilions, but it is a fact
that no artist of Roma origin has been
presented at the Venice Biennale throughout
its 112-year history. It was an emphatic part
of the 2009 curatorial concept that the
display should endeavour to counter wild
romantic stereotypes and misconceptions
about Gypsy culture, fostering thereby a
more self-assured Roma identity. It also
wanted to demonstrate that Roma artists
speak a visual language that is understandable
all over the world, and that this language is in
line with the ‘sophisticated, problem-
conscious’ approach of contemporary art.
The title of the exhibition, ‘Paradise Lost’,
evoked the possibility—and necessity—that
the majority society should, finally, give up,
not only negative stereotypes about the
Roma, but also its exotic taste for ‘Gypsy
romances’. The self-image that emerged at
this display, through the reinterpretation of
Roma identity, was not homogeneous or
stable. Our conviction now is that the identity
of the Roma can serve as a model for a new
kind of European transnational identity, and
that it is capable of cultural adaptation to, and
negotiation with, changing circumstances.
This is how the artists invited represented
692 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
themselves, for this is how they experience
their Gypsy identity. But while the goals of
the Pavilion included the representation of
this flexible identity, the individual artists
were not being requested to deal with their
own identity. Not every one of the artists in
the Pavilion is of Roma origin. Nihad Nino
Pušija, for instance, who lives in Berlin, has
o
carsn[]
been documenting the life of a Gypsy family
for two decades, and had built strong links
with this minority before learning (about two
years ago) that he himself has Roma ances-
tors. The Finnish Kiba Lumberg’s video work
ends with this sentence: ‘I don’t recall being a
Gypsy, but I have Gypsies in my dreams, and
Gypsies surround me.’
All the artists on show embrace and trans-
form, deny and deconstruct, oppose and anal-
yse, challenge and overwrite, the existing
stereotypes in a confident and intellectual
manner, reinventing Roma traditions and their
elements as contemporary culture. The arche-
typical motives provide a firm underlying
sentiment, but the results unexpectedly
suggest a new mode of interpretation, one that
is created by the Roma artists themselves. The
envisioned alternative identity highlights the
strengths of the Roma, their capacity for
fusion, their sense of glamour, humour and
irony, adaptability, mobility and transnation-
alism. The intention of opposing and decon-
structing existing (mis)representations and
promoting contrary possibilities, generates an
irresolvable dichotomy, manifesting itself in
an art that is laden with sorrowful beauty,
traces of paranoia, schizophrenia and post-
traumatic emotions. The images set models
before the majority society, as well as the
Roma, representing the Roma in terms of a
collectivity of civilised, successful individuals
whose dignity is worthy of acknowledgement.
Visual art has the palpable capacity to define
and communicate particularised ideas, as well
as collective cultural codes. Roma artists have
sought to mobilise this capacity, but until
recently they were condemned to anonymity
and their voices have been hushed. If nothing
else, the ‘Paradise Lost’ exhibition stood as
evidence that their voices are now being heard,
and will continue to resonate into the future.
Notes
1
1
A few examples: ‘János Balázs, Monographic
Exhibition’, Hungarian Institute, Paris; ‘“We are
what we are”—Aspects of Roma Life in
Contemporary Art’, Minoriten Galerie, Graz,
Austria, 2004; the exhibition travelled to Slovakia,
Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary
(2006); ‘Tibor Balogh, Teréz Orsós, International
Sinti Festival’, Hungarian Institute, Berlin, 2004;
‘Hidden Holocaust’, Mu°csarnok/Kunsthalle
ud
[a
b
c]l
Budapest, March 2004; ‘North and South LAB,
Culture and Colonisation’, Tranzquartier, Vienna,
March 2005; ‘Strategies of (In)visibility’, Camden
Arts Centre, London, May 2005; ‘Omara at the
Rijeka Arts Biennial’, Rijeka, Museum of Modern
Art, November 2005; ‘Second Site Exhibition’,
2006.
2 The First Roma Pavilion at the Venice
2
Contemporary Art Biennale, in 2007 was initiated
by the Open Society Institute Foundation, and
supported by Allianz Kulturstiftung and the
European Cultural Foundation.

El rey de rumba
Garth Cartwright
If Fawlty Towers’ long-suffering Catalan
waiter Manuel had been gifted a musical
hero, it surely would have been as a burly
Barcelonan Gypsy known simply as Peret.
For more than 50 years Peret has been
hugely popular across Spain—especially in
Catalonia where his status is comparable to
that of, say, Tom Jones to the Welsh—with
his fame spreading across Continental
Europe, Latin America and even into
Africa. But the closest he came to winning
a UK audience was representing Spain at
the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest (held in
Brighton). And that event was won by a
Swedish quartet singing chirpily about
Waterloo …
Thirty-five years later, and Peret is to give
British audiences another chance. This time
he headlines a night at London’s Barbican
Centre dedicated to his sound: rumba Cata-
lana. Mixing flamenco guitar and Latin
American rhythms, then flavouring with a
pinch of rock and a soupcon of soul, rumba
Catalana is as Spanish as sangria. Flamenco
purists hate it, while the public love it: think
of any Spanish pop hit you have heard, and
it’s likely to have been rooted in rumba,
Catalana’s infectious groove. The genre’s
most famous—or notorious—practitioners
are the French band The Gipsy Kings. The
Kings may be French, but Catalan is their
native tongue and they are sworn disciples of
the man many call ‘el rey de rumba’: Peret,
the king of rumba.
The life story of Pedro Pubill Cala, aka
Peret, is an extraordinary one, and after
months of requesting an interview—one
does not get to meet ‘el rey’ easily—I spent
an afternoon with him in his house in the
hills outside Barcelona. Surprisingly, for a
man who has been a public figure for half a
century, Peret is remarkably unassuming.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 693
Surrounded by his extended family and a
multitude of canine pets, he is a genial host,
his roguish features and barking laugh
making him resemble a diminutive Sean
Connery. The only sign of performer ego
comes when I produce Achilifunk, a chic
rumba Catalana CD compilation; as he
flicks through the CD’s accompanying
booklet, he insists that every artist included
owes their career to him. Beyond such
occasional displays, his reflections often
offer a meditation on Spain’s volatile 20th
century:
‘I grew up in the Barcelona barrio of Ravel. I
remember my father would whistle in the
morning, and then sing while he sold fabric
on the streets. My mother would also sing
and dance a lot. They weren’t professionals,
but there was music everywhere. When I was
growing up, the hurdy-gurdy man would
walk down the street playing, and we would
rush out to listen to him. Back then there was
dancing in the streets.’
