Budapest orchestra shows fiery brilliance in lightish program

The Adrienne Arsht Center was effectively converted into a cafe on the bank of the Danube Wednesday night with Tokay flowing freely, paprikash and palacsinta served, and Hungarian musicians providing an al fresco serenade.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra made its Miami debut at the Knight Concert Hall with an intriguing if strange program that displayed the ensemble’s corporate excellence and tonal gleam, but rather belatedly and to too little an extent. The event was presented by the Concert Association of Florida.

Founded in 1983, the Hungarian orchestra remains one of Europe’s finest, with whipcrack brilliance, rich string tone and refined woodwinds. And while enjoyable enough on its own terms, there was a musical lightness of being in the first half, which concentrated on gypsy-inspired fiddle music and showpieces.

Music director Ivan Fischer was an engaging host with his low-key verbal notes, charting the pungent influence of gypsy music on composers such as Brahms and Liszt, and introducing cimbalom player Oszkar Okros and father-and-son violinists, Jozsef Lendvay, Sr. and Jr.

The evening began with Fischer and Okros alone on stage. Following a brief Cliff Notes guide on the cimbalom’s history, Okras performed a solo improvisation that segued from evocative melancholy to virtuosic brilliance, a beaming Fischer looking on.

With the full orchestra on board, Josef Lendvay, Sr., schooled in the Hungarian folk tradition, came out for a concertante retooling of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 3, interpolating a rustic gypsy solo cadenza. Brahms’ Hungarian Dances Nos. 15 and 1 were performed, the latter in what Fischer claimed was a spontaneous Magyar jam session with Lendvay and Okras adding solo lines on top of the orchestra, stylishly and with idiomatic zigeneur spirit.

Jozsef Lendvay the younger entered, looking like a Central European rock musician. Unlike his father, Lendvay Jr., is classically trained and displayed staggering virtuosity in a take-no-prisoners account of Sarasate’s uber-gypsy fiddle showpiece, Zigeunerweisen.

Lendvay, pere et fils, joined forces for a duo-violin revamp on yet another Brahms Hungarian Dance, No. 11; Fischer indicated this would be the first time father and son performed together, which seems unlikely since they’ve already done this program elsewhere on tour. Both violinists conveyed the music’s more dolce expression but it made an odd choice to end the first half.

More substantial Brahms closed the evening with the German composer’s Symphony No. 1. The sterling qualities of the Hungarian ensemble were finally in the spotlight rather than as backup band: a rich but refined sonority, polished corporate musicianship, and hair-trigger volatility.

Fischer’s take on the mighty C-minor symphony lacked nothing in intensity with an exhilarating coda and the drama of the long opening movement, proceeding in a seamless arc. Yet most striking were the refinement and elegance of the performance, qualities rarely on display in this repertoire.

Fischer’s direction was never idiosyncratic but full of inspired touches as with the pre-Allegro foreboding of the outer movements, his majestic drawing out of the climactic horn theme, and graceful attacca turn into the finale’s openig bars. Perhaps most notable was the serenity of the slow movement, with silken strings and bucolic woodwinds that were chracterful yet perfectly integrated into the musical texture. It’s too bad that there were not more opportunities Wednesday for this wonderful orchestra to shine.

Obligation to educate Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children

What is a school's legal position when it comes to the education of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, and how do teachers protect their education? Michael Segal discusses

QUESTION:

How should their educational needs be balanced against those of the community at large?

ANSWER:

The case of Hughes v The First Secretary of State and South Bedfordshire District Council [2007] ELR 1, CA looked at this question.

Mr Hughes was head of one of four Traveller families who bought a site for their caravans. The site, in the green belt, was subject to stringent planning restrictions.

Mr Hughes applied for planning permission to use the site as a Traveller site. The planning authority, South Bedfordshire District Council, refused. Mr Hughes appealed, and there was a public inquiry.

