played music by both Roma and non-Roma from the manele-focused music channel Taraf, identified as a ‘Ţigani’ channel. Roma in Pod appreciated ‘Gypsy soaps’, even though these represented gadge’s32 exoticized projections of Gypsiness.
Aside from my own analysis, when I discuss media representations of Roma, including in the television soaps, I will present Pod residents’ views of these productions. In the early years I watched North American soaps with Pod residents, and in the later years I discussed Gypsy soaps with several Roma from Pod in both formal and informal interviews, which changed my own perception of the soaps. In mapping the reception of the soaps and music performances, I also use audience comments from soap websites and YouTube. My media ethnography is situated between a fully embedded reception analysis (Abu-Lughod 2005) and one focused on audience members who participate in or comment on programmes through social media (di Leonardo 2012; Imre and Tremlett 2011). While Roma have rarely been analysed as consumers of media, including television (see Tremlett 2013), I engage with both the majority’s consumption and the readings of a Roma counterpublic that identified with or challenged the images of Roma presented in these cultural productions.
I am a gadgi (non-Roma) and Romanian citizen of mixed Romanian-Hungarian descent, with a Ph.D. gained in the United States and currently working in the United Kingdom. Some of my non-Roma Romanian friends and acquaintances rolled their eyes upon hearing about my research topic, and worried that I would reiterate or add to many Westerners’ mistaking of Romanians for Roma; some asked me ‘please don’t make us all look like Ţigani.’ My Western location at the time of my fieldwork in Romania, being the United States and, after 2005, London, bestowed upon me a certain cachet among some of my informants: one of the Romnja in Pod decided I was Spanish, a nation to which she felt connected; one Romni from the village of Clejani called me a ‘foreign gadgi’, as opposed to a local, Romanian gadgi. At times the perception of my identity shifted – for example, when a lawyer asked me whether I was a Romni friend’s daughter, even though we were both in our thirties. This instance, when I was taken for a Romni by a non-Roma, was a shocking (for me but not, as it turned out, for my Romni friend) reminder of the widespread gendered stereotypes about Romnja as young, over-fertile mothers with dozens of children. Several times, when I accompanied friends and witnessed similar situations, the casualness of such incidents and the everydayness of racism really struck me. My shock reflected my privileged position: for my Roma friends and acquaintances these incidents were not surprising. As I show in Chapter 2, there was no shortage of such incidents: encounters in hospitals, schools, shops and police stations, and often with state employees, demonstrated this everyday racism.
In many instances my ethnographic journey involved making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Performance and theatre scholar Baz Kershaw discusses radical theatre, which has the power to change the ideological inclination and worldviews of audiences: ‘theatre which mounts a radical attack on the status quo may prove deceptive. The slow burning fuse of efficacy may be invisible’ (1992, 28). I see the slow burning fuse metaphor as an apt description of the change in subjectivity that I experienced when making the strange familiar and vice versa. The slow burning fuse was started for me most likely at a Christmas celebration in Pod, when I visited with non-Roma friends. In these moments, when I was allowed into people’s lives, the expected power balance was temporarily redressed; instead of only witnessing suffering and injustice, I spent enjoyable moments with Pod friends. These became turning points in the co-witnessing process of ethnography, when the initial impulse, of seeing Pod as a problem that needed a solution, receded to some extent. I started listening to people more carefully, to their music, their dances and their actions. My sense of outrage at their situation never disappeared, but it became equally important for me to document their other stories – in addition to stories about injustice and discrimination – from the way they saw Gypsy soaps to their perspectives on belonging in Romania.
From Pod, this study moves to other places within Romania, including Bucharest, and then abroad to the West, following the trajectory of ‘Gypsy music’. In addition to Pod, I conducted fieldwork in Bucharest and in Clejani, the village in southern Romania from where the famous (in the West) Roma band Taraf de Haïdouks originate. In London I experienced first hand the considerable international success of ‘Gypsy music’: from traditional music to the ubiquitous manele,33 everything had become prime material for mixing into dance music in venues such as the Barbican and clubs such as Koko and Cargo. I attended concerts at these venues, as well as other cultural events. I attended many performances of the dance group Together, composed of both young Roma and gadge, which initially started at a local school near Pod. My travels across Romania took me to different parts of the country, where I interacted with different Roma: Romungre, Gabors (traders and welders), Kelderara, Karamidarja and Vatrash, Lăutari, Ursara, Kelderara and Rudara, as well as activists and intellectuals.
The ethnographic material in this book focuses mainly on Roma from Transylvania and Wallachia, regions within Romania’s national borders. The distinct histories and social status of different Roma, including musicians, in Transylvania and Wallachia influence current perceptions of these musicians and the different stereotypes associated with them. Roma known as Romungre were historically Hungarian speaking, and had musical occupations during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I met some Romungre in Pod, most of whom only spoke Romanian. Roma musicians in Wallachia were known as Lăutari; I met some Lăutari in Clejani. The repertoire and audiences of Romungre and Lăutari musicians diverged with the music and histories of Austro-Hungary and Romania respectively, until 1918, when Transylvania became part of Greater Romania. Transylvanian music and Romungre musicians were ‘rediscovered’ by the Tanchaz movement as Hungarian folk music in the 1970s. From socialism to post-socialism, Transylvania remained the repository of folk music for Hungarian musicologists and nationalists alike. Muzica lăutărească – the music of the Lăutari in Wallachia – had strong Turkish influences, evident today in manele, the most popular genre, played predominantly by Roma musicians in Wallachia. Today manele production is most powerful in Bucharest, and the concentration of media production and political power in the city has made certain groups of Roma, especially those in and around Bucharest, more visible in the national arena. The media brought to Pod the sounds and sights of manele from Bucharest, and Roma in Pod enjoyed, consumed and performed manele and a traditional Roma dance known locally as csingeralas, a type of verbunk, part of the Tanchaz music. However, ‘manelists’ are most numerous in the south of Romania, and manele are equally popular in Transylvania.
Despite the diversity that characterizes both Roma and their musical production, and despite their significant musical success, this book shows that Roma have not gained a legitimate place as a culture in the national imaginary, and they continue to be denied cultural citizenship, even when their music is praised. While Roma musicians’ performances may continue lucrative stereotypes about Roma that have existed for centuries, from the perspective of a Roma counterpublic, these performances can be read as performances of citizenship. As the advent of neoliberalism under monoethnic nationalism has maintained the citizenship gap for Roma, paying attention to the subjectivities of Roma and including them as equal partners in social and cultural programmes could be a first step for state institutions to take in bridging this gap.
Chapter Outline
Part I: Poor Roma, Roma Activists and the Romanian State
Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the lived structural constraints within which everyday performances of citizenship are enacted, while Chapter 3 addresses the discursive constraints of policy framings on the performances of citizenship for Roma.
1. ‘We Will Build a Beautiful Future Together’: NGO Historiography, Roma Culture and