Yet when pressed Peret recalls a city devas-
tated by the civil war:
‘I was playing marbles on a barren lot and my
grandmother was washing clothes in a tub,
when a war plane started flying low and then
he shot at us! We all ran away and no one got
hurt, but when we returned my marbles had
been destroyed and my grandma’s washing
tub was full of holes. She patched it up and
kept using it for years! [Peret chuckles,
before adding] I can perfectly picture the
situation, but I see it in black and white as
everything was so grey. We lived in what was
like a shantytown, with no colour.
Everything so poor and desperate.’
How, I wondered, does Peret find contem-
porary Barcelona when compared to the city
694 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
of his youth? ‘Oh,’ he says, and makes a
sweeping gesture,
‘it’s like night and day. So much has changed.
If you talk of different cities in the world all
of them are really villages, some bigger than
others. A village should be made up of
families and Barcelona was certainly this in
the 1950s. Today …’,
he shrugs and smiles.
Peret’s recording career started in 1957 but
it was the Academy Award-nominated 1963
film Los Tarantos—Romeo and Juliet set
amongst the city’s Gypsy neighbourhoods—
that helped establish him as an icon. The film
starred two of Spain’s most acclaimed
flamenco dancers, Carmen Amaya, in her
final role, and Antonio Gades, in his debut.
Largely filmed in Somorrostro, the Gypsy
neighbourhood that existed by the sea until
replaced with the city’s Olympic stadium,
Peret did everything on Los Tarantos from
providing the music and acting to helping
with casting and on set problems. This and
the success of his records helped turn him
into a leading star of 1960s Spanish cinema.
‘They were fun to make, not serious’, he says
of his films. ‘If a scene showed me driving a
taxi then it would be followed by me singing
a song. They were comedies, romantic. Like
Elvis films.’
Elvis is an appropriate reference, as it was
the American’s hits—alongside those of the
Cuban mambo musician Perez Prado—that
inspired Peret to pioneer rumba Catalana.
Peret’s brilliance as a singer, songwriter,
talent scout and all around entertainer made
him hugely popular in Franco’s Spain. That
he was a Gypsy who liked to sing in Catalan
and Calo (Spanish Romany dialect) could
have marked him out for trouble with the
fascist regime, but Peret’s charm waylaid the
censors. Still, he marks his failure to win at
Eurovision down to Franco:
‘I didn’t want to enter, but I received a death
threat so I had to sign up. Just before the
contest Franco executed two Basque
prisoners and this caused huge controversy
across Europe, many nations calling on him
to grant the men a reprieve. Eurovision is all
about politics, so I knew Spain had no
chance.’
While Peret welcomed Spanish democracy—
‘everything changed, everyone relaxed’—his
own fortunes would founder as Spaniards
began embracing British and American rock
and pop. Peret retired for a decade, becoming
a preacher at the Filadelfia Evangelical Baptist
Church, until called to sing at the Barcelona
Olympic Games closing ceremony. He soon
found many of his city’s young musicians
now citing him as an influence—the likes of
Manu Chao and Ojos de Brujos mix rumba
Catalana with ska and punk rock, so extend-
ing the music’s appeal. ‘Nothing stays the
same’, says Peret of new sonic hybrids. ‘It’s
good that the young make rumba Catalana
fresh and appealing.’
Proving he was still the master, Peret
returned with a magnificent 2007 album Que
Levante El Dedo [Raise Your Finger]. The
toupee, polyester suits and kipper ties that
once ensured that he resembled Europop at
its naffest are long gone; what’s left is a rugged
artist who still believes he has a lot to offer:
‘I’m controversial because I sing of the
prostitutes and the work they have to do, and
how taxing cigarettes means the government
makes money from selling poison, [says the
ex-smoker who now suffers from
emphysema]. Most of all, I’m a Gypsy, and
Gypsies need music like we need sun. Like
we need sea. We need the music. You go into
a Gypsy bar and there will always be music,
and the children will be stood on the table
and encouraged to dance. There must be a
gene in our people that means we can make
music.’

Queen of Gypsy music
Carol Silverman
More than any other Romani musician, Esma
Redžepova embodies the strategic intersec-
tion of layered ethnic, regional, national and
transnational identities. In her 50-year career,
including thousands of concerts and
hundreds of albums, she has become perhaps
the most famous Romani singer in the world
by mediating cultural policy and marketing
(Figure 23). Her performances helped to
historically reconfigure Yugoslav multicul-
turalist heritage to include Roma; yet Roma
continued to occupy an ambiguous place in
relation to the Yugoslav state. Esma’s success
was built on a number of paradoxes: she
succeeded in part because of her non-Romani
mentor/husband’s marketing ability; her
image drew on sanitised versions of stereo-
types of Romani women as exotic, nubile,
emotional and musical; and she presented
herself as simultaneously local (Macedonian
and Romani), national (Yugoslavian) and
international. Professional music has been an
important medium of exchange between
Figure 23 Record cover of Esma Red žepova, early
1960s.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 695
Roma and non-Roma, and the musical
performance has been the privileged site
where gendered images are exchanged. The
associations of Roma with music and women
with sexuality are symbolic capital used in
the marketplace.
Figure 21
20 The name
Record of Ke
cover an is being heard
of Esma Red epova,inearly
the world
1960s.through the sound of the clarinet: Selim Sesler, Agora Tavern, Ke an, Turkey, July 2009 (photo credit: Sonia Tamar Seeman).
Style and image. Esma was born in 1943 in
Skopje, Macedonia to a poor Muslim family.