To justify a development on land within the green belt, Mr Hughes had to show ‘very special circumstances’ outweighed? ordinary planning considerations and any harm the development would cause.

The education argument
Mr Hughes relied heavily on the fact that six children of the Traveller children attended local schools. He argued that their education would suffer if they left the site, particularly if that meant a return to roadside camping and an itinerant way of life.

The inspector found that the proposed development would harm the green belt by reducing the openness of the landscape, leading to the encroachment of urban features, and adversely affecting the character and appearance of the locality.

But he accepted that there were no alternative sites for the families and that, if planning permission were not given, the children’s education would be severely hampered.

He concluded that there were ‘very special circumstances’, and recommended planning permission.

Appeal
The Secretary of State appealed against that recommendation. He conceded that the children’s education might be disrupted if they were required to leave the site — particularly serious for Traveller children, who have a history of fragmented education.

But, having regard to the local authority’s obligation to make educational provision for children in its area, he was satisfied that they would have appropriate education even without planning permission and an immediately available alternative site.

The educational needs of these children were not out of the ordinary. None had SEN; all were making progress. The harm to their education if they left the site was not a ‘very special circumstance’ sufficient to overcome the harm caused by the development.

High Court
Mr Hughes went to the High Court. The judge allowed the appeal. He held that the Secretary of State had been wrong in finding, without further evidence, that the harm to the children’s education, if they left the site, was not a ‘very special circumstance’ of sufficient weight to overcome the harm caused by the development.

Court of Appeal
The Secretary of State went to the Court of Appeal, which restored his decision, holding that the High Court had been wrong in saying that he should have called further evidence.

The Secretary of State had found that the children’s education would suffer if they were required to leave the site. No further evidence was necessary. He had simply concluded that this harm had not sufficient weight to overcome the harm caused by the development.

Local authority obligation
The Court of Appeal said Mr Hughes’ argument (that a severely disrupted education could not be an appropriate education) would be correct if the local authority’s duty were to ensure that all children within its area received education appropriate to their needs — but this was not the case.

The local authority’s obligation (Education Act 1996, s.13) was not to ensure that all children within its area received an education appropriate to their needs and, but simply ‘to secure that efficient and properly equipped schools of sufficient number and type were available to meet the needs of the population in its area’.

Whether and by what means parents and children used such schools was another matter. The planning judgment rested with the Secretary of State, who had to strike a balance between the community’s interests and those of the children.

The Secretary of State decided in favour of the community, despite the disruption to the children’s education. It was not an easy decision, but it was one that he was entitled to make.

Michael Segal is a district judge in the family division of the High Court

We regret we can not enter into individual correspondence. While it is hoped the answers given here are helpful, they should not be relied on without seeking proper advice as to their application to your own circumstances.

Tensions rise over Italy’s gypsy migrants

By Guy Dinmore and Gabriella Bianchi

Published: January 26 2009 20:29 Last updated: January 26 2009 20:29

A political storm has erupted around Italy’s gypsy community after a series of recent attacks prompted Silvio Berlusconi, the country’s prime minister, to suggest deploying 30,000 troops nationwide to combat crime blamed on gypsies and other immigrants.

Europe’s open borders have led to a flood of Romanian gypsies into Italy, straining municipal services and stirring political tensions. Some church groups estimate 50,000 Romanian gypsies have arrived in recent years, adding to thousands of Balkan gypsies who had fled the former Yugoslavia. Many live in squalid conditions condemned by human rights groups.

Mr Berlusconi suggested the extra deployment of troops in response to the highly publicised cases of two women reportedly gang raped near Rome. Police have not publicly identified their suspects as gypsies.

But Carabinieri police units have searched 47 settlements and other places for the suspected rapists and one “Romanian” was arrested, local media said.

Police also intervened after a neo-fascist group demonstrated in Guidonia near Rome – where the rapes took place – during which thugs attacked Romanian and Albanian immigrants.

