A profile of one of the best-loved ambassadors of Romani music worldwide.
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You might say the orchestra was born from sorrow. Its story dates back to a cold, rainy autumn day in 1985 and the funeral of the famed violinist and conductor Sandor Jaroka, where many musicians came to pay the last tribute to an acknowledged master of his art. But the final adieu was in fact a beginning. The gloomy serenade the Romani musicians played laid the foundation of what became the Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra.
Known also as the 100 Gypsy Violins (in fact, there are 50 violins, a couple of dozen other strings, plus clarinets, dulcimers, and the occasional singer), the orchestra in the past few years has begun to highlight individual talents as well as ensemble playing. Their most successful find so far is rising jazz singer Nikoletta Szoke, who at 23 has already garnered worldwide kudos and won both the first prize and the audience award in the 2005 Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition. At the core, though, the orchestra remains an all-male, all-Romani ensemble specializing in the Romantic repertoire and Gypsy-spiced Hungarian favorites.
What distinguishes these players is their flair, says Romanian music teacher Eugen Munteanu, son of the famous singer and singing coach Dezideriu Munteanu. "That's difficult for non-Romani musicians because Roma put generations of soul and tradition into their playing," he says.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY
The 100 Gypsy Violins is a generational continuum. Among Romani musical families, it's taken for granted that children will step into their parents' shoes. The orchestra replenishes itself through annual auditions for local musicians. Sons and fathers, grandfathers and grandsons play side by side. And sometimes the baton passes from father to daughter: Szoke's father played dulcimer in the ensemble, and the players like to think of her as their collective musical child.
The orchestra's repertoire runs from classical works by Brahms, Liszt, Rossini, and Strauss to the "Gypsy music" of Laszlo Berki, Grigoras Dinicu, Jeno Hubai, Victorio Manti, and Elemer Szentirmay. The Romani strain is an inseparable part of Hungarian music, orchestra member Tivadar Fatyol says. Famously, Liszt was captivated by the music he heard Gypsies playing. The 19th-century Hungarian composer Ferenc Erkel drew on the Gypsy-inspired verbunkos dance for his Hungarian-language grand operas, and later Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly collected Gypsy folk music in remote villages and integrated their discoveries into their own compositions.
"The Roma are a true example of the cultural diversity of a nation," Munteanu says.
Romani culture and social organization has been transmitted from mother to son over two millennia from the people's roots in India to the present, says Marcel Courthiade, a Paris-based scholar of the Romani language. Romani music combines rhythms and cultural influences from northern India along with influences picked up during their migrations across Asia and Europe, according to music historian Ferenc Zenasi.
The high status of musicians in Romani society may also have Indian roots, Zenasi believes. When Roma came to Hungary, talented musicians also found favor with the aristocracy, who granted whole families of musicians land to settle. The Roma-Hungarian musical hybrid traces its ancestry at least to the 18th century, when Roma in the employ of aristocratic patrons enriched local folk tunes with rhythms and styles of their own.
TALES FROM THE ROAD
Out of this fruitful mingling emerged famous dance melodies played by many Romani bands, including the Gypsy Symphony Orchestra - like the Transylvanian toborzo and the verbunkos, based on military recruiting tunes.
The orchestra's history is rich with memorable stories. Fatyol recalls how the players were all robbed during a tour in Australia in the mid-1990s and had to sell their gold jewelry to pay their way home.
On another trip the ensemble gained a valuable prize, only to lose it to communist authorities. Fatyol tells of his meeting with Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands when the orchestra performed at a Queen's Day holiday concert. Asked what gift the orchestra would like from the Dutch royal family in recognition of the players' virtuosity, the players told the queen that as Roma, they cared little for money and would be honored to receive any gift. Impressed, the monarch presented the orchestra with a bejeweled gold ring.
When the orchestra returned to Hungary, Fatyol says the ring was confiscated by the authorities. It is now displayed at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. Luckily for the musicians, the commissars could not confiscate their virtuosity.
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Cristinela Ionescu is a journalist in Hateg, Romania. She is production manager at Tumende, a television studio serving the Romani community in the Jiu Valley. |