As a child she was brought to the attention of
Stevo Teodosievski (1934–97), a non-Romani
Eastern Orthodox Macedonian accordionist
and music arranger for Radio Skopje. Stevo
wanted to take her on as a pupil and train her,
but Esma’s parents refused. For Balkan Roma,
the professional singing of females is
associated with sexuality and shame because
the voice and body are displayed for men for
remuneration. Historically this ideology
existed among all ethnicities in the Balkans,
but today it is stronger among Muslims. Given
these restrictions, Esma’s life is quite extraor-
dinary. Stevo strategically managed to make
an arrangement with Esma’s parents that he
would make her into an ‘artist’, not just a
lowly ‘café singer’. The couple eventually
decided to marry. At that time it was virtually
unknown for Roma and Macedonians to
intermarry; neither group desired it. Esma
narrated: ‘We were the first mixed marriage!
Ten to fifteen thousand people came to our
wedding in 1968, to see if it were really true!’
Esma and Stevo launched their career in
the 1960s, characterised by instantaneous
success and daring innovations. Esma was the
first Balkan Romani musician (male or
female) to achieve commercial success in the
non-Romani world; she was the first openly
Romani singer to perform in the Romani
language for non-Roma; she was the first
openly Romani female artist to record in
Yugoslavia. Stevo planned Esma’s career very
carefully. One early strategy was not to allow
696 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
her to perform at kafanas and weddings, but
only at concerts and for recordings. In effect,
Stevo created a new category of female
concert artist that didn’t have the same
degree of stigma as the café/wedding singer.
Stevo was severely criticised at Radio
Skopje for promoting Romani music. In 1956
he had two Macedonians perform Romani
songs in Belgrade. Audiences were fasci-
nated, and according to Stevo: ‘I knew that
we had broken through a barrier.’ Stevo
remarked: ‘At that time it would have been
impossible for a Romani woman to perform,
due to the racism.’ Esma remembers think-
ing: ‘I can do better than that—Why don’t I
sing?’ For Esma, singing in her own language
was a statement of pride in her heritage. ‘I
was the first Rom to sing in the Romani
language. It was kind of shameful to sing in
Romani. Once I came out singing in Romani,
many came out after me.’ Note that Esma
uses the phrase ‘came out’, to characterise the
bravery needed to confront the prejudicial
attitude of Yugoslav music production.
According to Esma ‘many singers passed as
Turkish, Macedonian, Albanian, anything
but Roma, because there was an embargo on
Romani singers. There was discrimination
against them as performers. I risked a great
deal when I said I was Romani.’
Esma and Stevo endured both the racism
of Macedonian institutions and the gossip of
the public. At Radio Skopje, Stevo was
repeatedly told: ‘Take … other singers—why
a Gypsy?’ His colleagues would say cruelly,
‘Stevo, why have you brought this Gypsy to
disgrace us.’ At the beginning of her career,
Esma was denied opportunities. Stevo
recalled: ‘they took from her the song she
knew and did best, and gave it to another
girl’. Top officials from the Communist
Party advised Stevo to promote Macedonian
music: they said ‘“Why do you play that
Romani music? Let it go—you’re not
Romani.” The Party objected, they threw me
out.… The secretary of the party said, “Why
do you bother with Esma? Esma isn’t Mace-
donian!”’ The taunts became so stifling that
Stevo and Esma moved to Belgrade, the capi-
tal of Yugoslavia, where they would have
more musical opportunities open to them.
Stevo was very clear about creating a
specific Romani niche for Esma in the
commercial world. Part of his genius was to
craft a trademark image and staging for Esma
that evoked the historical stereotypes of
Gypsy women as sensual and fiery, but kept
the pageant tasteful. A survey of Yugoslav
press reviews during Esma’s early years
reveals that critics focused on her Romani
heritage in stereotypical prose: she was
described as dark-skinned, hot-blooded,
happy-go-lucky and genetically talented.
Stevo and Esma cultivated these stereotypes
as long as they were positive. This under-
scores the point that some Roma will exoti-
cise themselves when necessary for
marketing purposes. Historically, Roma have
had few opportunities to alter their imagery
and discourse, because they have never been
in control of their public representations.
Positive stereotypes do sometimes help
break barriers. Esma, for example, may have
reinforced the female Gypsy sensual image,
but she herself never wore immodest
costumes. Rather, she was the first Romani
performer to appear in Romani dimije
(wide-legged pants) before non-Romani
audiences. Dimije, which emphasise hip
movements, linked Esma specifically to
Roma, to other Balkan Muslims and to
tradition. Esma’s dimije, however, were
fashioned in modern fabrics and colours, and
Esma further innovated with accessories and
headpieces.
Emotion is perhaps Esma’s trademark
stylistic performance trait. She capitalised on
the iconic connection between emotion and
passion in both her voice and her stagings.
For example, in the song ‘Hajre Ma Te’ [I
Curse You, Mother] she enacts the lament of
a young girl being married off to an older
man by virtually crying while she sings the
song. Another trademark feature was that all
the performers in her ensemble stood up,
giving them unprecedented freedom of
movement on stage. Typically, they swayed
right and left with their instruments in

rhythm, evoking the back-up singers in pop
groups of the 1960s. And most daring, Esma
danced č oč ek (a solo dance using hip and
acorn
[] oan
rc][
torso movements) during musical interludes.
Stevo staged Esma’s performances as
miniature dramatic scenes in which she
enacted the story of the song. Her voice
showcased emotional qualities expressed by
the text, and her hand gestures referred to
story themes. Similar to generations of
professional male musicians, she masterfully
played to audience sentiment. Esma contin-
ues these types of stagings to the present,
even though some have criticised them as too
clichéd for contemporary audiences.
Furthermore, Stevo recruited uninhibited
young Romani boys to dramatically play the
tarabuka (hand drum) while they playfully
danced with Esma.