The possible troop deployment follows the decision last summer by the prime minister’s tough-on-crime ruling coalition to order 3,000 troops to back up police last summer, mainly in the fight against organised crime and illegal immigration.

Ignazio La Russa, defence minister, said today that Mr Berlusconi’s proposal remained a “hypothesis”, to be discussed further in high-level talks on Thursday.

Gypsy activists are investigating allegations that units of the Folgore parachute brigade were involved in making arrests and breaking up illegal shacks used by gypsies on Rome’s Via Gordiani last week.

An army spokesman said a unit of Sardinian grenadiers had been involved in checking identities of some 70 gypsies in an illegal camp.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, made his second inspection tour of camps near Rome this month.

He was visibly shocked at meeting with a Romanian who called herself Marinella, living in a tent with her two children, in the midst of rats and a swamp caused by torrential rain.

“The situation is unacceptable,” he told the Financial Times. “Nothing has changed since my last report in July. In fact living conditions are even worse. So much talk and media attention but nothing happens. This is a display of inept policy.”

Meanwhile, an official poster campaign sponsored by Gianni Alemanno, mayor of Rome, is boasting of “6,216 expulsions in 2008” and taking credit for a “20 per cent fall in crime”.

Formerly a neo-fascist, Mr Alemanno campaigned on a promise to crack down on crime, illegal immigrants and gypsies, capitalising on emotions that were running high after the murder of a woman by a Romanian gypsy near a railway station.

Mario Mori, a retired general who is security adviser to the mayor, sought to distinguish actual policy from the heat of last April’s elections.

Mr Mori said the 6,216 expelled by the prefect of the interior ministry were mostly illegal immigrants from north Africa and only a few had been gypsies.

He noted there was no national legislation on “regulating” gypsies and that policy had been left to individual cities.

Mr Alemanno wants to erase unauthorised camps and build new “maxi-camps” for gypsies who have the “right” to stay in Italy by proving they are EU citizens. Those without papers are liable for expulsion.

Mr Hammarberg said today: “I am concerned about reported plans to use soldiers for evicting Roma (gypsies) from their settlements.

“If evictions are necessary at all they should be conducted humanely and only after a satisfactory alternative for housing is found and offered.”

Nazareno Guarnieri, head of an organisation that represents gypsies, said: “They say we like living in camps. They invented camps. None of us lived in camps before. We want homes.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Bollard to block gypsies to be built in Mayfield

Saturday, January 24, 2009, 08:00

A LOCKABLE bollard is to be placed along a stretch of road to discourage gypsies and travellers from setting up camp there.

The moveable obstruction is to be constructed halfway down the disused section of Tunbridge Wells Road in Mayfield, referred to locally as the disused spur.

The road became home to a family of travellers in November 2007, causing great concern among residents and resulting in a court ordered eviction.
This new measure, to be introduced in February, is a response to concerns from residents that such an event could happen again.

Peter Deller is a parish councillor who lives on the spur.

He said: "There have been a lot of discussions about how to prevent it happening again. I think the truth is that there is no perfect solution."
The bollards are to be built as part of an experimental order likely to last a year.

Kathryn Langley, a spokesman for the county council , said: "We've been asked to introduce these measures because of some problems we had in this section of Tunbridge Wells Road.

"Vehicles are banned, and this is being enforced by lockable bollards. Emergency services and landowners who need access are being given keys."
She confirmed that should the bollards be successful and meet with residents' approval they would be made permanent.

The travellers were eventually evicted from the disused spur in February 2008 and since then Cllr Deller has worked with East Sussex County Council to prevent a similar situation arising.

One of his major concerns is the lack of official sites available for travellers.
"The police's job in moving these people on is made considerably easier if they are in a position to say to the offender you should go to this specific place. In 2007 there was no place to send them to and that is still the case now," he said.

Cllr Deller praised the support of East Sussex's Mayfield representative Cllr Bob Tidy in getting the bollard but questioned the council's efforts to provide more gypsy accommodation.

