Gypsy Music in European Culture: From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Part I — Two Models of Discourse on Gypsy Music

Part I Two Models of Discourse on Gypsy Music The music played by Gypsies was perceived within Europe, on the one hand, through the prism of the Gypsy question—a question burdened with the pejorative overtones of general attitudes toward Gypsies—and, on the other, according to the musical practices connected with Gypsies seen within the broader cultural conditions of modern Europe. Academic consideration of Gypsymusic—beginningatthestartofthenineteenthcenturyandtiedtorising interest in Romany people overall—would culminate in two models: those of assimilation and nonassimilation. These models both aimed to situate Gypsies and their music within European culture. In the period following the French Revolution right up until the beginning of the twentieth century, the assimilative model was based on the concept of nationality propagated within the whole of Europe. As such, Gypsy music was presented as an integral component of European culture, a form that joined with local musical idioms to create national musical traditions in individual countries, especially those with high proportions of Romanies. Meanwhile, within the nonassimilative model, Gypsy music was presented as belonging to a distinct culture, whose outlook was inherently alien to European civilization. The nonassimilative model employed the concepts of exoticism (Orientalism) and race, weaving Gypsy origin, musical characteristics, and thinking on the culture of Gypsies into an interdependent web. The popularized versions of Gypsy music that emerged from the late eighteenth century onward—performed in particular by Hungarian Romanies but also by Russian and Spanish Romanies—came about in the context of creating national cultures as opposed to the earlier abstract humanism of the eighteenth -centuryClassicalperiod.MusicperformedbyRomanieswasconsidered a binding agent for countries of broad geographical scope, with the figure of the wandering Gypsy musician playing an especially useful role as a unifier of dispersed musical practices. Academic writings on Gypsy music of this period thus concentrate on the links between Gypsy music and the music of a given country, intertwining Gypsy with national motifs and thereby acknowledging hybrid forms. The model of assimilation bolstered the thesis that the nation was both a spiritual and a historical concept and therefore eternally ascending, whereas the concept of race was perceived as naturalistic or static. The concept of race—as applied to Romanies, more or less interchangeable with exoticism—was used in the construction of the nonassimilation model. Indeed,racewasthedominantelementofsecularEuropeanidentityandclosely connected with the idea of Europe as such. Especially beginning at the end of thenineteenthcentury—drivenbyvariouspeoples’searchfornoblerootsinthe ancientworld—itbecameofspecialimportanceforEuropeanhistory(Delanty 1995). To emphasize one’s own racial purity could mean denigrating the Other, with Gypsies and their music often the casualties of academic writings having such a bent. The recognition of Romanies (as well as Jews) as representatives of a non-European but Oriental race constituted a seminal moment in the alienated stance of the researcher toward Gypsy music. The concept of “still exotic arrivals” (Ficowski 1953, 18) would persist into the twentieth century. A notion ofEuropeanexceptionalism,amongnineteenth-centuryintellectualsandothers, guided such views (Sokolewicz 1974, 182). Broadly speaking, in the nineteenth century, anyone who did not fit in might be considered Other (Skarga 1973, 277);Gypsieslikewisewereoftentreatedasstrange,andpotentiallydangerous, and, as noted, possessed of a culture alien to the European. This Eurocentrism was a specific form of ethnocentrism, a mixture of ethno- and logocentricism negatingunknownelementsasaresultofbroadcentralizingprocesses(Waldenfels 2002, 146). The inclusion of music cultivated by Gypsies within the nonassimilative model was aimed at building the scholars’ own ethnic and national self-conception . In making their arguments, they emphasized differences, presented the marginalized nature of Gypsy music, and finally sought to reduce its role in the development of Europe’s musical culture. Such reactions occurred almost mechanically, naïvely, although they may have resulted from the assumptions of a conscious program. Stefan Treugutt writes that, “mistrust, aversion, even hostility in relation to others and that which is different characterizes human societies in exactly the same way as interest, wonder in relation to something foreign, the desire to emulate being last” (Treugutt 1973, 393). The inclusion of discourse on Gypsy music in a wider spectrum of exoticism was linked closely with the search for a “noble savage” as well as the attribution of the emotional layer of Gypsy music with traits associated with Oriental peoples (on the one hand sentimentalism and naïveté, on the other wildness and barbarianism). Both the assimilation and nonassimilation models seem to have drawn their sourcesfromtheearlymodernbeliefinknowledgeasthemotorofprogress.For centuries demonized as a result of their skin color, Eastern origins, and cultivation of their own customs, Gypsies constituted within Europe...