Esma and Stevo were pioneers in produc-
ing music videos. They appeared on the
Yugoslav music scene just when television
was making inroads, and they correctly
predicted that visuals would capture an audi-
ence. A 1965 Austrian television show
displays how Stevo evoked tradition and
modernity in Esma’s performances. The first
part of the show is staged in a ‘village’, and
features Esma clothed in Romani costume
and the male instrumentalists in ‘folk’
costume with Slavic elements. By contrast, in
the second part of the show, Esma wears a
cocktail dress and high heels and has short
bobbed hair, and is positioned behind a see-
through curtain with a modern art design. To
one song, she dances the twist—the most
popular dance in the West at the time! Esma
ends her show with ‘Makedo’, a pop song in
German, which encourages Germans to try
Macedonian dances and songs.
Stevo wanted Esma to appeal to wider
Yugoslav and international audiences, thus
early in her career he broadened her reper-
toire and arranged tours. In the 1960s, Presi-
dent Tito frequently sent her abroad to
represent Yugoslavia. Esma’s early repertoire
included Macedonian folk songs, for which
she dressed in traditional costumes. In addi-
tion, Stevo arranged collaborations with
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 697
Macedonia’s most famous vocalists, legiti-
mating Esma’s talent beyond the Romani
sphere. Repertoire in other Yugoslav
languages was added, including songs in
Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Slovenian, Turk-
ish and Albanian. She embodied Tito’s prin-
ciple of bratstvo i edinstvo (brotherhood and
unity) by performing the music of all the
ethnic groups in Yugoslavia and wearing
their folk costumes. Songs of neighbouring
Balkan countries were incorporated (e.g.
Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek), and then
songs of far-flung ethnicities: Russian,
Hebrew, German and Hindi; again costumes
reflected the region. Perhaps the most impor-
tant international tie in Esma’s career was her
link to India. In the early 1970s, Roma in
Macedonia were beginning to develop a sense
of their historical ties to India as part of a
larger politicisation process and a movement
to define their identity. Ensemble
Teodosievski travelled to India three times,
and in 1976 Esma and Stevo were crowned
‘King and Queen of Romani Music’ at the
First World Festival of Romani Songs and
Music in Chandigarh.
Politics and humanitarianism. Esma has
always been vocal about her patriotism for
Yugoslavia and Macedonia, positioning her
as an ally of the nation/state, rather than as an
oppositional activist for a minority. She sees
herself as an ambassador for Macedonia more
than for Roma: ‘I represent Macedonia
everywhere in the world, and my ambassado-
rial mission is to present my country to my
best [sic].’ The fact that this quote appeared
on the country’s website shows Esma’s
vision has a nationalist dimension rather than
an ethnic one. In 2007, she was awarded a
diplomatic passport that allows her to travel
without visas, as a ‘cultural ambassador’.
Esma’s patriotism extends to a defence of
Macedonia as a haven for Roma. When I
asked her about problems Roma face in
Macedonia, she answered that it was ‘the
least oppressive place for Roma’. These state-
ments are a bone of contention with some
Romani activists. Whereas she points to her
698 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
middle-class life as evidence that there is no
prejudice in Macedonia, activists point to the
health crisis, police brutality, discrimination
in housing and education, and the squalor in
Romani refugee shantytowns. Note that,
although Esma has sponsored many benefit
concerts for various causes (and was nomi-
nated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and
2005), it wasn’t until 2002 that she sponsored
a benefit specifically for Roma. Esma has
crafted a somewhat unthreatening profile:
she stresses Macedonian patriotism in the
realm of politics and Romani music in the
realm of entertainment. Like other middle-
class Macedonian Roma, Esma complains
that international images of Roma focus on
rural poverty and do not represent them
adequately. We may observe that both activ-
ists and musicians engage in strategic essen-
tialism: the former essentialise Roma as
victims, whilst the latter essentialise Roma as
entertainers.
This brings up the question of resistance.
Esma certainly resisted the exclusionary cate-
gories of institutions through her pioneering
use of Romani language, dance, music and
costume, but she also resisted political agen-
das that might hurt her commercial success
and infringe on her artistic decisions. In addi-
tion, she collaborated with the commercial
establishment by endorsing positive Romani
stereotypes. Her image is that of a universal
humanist; her public statements repeatedly
stress pacifism and cross-cultural understand-
ing. Esma’s stance illustrates the point that
Romani musicians have selectively resisted,
based on strategic decisions about what they
could actually accomplish and how resistance
would affect their careers; furthermore, resis-
tance is always paired with collaboration.
Current directions. Throughout her career
Esma has collaborated with many non-
Roma, which strategically broadened her
appeal. Perhaps Esma’s most famous collabo-
ration was with Toše Proeski in the song
o
carsn
[]
‘Magija’ [Magic, in Macedonian]. Toše, who
o
carsn
[]
died in 2007, was one of Macedonia’s top
young pop singers. The visuals in the video
for ‘Magija’ portray two contrasting worlds:
Toše’s sunny daytime world of upper-class
o
carsn
[]
love and conviviality, and Esma’s night-time
world of Gypsy magic, abandon and the
occult. Indeed, the text seems to suggest that
Esma (and by extension all Gypsies) can cure
Toše’s despair. Esma is pictured in flowing
o
carsn[]
dimije in the middle of a wild party on the
beach, amidst tents, rusty cars, fire dancers,
and couples who wear revealing clothes and
sensuously belly dance and kiss. All the
elements of the standard Gypsy stereotype
are here: sex, music, the occult and even a
crystal ball—into which Toše gazes at the
o
carsn[]
end of the video.
Why would Esma engage in such a stereo-
typical treatment of Roma? When asked this
question, she replied, ‘It’s an artistic staging.
It’s art.’ Her reasons for collaboration with
Toše are complex: she may have had an affin-
o
carsn
[]
ity for him because he too was involved in
humanitarian work. In the end, Esma proba-
bly chooses to collaborate whenever a good
opportunity presents itself. Several years ago
she decided to forgo an exclusive Western
contract in order to manage her own career,
but in 2008 she relented and signed a contract
with Asphalt Tango in Berlin. Now she tours
frequently with Asphalt Tango’s ‘Queens
and Kings’ ensemble. Does she have choices
in her artistic products? Theoretically yes,
but in a tight musical market, and as a now
ageing Romani star, she is vulnerable.