In response, Cllr Tidy pointed to redevelopment taking place at a travellers' site in Maresfield and gave assurances East Sussex was continuing to search for suitable locations.

He said: "We have two sites that we can move travellers to. The finding of new sites is principally a district and borough council responsibility but we help and we have just received funding for five pitches on existing traveller sites in Hailsham and Maresfield."

Ivan Fisher's orchestra fuses unlikely union of music styles

by Bradley Bambarger/The Star-Ledger
Thursday January 22, 2009, 3:10 PM
___________________________________________________

Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. When and where: 8 p.m. Friday, State Theatre, New Brunswick; 8 p.m. Saturday, Carnegie Hall, New York. How much: $30-$75 in New Brunswick. Call (732) 246-7469 or visit statetheatrenj.org. $27-$81 in New York. Call (212) 247-7800 or visit carnegiehall.org.
___________________________________________________

In the 19th century, the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire was the nearest faraway place for those looking east from Vienna -- not exactly foreign, but exotic. In particular, composers loved the freedom and fire of the Gypsy music they heard there.

Brahms, a German-born Vienna resident, picked up cheap sheet music of traditional Gypsy tunes and wove inventive arrangements around them for a popular set of "Hungarian Dances." Liszt, born in Hungary but the epitome of the Western European cosmopolitan, used Gypsy melodies and rhythms as jumping off points for his own nostalgic "Hungarian Rhapsodies."

There is no better ensemble to embody this East-meets-West, structure-plus-spice ideal than the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The group was founded 25 years ago -- by conductor Ivan Fischer, among others -- on a manifesto of individual energy, creative risk and fun. Even putting the "festival" in its name was about suggesting celebration over stuffiness.

Fischer and company open Carnegie Hall's two-week, multi-artist "Celebrating Hungary" festival Saturday after they give concertgoers a preview Friday in New Brunswick. The program is special in that it replicates the Budapest orchestra's mold-breaking recordings of Brahms' and Liszt's Hungarian-themed works, featuring Gypsy musicians for the ultimate in native zest -- the Lendvay father-and-son fiddle duo and cimbalom player Oszkar Ökrös.

"I think Brahms would've loved the way we perform this music with these players," says Fischer from Budapest. "He wanted to incorporate the Gypsies' folk art into his classical world -- their imagination and improvisation, their richly ornamented style of playing. These artists challenge us to bring more to the music than just what is on the page."

The younger Lendvay, the classically trained Jozsef Jr., will also solo in Pablo De Sarasate's Old World showpiece "Zigeunerweisen" ("Gypsy Airs"). To cap the night, Fischer will lead the orchestra in Brahms' drama-filled Symphony No. 1 -- not a work with Gypsy themes, of course, but one that may profit from the night's improvisatory atmosphere.

"It will be fascinating to see how people hear the Brahms' First after all the Gypsy music," Fischer says. "We will all be affected. I think the orchestra will perform with a subtle but noticeable spice -- playing the rhythms with more rubato, reacting to each other more in the moment."

Hungary produced some of the 20th century's greatest conductors: Georg Solti, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Antal Dorati, Ferenc Fricsay. Fischer, who turned 58 this week, is in that line of artistry, but his mellow charm and individualist sensibility are worlds away from the my-way-or-the-highway method of Szell and Reiner. Characteristically, though, Fischer is generous and mindful of history, as he points out that "it was a different world for them -- raising an orchestra in Cleveland to world-class status as Szell did took unyielding standards."

But Fischer does wonder what Szell or Reiner would think of his Gypsy-bolstered way with the Brahms and Liszt pieces: "Their generation was concerned with fidelity to the letter of their scores. They were modern in their day, reacting against a Romantic tradition that perhaps allowed itself too many liberties. As with everything, music goes in cycles. We have plenty of orchestral skill and discipline now. Like many conductors of my generation, I am more interested in the source and style of the music, the spirit of the score."

Roma Holocaust victims speak out

BBC News

Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January is an occasion for Jews and Roma (Gypsies) to remind the world how their families were terrorised and butchered by the Nazis in World War II.

Roma in Vlasca, a village in southeastern Romania, told the BBC's Delia Radu about their wartime ordeal.

The Roma people of Vlasca - traditional metal workers called Kalderash - are closed and inward-looking. They are reluctant to talk to anyone from outside the community.

It took weeks of negotiation to hear the accounts of Holocaust survivors in the village.

Historians often call it "the forgotten Holocaust". Up to 500,000 Roma are believed to have died in mass shootings and Nazi gas chambers.

Recent studies have brought more of their suffering to public attention, but to this day little is known about the Roma targeted for persecution and extermination by the allies of the Third Reich on the eastern front.

The men are the first to speak - and later, when it is the women's turn, they leave the room.

Dumping ground

Sandu Stanescu remembers how, in the early summer of 1942, some policemen installed a table by the road, covered it with papers and made lists: Roma families, extended families, communities - shatras .

The Nazi-backed ruler of Romania - military dictator Ion Antonescu - had just received his reward for attacking the Soviet Union: Trans-Dniester, "the land beyond the Dniester". It was a chunk of land in the east, between the rivers Dniester and Bug.

The territory, most of it part of today's Ukraine, became Nazi Romania's ethnic "dustbin" for Jews and Roma.

Conveniently the nomadic Roma had carts and horses and the police only had to escort them across the border.

But as soon as the convoys reached Trans-Dniester, the Romanian authorities confiscated everything.

"We lost our carts, horses, all our baggage and all the gold our fathers had hidden in the carts' shafts," Mr Stanescu says.

In freezing cold, with no food, thousands of Roma were marched towards the river Bug. The survivors were forced to live in camps of flimsy hovels on the outskirts of war-torn villages, or in stables on deserted collective farms, to provide forced labour.

"My father, Mihai Gheorghe, died there, my mother Maria died there, both my brothers died there," says Mihai Gogu.

"They died because of the bitter cold, because there was nothing to eat and you couldn't wash. I think filth was the main killer: lice were crawling everywhere, like teeming ants in an anthill. That was our ordeal."

Scavenging for food

One man speaks of "beatings, disease and bitterness in the fields".

Mihai Iorga recalls how his mother had "brought with her some embroidered pieces of cloth, like those ones people arrange on walls under the icons".

His sharp grey eyes are moist and he stands in the middle of the gathering to tell the story better.

"She tried to sell those in the neighbouring village, for food. But a Romanian policeman and a Ukrainian guard saw her, beat her badly and threatened to shoot her. She rushed back home crying.

"Me and my brothers begged her not to go again. But the following day off she went. She did what she did and managed to find another way to sneak back into the village.

"We waited and waited, fearing she might never come back... But lo and behold, there she was, carrying two buckets of potatoes and sweet cornflour! Oh, how we hugged her, how we kissed her! She then baked those potatoes straight on the flame because we were left with nothing, not even a pan or dish for cooking.

"Afterwards she managed to find a small tin. She melted some snow in it, there was no other source of water, and made a nice tiny polenta. It was so good! We felt so good!"

In 1944, when the war front moved west and the Romanian administration withdrew from Trans-Dniester, the Roma had to walk back hundreds of miles, "covered in mud, covered in bitterness".

A teenager at the time, Mihai Gogu was the only survivor in his family and saw many children dying on the road.

"We walked back, barefoot. Parents carried children on their shoulders. But time and again, one of these little ones would slip and fall off the grown-up's back. They died of hunger."

Mihai Iorga's father was taken ill and died during the return journey. It was his mother who managed to see her children safely to Romania.

Girls targeted

The men leave, the women enter in their flowery scarves.

During the deportation pregnant Roma women were killed because they were unable to walk fast enough.

"A heavily pregnant woman was shot before my eyes," Maria Mihai recalls. "She fell on the ground. And the baby started struggling inside her."