In surveying Esma’s life, we can see just
how innovative she has been. Under the tute-
lage of her non-Romani mentor and
husband, Stevo, she created an unprece-
dented niche for Romani music and dance.
Moreover, she raised female arts to a level of
respectability by playing with images of
emotionality and sexuality in the framework
of the elite concert and recording stage. By
achieving success among non-Roma, she
legitimated her role as a professional amongst
Roma. Today Esma Redžepova is a living
zo
car[n]
legend for many Roma, and many Mace-
donians—and well beyond.

Selim’s stories1
Sonia Tamar Seeman
It was in 1997 that I first met Selim Sesler, a
professional clarinettist of Rumeli Roman
background (Figure 24).2 At that time, Selim
specialised primarily in fasıl (Turkish light
classical music), but had made two solo
cassettes of regional Roman dance music for
Turkish audiences. I began studying with him
in Istanbul, the bustling metropolis in which
he had built a successful career. During lessons
he told me stories about his family’s origins.
He described how his mother and father were
originally from Drama, Greece, then migrated
to the Turkish Thracian village of İbriktepe ]d
I[ot
where his father, Mümin, first settled, then on
to Keşan where Mümin and his wife gave birth
cs]e[d
li
to four children. He explained it to me this
Figure 24 Newspaper headline reads ‘The name of
Keşan is being heard in the world through the sound of
the clarinet: Selim Sesler.’ Photo of Selim Sesler in Agora
Tavern, Keşan, Turkey, July 2009 (photo © Sonia Tamar
Seeman).
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 699
way: ‘Atatürk gave us houses here in Turkey,
so we left Greece and came to Turkey.’ In
another telling, he said: ‘My father was given
a place in İbriktepe, but when he got there he
]d
I[ot
looked around and saw that none of his clients
from Drama were there—they had all moved
to Keşan. So my father moved to Keşan.’
cs]e[d
li cs]e[d
li
In 2005, Selim and his son Bülent were
invited to a music seminar in Mendocino,
California. During an informal conversation
at a picnic table, I introduced him to a graduate
student who was writing his thesis on repre-
sentations of Romani music in the context of
‘world music’ festivals.3 The student asked
Selim about his origins. Selim responded:
‘We first came from India. Then we traveled
through the Middle East, and we landed in
Greece. Then Atatürk gave us houses as part
of the population exchange (mübadele)4 and
we moved to Turkey. And here we are now,
in California!’
These two stories both contain travel narra-
tives, although with different origin points
and emphases. In Turkish, they serve to
answer one of the fundamental identity
questions exchanged when two people meet:
‘Where are you from?’ (‘Nerelisin?’), by
which people perform—and claim—place and
belonging. In the first narrative, Selim’s
family is the fortunate recipient of Atatürk’s
gift of land that brings them to Turkey away
from Greece. This is a familiar and often-told
story that is recited by later generations
whose fathers, mothers, grandfathers and
grandmothers experienced the implementa-
tion of the Lausanne Treaty in the 1920s—the
early years of the new Turkish Republic. Here
Selim locates his identity as part of the
modern Turkish nation state under a series of
patrons (Atatürk, clients from Greece). In the
second story, he highlights his identity as an
ethnic Roman, and links himself to the
700 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
European Romani narrative of migration
from India that preceded his family’s settling
in Greece. This second narrative was rarely if
ever told among Turkish Roman in the 1990s,
but became increasingly part of self-identity
in post-2000 Turkey. In Selim’s case, the link
to pan-Roma identity through origins in India
was the result of his increasing international
profile, which led to performances in Romani
music festivals and to meeting Roma across
Europe and Canada in the late 1990s.
One of the shortcomings of these narra-
tives, and of my own, stems from the
seemingly straightforward parallels between
linear reading of text and the rectolinear chro-
nology by which events are told—‘this, then
that, then the next …’ Such coherence
between two modes of inscription—writing
and oral recitation—affirms these kinds of
narrative as truths. But the human imagina-
tion reconfigures time, reading backwards
(‘this was due to that’), projecting forwards
(‘if this, then perhaps that …’), and grasping
simultaneously (‘while this, the other is
occurring’). In music, sounds of past, present
and future co-mingle, and listeners simulta-
neously experience multiple narratives of
temporal, social and geographic belonging.
And musicians both unconsciously and stra-
tegically incorporate what has come before,
what exists now and project what is to come.
In order to hear the temporal and
geographically layered strands of Selim’s
musical life, I disrupt a chronological narra-
tive with a description of recent events during
summer 2009. In July 2009 a film crew from
Turkish Radio Television (TRT) arrived in
Keşan to film scenes to be used in a documen-
cs]e[d
li
tary on Selim. For one scene, the producer
wanted to record Selim playing, and then
later narrating his life in a sunflower field.
The setting among sunflowers was intended
to be iconic for the region of Thrace, and to
represent a link between Selim and his rural
background, playing for weddings in the
outlaying villages around Keşan. Selim chose
cs]e[d
li
to play his new composition, ‘Sea-Blue’
(‘Deniz Mavisi’) as he and band members
marched up the path near the Thracian village
of Siliği. We heard Selim’s clarinet and his
gb
[evr]
composition among the flowers before he
and his band emerged up the hill. Selim’s
sound preceded him; that which preceded
him made him present.
What was in this sound?5 ‘Sea-Blue’ images
were conveyed in fast passages in makam
Kurdi, a brisk 2/4 melody that required clean
articulation, in a style that echoes a bygone era
of dance pieces composed for stage ‘oriyental’
dancers. This piece also continued a repertoire
that carried the names of past masters of the
Turkish urban nightclub tradition, evoking
high society and Istanbulite sophistication.
These sounds would not be heard at a local
wedding, certainly not in the Romani-speak-
ing village of Siliği. We could also listen to
gb
[evr]
these sounds through the silence of other
works that he chose not to play. Debating
beforehand with me, Selim rejected sugges-
tions of older anonymous 9/8 meter dance
songs that have long been musical staples
shared between Roman and non-Roman resi-
dents around Keşan—even though he has
cs]e[d
li
recorded many tracks based on these melo-
dies. He also did not select current popular hits
of summer 2009. That summer, local Roman
weddings resonated with the theme song from
the 1997 feature film Titanic refashioned into
a 9/8 meter dance tune that was being claimed
by the dancing bodies of local youths.
Selecting ‘Sea-Blue’ dovetailed nicely with
an upcoming recording project, therefore
promoting the album-to-come in the sound of
music-to-come, enabling Selim to promote his
own new work in a documentary about
himself. He also promoted this piece to me:
‘You need something you can use to work on
your technique, to take home and practice.’
During the taping, the sound of the lively
passages wafted up the path before Selim and
his band appeared before the camera lens.
From the extensive filming sessions, phrases
reverberated in the crew’s ears afterwards over
the three-day shoot. From humming and whis-
tling to comments made later during meals at
home, these musical phrases also reverberated
in the ears of family members, who either
participated in, or attended, the shoot.

The producers also wanted to include
footage of a Roman wedding in the neigh-
bourhood. They had hired a band led by
Selim’s wife’s nephew and his friends—
young men who are just six or seven years
into their lives as professional musicians,
with small children to support. Selim, with
his three grown children and four grandchil-
dren, no longer plays regularly for local resi-
dents of Keşan. Due to his by now
cs]e[d
li
international status, his price has risen and
the settings of the wedding events at which
he performs have become more elite and
geographically remote. Some require a trip to
a local island; most are located in indoor
rented halls. At some events, Selim plays for
only a short cameo appearance, such as this
one to be documented in the TRT film.
While the documentary scene of Selim
playing at a neighbourhood wedding
appeared natural and effortless, the crew
could not have filmed any Roman wedding
without Selim’s intervention. Distrust of
even local outsiders runs deep, and has been
exacerbated by an increased media sensation-
alism turning their floodlights on Roman
communities. The community experienced
the visit of Fatih Akın’s film crew just four
years ago, when he was shooting scenes for
the musical documentary Crossing the
Bridge: The Sounds of Istanbul (2005). The
2009 TRT crew visited the celebrating family
early in the day to make sure of the timing,
permissions, appropriate setting, as well as
the crew’s needs for lighting and electricity.
Later in the evening, after darkness, Selim
came with the crew and waited to play until
most of the invited guests had arrived.
He played mostly older regional Roman
dance tunes for 20 minutes, with his
nephew’s band backing him up. Thracian
Roman wedding standards followed one
another with two new novelty tunes thrown
in: an instrumental version of ‘Babuba’ and
the 2009 hit, ‘My Mother-in-Law’. Selim’s
set ended with a long segment on a piece
called ‘Snake Dance’ [‘Yilan Oyunu’]—a
Bollywood-derived Indian tune, to which the
bride was brought out in a large box, and
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 701
emerged dancing in an Indian-styled
costume. Selim’s young nephew took over
lead clarinet while the groom was brought
out in a chair, then lowered, continuing to
dance next to the bride while cameras rolled,
and then family members joined in.
While Selim’s performance at this moment
of filming presents core local Roman
wedding repertoire, there is an odd disjunc-
ture between the mass media display of
Selim’s musicianship and the long roads that
have taken him away from Keşan. These cs]e[d
li
journeys in turn were set in motion by a
series of nodal relationships that were inau-
gurated by personal travels, artistic and intel-
lectual exchanges, commercial networks and
transnational educational institutions. Trac-
ing these roads also provides us with alterna-
tive narratives about how networks are
forged, new nodes are accessed and new
foundational grounds established.
It was in Istanbul, the bustling metropolis
in which he had built a successful career, that
I had first met Selim. As an enthusiastically
idealistic ethnomusicologist conducting
dissertation fieldwork on Roman music and
identity, I was struck by Selim’s deep knowl-
edge of repertoire from his natal region of
Keşan. I thought it would be helpful to his
cs]e[d
li
career to document his musical life through a
recording that captured the sound and reper-
toire from his early experiences, and to
research and write a booklet with pictures to
accompany the CD Keşan’a giden yollar
]ecd
sl[i
[Roads to Keşan], Kalan, 1999. Selim told me
cs]e[d
li
that this Keşan CD, and the one in which he
cs]e[d
li
accompanied Brenna MacCrimmon in
Rumeli Turkish songs (Karşılama, Green ]ecd
sl[i
Goat Records, 1998) have led to bookings at
international folk music festivals. After
hearing these CDs, several groups of folk
music aficionados have come to Turkey from
the USA and Canada to take lessons with
Selim.
Selim’s transnational fame increased
another notch after appearing in director
Fatih Akın’s award-winning feature film,
Head On [Gegen die Wand, 2004]. Scenes of
the movie are signalled by the appearance of
702 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Selim leading a fasıl ensemble, backing up a
female soloist singing Rumeli songs. Fatih
Akın was inspired to use Selim’s fasıl band
after hearing Brenna MacCrimmon’s collab-
oration with Selim Sesler on the 1998 album.
Further prominence came as a result of
Selim’s appearance in Akın’s popular docu-
mentary, Crossing the Bridge: The Sounds of
Istanbul. Here Selim’s Keşan roots echo
those first displayed in the ethnographic CD
that Selim and I co-produced in 1999: Selim
at a wedding, playing wedding music. He
was shown in a scene where he would not
place himself now, but in this way he was
able to accrue signs of ‘authenticity’ to
producers’ portraits of Selim, as, most
recently, in the TRT documentary.