The women remember how their mothers had to find water and food miles away from the camps, there were long queues at the wells, sometimes the water sources had dried up. They remember their mothers making clothes out of thick brown paper potato sacks.

But most stories revolve around the constant fear of being raped by the armed guards.

"Both my parents died. I was only a girl, in the flower of my youth. That was very dangerous. They tried to take us young girls by force," says Natalia Mihai.

There were horsemen hunting women and little girls hiding under their mothers' long-layered Gypsy skirts.

"Once they put a gun at a girl's neck and raped her, something like a whole committee raped her and they were shouting and chanting," says Floarea Stanescu. But Natalia Mihai asks her to stop: "Don't remind me of all that, I feel like dying".

A report by the International Commission for the Study of the Romanian Holocaust says the number of Roma victims in Trans-Dniester is difficult to establish, mainly because the lists of deportees were negligently put together.

Some 25,000 Roma deportees are accounted for and the number of dead is thought to be 11,000. According to the report, half of the deported Roma were children and the women were frequently subjected to brutal sexual attacks.

Now that the Roma women in Vlasca have finished their stories, the men are back.

Both groups make a few final comments about the food in Trans-Dniester. "The Ukrainians used to catch those underground creatures, moles, you know", says Maria Mihai. "They skinned these animals and either ate them or sold them to us."

"Yes," says Mihai Iorga, "I ate moles too, on the banks of the Bug".

"And when we saw those moles, we wept with revulsion," continues Maria Mihai. "And we ate dogs, too… Yes, dead dogs, sweet Jesus, we were given dog meat, too."

"But in the summer, the mussels in the Bug were a luxury," says Mihai Iorga. "She knew how to cook those, my poor mum."

Most of the Holocaust survivors in Vlasca have received compensation via the International Organization for Migration, in Geneva. The IOM says survivors and their close relatives receive up to 7,000 euros (£6,590; $9,070) each.

The compensation is paid under an IOM partnership with Germany.

Gypsies reprieved

Published Date: 22 January 2009

A GYPSY family has won a three-year reprieve to stay on land it owns in a Northumberland village, after a planning battle with local residents and council chiefs.

Alnwick District Council agreed on Tuesday to allow Kathleen and Terrance Lowther to remain temporarily on the site at Heatherleazes, on the outskirts of Warkworth.

The couple moved there in 2007, when their former site at Carlisle closed down.

But their problems were further compounded because their daughter Lisa Anne, who was 23 at the time, was undergoing intensive therapy for cancer at Newcastle, and they needed to be closer to her.

They initially sited three caravans on the land, which has been in Mrs Lowther's family, the Ornsbys, for more than 100 years and was formerly owned by her uncle who lived locally.

But the family faced furious objections from neighbours and plans to change formally the use of the site were refused in June 2007.

They were served a notice to quit in December, but both the planning decision and the notice to quit were overturned on appeal in August last year.

Speaking after this week's decision, Mrs Lowther — whose grandparents are buried in Warkworth — said: "It has been very hard, and we're relieved we can stay.

"We don't bother anyone, we just want to get on with our own lives in peace."

Mr Lowther, who is disabled, added: "You would think people would be more understanding in this day and age. Life is terrible when you even have just one or two people who don't like travellers."

Lisa Anne, whose cancer is now in remission, said: "All we're asking is for people to respect us and our way of life."

Under the conditions of the approval, the Lowthers are permitted two caravans on the site, which are to be moved away from houses, with parking for one van.

Warkworth's district and county councillor, Jeff Watson, said: "Local residents are as adamant as ever that this site should not have been allowed, but have accepted that it is only a temporary permission.

"They look forward to the end of the three-year permission and the site reverting back to open countryside."

Travellers Lose Eviction Court Case

12:46pm UK, Thursday January 22, 2009

Mark Stone, Sky News reporter

The Court of Appeal has ruled that 1,000 travellers living in Dale Farm in Essex can be moved on by Basildon Council.