After his rise to international fame, Selim
and officials at Keşan’s municipal building
cs]e[d
li
told me that tourists arrived in Keşan looking
for Selim. They were disappointed when they
were told that they needed to go to Istanbul
to find him. Not only Keşan, but Istanbul is
in Selim’s sound. It forms the ground of his
composition ‘Sea-Blue’, and is a formative
part of Selim’s sonic development. He and
his wife Nuran first came to Istanbul in 1984,
and settled in various locations within the
ethnically mixed and marginalized neigh-
bourhood of Tarlabaşı. This neighbourhood
housed mostly Greeks and Armenians until
the 1970s, and since the 1950s had gradually
become the home to Roman professional
musicians who serve the nearby taverns, bars,
nightclubs and restaurants in the districts of
Taksim and Beyoğlu. gb
[evr]
Tarlabaşı was a major springboard for
sc[e]dli
Selim’s musical development. There he
joined Ferhan Şensoy’s Ortaoyunu Theatri-
S[c]ed
li
cal troupe, located in Beyoğlu, eventually
earning himself a pension. He joined several
amateur music groups, which provided expo-
sure to Ottoman Turkish classical melodic
modes (makam) and rhythms (usul), reper-
toire items, performances and contacts with
highly respected radio musicians. He social-
ised in musicians’ coffee houses, and he
joined ensembles hired to play at prestigious
nightclubs (Maksim, Çakıl, Doğanay). He
also often went to play at lower-class clubs
after the nightclubs closed, and also picked
up wedding gigs as well. Eventually, he was
able to form his own band.
Istanbul is where Selim lives most of the
year. From his home he walks the steep slope
up to Tarlabaşı Boulevard, crosses into the
sc[e]dli
backstreets of Beyoşlu. There he performs
gb
[evr]
cs]e[d
li two to four nights every week. One evening
he may be found inside at an expensive
restaurant playing fasıl music that accompa-
nies fixed-menu meals. Two nights a week
his Roman dance music can be heard at bars
that attract mostly young, cosmopolitan
intellectuals, leftists and foreigners, who look
forward to listening and dancing to Roman
music. I told Selim of my surprise after my
first introduction to this new scene in the
post-2000 era. ‘Selim, when I first met you,
cs]e[d
li no one would get up and dance Roman in
these places!’ He answered, ‘Sonia, all the
non-Romans have become Roman!’ (‘Bütün
cs]e[d
li Barolar Romanlaştı!’). ce]sd
[li
Istanbul is now Selim’s professional centre
of operations. But summertime, holidays and
celebrations take him and his family back to
Keşan. Until recently, there hasn’t been a
cs]e[d
li
place to live. His natal home was in the
neighbourhood informally known as the
cs]e[d
li ‘Reed-Weaver’s Cluster’ (‘Hasırcılar Küme’),
but was sold by his brother, and is now
rented out to itinerant fieldworkers. At the
end of summer 2009, Selim was looking for a
new place. Several deals fell through. In one
case, the apartment was in the downtown
district, but when the owner saw the skin
colour of the potential owner, Selim was
told, ‘It’s already been sold to someone else.’
Angrily, Selim related to me how the place is
gb
[evr] still up for sale. But not to him. Finally, he
was able to buy an apartment, down the main
street from the entrance to ‘Reed-Weaver’s
Cluster’. Five minutes walk to his wife
Nuran’s brother’s house. A balcony. Close
to the market. The musicians’ coffee house is
down the street. Close to Roman, but not
only Roman. A place for dwelling, in the new
economically, musically, professionally
gb
ve[]r successful in-between of being—an existence

that is the becoming of a new social configu-
ration of Roman.
In the space between Keşan and Istanbul,
cs]e[d
li
Selim performs for a mediatised sonic world
where local, ethnically marked sounds
become products for sale on the ‘world
music’ market; where Selim’s band performs
in Fatih Akın’s award-winning 2004 feature
film dressed in suits; where Selim plays to
Marlboro-waving Istanbulites who can
afford $6.00 beers and a cover charge. But, at
the same time, the non-Roman neighbours
adjacent to ‘Reed-Weaver’s Cluster’ street
recently built a concrete wall between their
backyards and those of their Roman neigh-
bours. I took a picture, and Selim quipped,
‘Look, Sonia, our Berlin Wall.’
In Crossing the Bridge, Selim bows to the
camera at the end of his interview, signifying
respect to his audience while his eyes remain
focused on the camera—he knows who he is
and how far he has come.
Notes
1 Information in this article was gathered during
1
doctoral field research in Turkey, sponsored by
Social Science Research Council–Near and
Middle Eastern Research Training Act (NMERTA),
and during subsequent trips to Turkey in 2003,
2005 and 2007. The 2009 trip was supported
by the University of Texas, Austin College of Fine
Arts Creative Research Grant. This essay benefited
from comments by Jay Olivier, Caroline O’Meara
and Michelle Wilbblesman. I am most profoundly
grateful for the ongoing friendship of Selim Sesler
and his family, Gümüş family, many friends in
cs]e
[d
li
Keşan, and the continued conversations with
sc[e]d
li
Hasan Saltık, owner and visionary of Kalan
Müzik. This essay is also indebted to theoretical
refinements and critiques from recent
ethnomusicological work on transnational,
cosmopolitan and ‘global’ musical practices. In
particular, the approach in this essay draws on
challenges from Thomas Turino to re-think ‘global’
through ongoing and varied forms of
cosmopolitanism, Timothy Rice’s call for subject-
centred ethnography as a lens to interrogate
musical changes wrought by modernity and
globalisation, and by the critical essays on ‘world
music’ by Veit Erlmann and Steven Feld, whose
ethnographically grounded works challenge
essentialist interpretations of ‘globalisation’, and
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 703
by Carol Silverman’s work on Romani music in the
context of commercial ‘world music’ and Roma
music. Any errors and divergences in conclusions
and interpretations are, however, solely my
responsibility.
2
2
Roman is the preferred self-designation for ethnic
communities in Turkey, which are labelled by
outsiders as ‘Çingene’ in Turkish, or ‘Gypsies’ in
English. Rumeli (literally, ‘The people of Rome’) is
an Ottoman administrative and geographical term
that refers to the people and regions in Western
Anatolia and South-eastern Europe formerly under
Ottoman rule.