Up to 50 families now face being forcibly removed from their homes from what is the largest traveller community in the UK, including more than 150 children.

Reacting to news of the court's decision, Dale Farm spokesman Grattan Puxon said: "We are not going to allow (our youngest) to be terrorised.

"We don't want bailiffs to come in, using force and heavy machinery around our children."

Mr Puxon described the petition as "somewhat confusing" and insisted the community would still fight for a "common sense solution".

He said the travellers would pitch at a site 50 yards south of the contested land, between Dale Farm and the A127, for the next 28 days.

From there, Mr Puxon said, they would make further legal applications.

In May 2005, Basildon Council voted to clear a large part of the settlement. It said that sections of the site had no planning permission.

The High Court rejected the decision, claiming that the council was not offering an acceptable alternative location for the travellers to live.

That was overturned by the latest ruling, meaning they will now be moved on.

"People really fear losing their homes," Joseph Jones, the secretary of the Gypsy Council of England told Sky News prior to the Court of Appeal announcement.

"They have no place to go and will end up on the side of the road." he said.

Travellers first settled at Dale Farm in the 1960s with the then Labour-run council granted planning permission for 40 families.

Since then, though, many more have settled. Most do not have planning permission to be on the land which forms part of the Green Belt.

"Everybody should be treated equally," local MP John Baron said.

The Dale Farm case has been registered with the United Nations Advisory Group on Forced Evictions. The eviction will now be observed by a team of monitors.

Travellers site inquiry under way

BBC News

A gypsy has told a public inquiry he faces life in lay-bys and on waste ground if an appeal to allow a caravan site in Flintshire is rejected.

Leonard Hamilton, 62, represented one of three families that have built a 10-plot site on land near Holywell.

The hearing in the town is being asked to consider a planning application, partly retrospective, for the land on Bagillt Road known as Dollar Park.

Flintshire council rejected it last year, on the grounds of highway safety.

The local authority also said it wanted to protect ancient woodland bordering the site, and feared it could have a negative impact on the character of the local community.


At a hearing on Tuesday Mr Hamilton said his and the other families, the Gaskins and Prices, had settled down for the first times in their lives.

The families refer to themselves as Welsh-Romany or Romany Gypsies.

Mr Hamilton said high blood pressure meant he could no longer work, and his 59-year-old wife was ill.

He also said the families' children were enjoying a stable education, both in local schools and on site.

He added: "I want my grandchildren to have a chance in life that I never had.

"My grandchildren need education.

Mr Hamilton, who described himself as a born-again Christian, moved to Dollar Park in 2007 after helping host a religious convention in the area.


He said: "I wouldn't sell my plot for a million pounds. With the help of the Lord, that's where I want to be."

Some local residents complained when the site was developed without full planning permission and there were concerns about the park's effect on woodland which borders the park and is protected.

Hugh Richards, for Flintshire council, agreed there were some elements in favour of the families, including the age and health of some of the residents and the educational needs of the children.

However, he said the planning inspector must decide whether these were outweighed by highway safety issues and the impact on the environment and the area's character.

The planning inspector, Clive Nield, is expected to visit the site on Wednesday, with the public hearing due to end on Thursday.

A decision on planning permission and any enforcement action on site is not expected until Spring.

Gypsy camp protesters warn council: 'The battle starts here'

Tuesday, January 20, 2009, 17:33

A CROWD of about 130 angry residents besieged a city Cabinet meeting to protest about plans for a permanent Gypsy and traveller camp in the city.
The residents – mostly from the Woodford area of Plympton – warned the council: “the battle starts here”.

They are fiercely opposed to a proposal to use land at Coypool for a traveller site, and say it will bring down the value of their homes nearby.
The council has identified privately-owned land at Coypool, and at Coombe Farm in St Budeaux, as potential sites, and Cabinet members yesterday approved the start of public consultation.