3 In the wake of the popularity of Tony Gatlif’s film,
3
Latcho Drom (1993), a movie featuring Romani
and related professional musicians, managers and
organisers responded to increased interest among
Western Europeans and Americans for Romani
music through CD compilations, Romani-themed
concerts, tours of multiple Romani, Rom-related and
non-related ensembles. See Silverman (2007) for
an account of tour experiences and production of
‘Roma’/’Gypsy’ images in world music festival
performances.
4 Population exchange imposed by the treaty of
4
Lausanne in 1923, in which Christian inhabitants
of Anatolia were to be resettled in Greece; Muslim
inhabitants of Greece to be relocated to the New
Republic of Turkey, with the proviso that Anatolian
Greek (Rum) residents of Istanbul and Muslim
residents of Eastern Thrace in Greece would
remain. The stories told by Selim’s generation differ
greatly from recollections of those who experienced
the enforced migration.
5
4
In the online version of this article, plese click on
the supplementary files link to hear a sample of
“Sea-blue” composed by Selim Sesler and
recorded July 2009.
References
Akın, F. (2004) Gegen die Wand [Head On]. Bavaria
Film International.
Akın, F. (2005) Crossing the Bridge: The Sounds of
Istanbul. Pictorion Pictures.
Gatlif, T. (1993) Latcho Drom. New York: New Yorker
Video.
MacCrimmon, B. (1998) Karşılama. Green Goat
sce][d
li
Records.
Seeman, S.T. (1999) Ke şan’a giden yollar [Roads to
s[ced
]li
Keşan]. Kalan Müzik.
sc[e]dli
Silverman, C. (2007) ‘Trafficking in the exotic with
“Gypsy” music: Balkan Roma, cosmopolitanism, and
“world music” festivals’, in D.A. Buchanan (ed.)
Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene:
Music, Image and Regional Political Discourse.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
704 CITY VOL. 14, NO. 6
Contributors to Roma/Gypsy montage
T.G. Ashplant is Professor of Social and
Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores
University, UK.
Juliette de Baïracli Levy (1912–2009) was a
pioneer of holistic veterinary medicine, and
was known as a ‘friend of the Gypsies’; she
gathered remedies from nomadic and peasant
peoples in America, Spain, France, North
Africa and Turkey.
Rüdiger Benninghaus’ research interests
include—geographically—Turkey, the
Balkans, Caucasia, the Middle East and
Germany; and—thematically—minority
affairs, ethnicity, ethno-history, migration,
folk religion. He is currently working in the
documentation centre of the Rom e.V. organ-
isation in Cologne.
Thomas Busch lives in Vienna. Until 2007, he
was director of Drava Verlag, in Klagenfurt.
Presently, he is working as a freelancer in
publishing and editing, particularly on topics
such as minorities and multilingualism.
Garth Cartwright is an award winning
freelance journalist, broadcaster and DJ. He
is the author of Princes Amongst Men: Jour-
neys with Gypsy Musicians and More Miles
than Money: Journeys Through American
Music.
Matthieu Chazal lives in Paris and Istanbul.
As well as documenting the end of Sulukule,
he has been undertaking photographic
projects on Gypsy communities elsewhere in
Istanbul (Kuştepe) and Turkey (Edirne).
ce]sd
[li
Jan Hanák is a priest, journalist, documen-
tary filmmaker and university lecturer. He is
based in Brno, the Czech Republic.
Tímea Junghaus is a Roma activist and an art
historian. She curates Roma art exhibitions
and initiates cultural events to demonstrate
effective strategies of Roma representation
and participation. She was the curator of the
First Roma Pavilion in the history of the 2009
Venice Contemporary Art Biennale.
Kostadin Kostadinov was born in Dobrich,
Bulgaria. He studied Theology, and his
master’s degree was in American and British
Studies. Being a Roma, he has been margina-
lised; and being a Christian, he has been
mistreated.
Adrian Marsh is Researcher in Romani Stud-
ies, University of Greenwich (London), and is
of Romany–Traveller origins.
Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov
have written extensively about Gypsies in
Bulgaria, the Balkans and Central and East-
ern Europe, including Gypsies in the Otto-
man Empire. Elena Marushiakova is head of
the Department of Balkan Ethnology at the
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies
with the Ethnographic Museum at the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Vesselin
Popov is chair of the specialised Romani/
Gypsy Studies Library and Archive.
Mariella Mehr is a well-known Roma novel-
ist and poet of Yenish origin. She has been
actively involved in reporting discriminatory
practices against travellers in Switzerland,
where she was born.
Monika Metyková is a lecturer in the
Department of Media, Northumbria Univer-
sity, Newcastle upon Tyne. She works on a
research project concerned with changing
European media spaces and policy.
Nejla Osseiran is a teacher and photographer
living in Istanbul.

Kevin Robins is an independent researcher,
living in Istanbul. He is the author of a recent
Council of Europe report, The Challenge of
Transcultural Diversities.
Sonia Seeman is assistant professor at the
University of Texas, Austin in musicology/
ethnomusicology, at the Butler School of Music
and in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
She has co-produced and consulted on Romani
music recordings, written liner notes, and
published on issues of music and social identity.
Carol Silverman is Professor of Anthropology
and Folklore at the University of Oregon.
Focusing on Roma in Bulgaria, Macedonia and
the American diaspora, she has investigated
the relationships among music, politics, human
rights, ritual and gender. She is the author of
the forthcoming Romani Routes: Cultural
Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora.
ROBINS ET AL.: CODE UNKNOWN 705
Hedina Tahirović Sijerč ić is a writer, jour-
ac[u
ce]t ac[orn] ac[ue]t
nalist and teacher, born in Sarajevo, where
she went on to become the first Romani tele-
vision and radio journalist and producer.
Most recently, she is the author of Dukh—
Pain (2008) and Rromane Paramicha:
Stories and Legends of the Gurbeti Roma
(2009).
Ilona Tomova is a Senior Research Fellow in
the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She was
a Chief Expert on ethnic and religious issues
to the President of Bulgaria from 1990 to
1997.
Huub van Baar is a doctoral candidate at the
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis,
University of Amsterdam, and has published
on Romani memorial practices, Romani
transnational networks and on minority
governance in Europe.