The protesters were joined by Efford residents fighting to keep Gypsies off land at Efford Warren, which the council identified last year as suitable for a permanent camp.

The site is a former Gypsy and traveller camp, and yesterday Cabinet members gave the go-ahead to bid for Government money to bring it back into use.

Andy Kerswell, Labour councillor for Efford and Lipson, said the council had prevented any genuine scrutiny of the Military Road proposal.

Patrick Nicholson, Conservative councillor for Plympton St Mary, said: “We will be doing everything possible to thwart the council’s proposal.

“We are bitterly disappointed that the meeting failed to address any of the concerns we all have about the site. The battle starts here, today.”

Russell Gale, of Woodford Action Group, said: “I live next to the site and all my plans for the next five to ten years are gone because of what this will do to property values.”

Clair Skelley said: “We already suffer the noise from the Speedway track at Marsh Mills, road humps and the possibility of putting an incinerator at Coypool. How much more do we have to suffer?”

Film a celebration of Gypsy music and culture

By Margaret Smith
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jan 20, 2009 @ 06:22 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acton, Mass. —

Exuberant violins and brass, the soaring passions and aching sorrows of flamenco echo across the same stage as a compelling drum beat from northern India -- rhythms from which these and many other sounds sprang.

These far-flung music styles came together in the Gypsy Caravan tour, chronicled in “When The Road Bends: Tales of A Gypsy Caravan,” which follows the artists, technicians and producers on a very noisy bus traveling to elite concert halls throughout North America.

The film is a dramatized documentary following the tour -- a dazzling survey of Gypsy music in its many forms, which included a Boston area stop -- and reaches into the inner lives of the artists and staff , both on stage and off.

Enthusiastic audiences greet them everywhere. With shots of the musicians’ encounters with devoted fans on sidewalks and during shows, the film slyly records how “right now” Gypsy music has become, even as Gypsy people continue to suffer discrimination and sometimes differ over how to chart a course for a better future.

Despite a common origin, the Gypsy communities represented on the tour have to work to find common ground, overcoming barriers of geography, language and cultural differences.

Interspersed with dazzling performance segments are segments of the performers’ friendships and occasional clashes on the bus and in hotel rooms, and glimpses into their lives back home.

These postcards from their native lands – forming a trail of the Gypsy diaspora, from India to the United States – are often sad, but not without silent victories.

In their homelands, even the most celebrated musicians can face struggles despite their celebrity status. Esma Redžepova, a celebrated Macedonian singer, recalls the plight of the influx of refugees from Kosovo.

The Romanian ensemble, Taraf De Haidouks, became stars through concerts and film appearances, with Johnny Depp – who appears briefly – among their fans and collaborators. But, band members support an entire, impoverished Gypsy village, where their large extended families live. Juana la del Pipa, matriarch of a flamenco family, speaks from her apartment in Spain about helping loved ones overcome drug addiction.

Extras include more concert footage, vintage footage and scenes of Gypsy life in various locales, an interview with Depp that rambles and provides little added insight.

Rich with history, stories, music and dance, “Gypsy Caravan” is a rare, candid insight into an intensely private people, with musicians – as they so often are – ambassadors -- shuttling between worlds in the hopes of bringing them together.

‘When The Road Bends: Tales of A Gypsy Caravan.’ Directed by Jasmine Dellal. Little Dust Productions. English, with Spanish, Romany, Romanian, Macedonian and Hindi with subtitles. Margaret Smith is Arts and Calendar Editor of GateHouse Media New England's Northwest Unit. E-mail her at msmith@cnc.com.

Downturn hits Romania's tinkers

BBC News

Scrap metal was once a lucrative trade for Eastern European Gypsies but as Nick Thorpe reports, this has been devastated by the global economic crisis.
Melting snow has turned the unpaved roads of Zizin into streams of mud, ankle deep.

Wading through it, in search of drier ground, your ears grow accustomed quickly to the gentle murmur of the wintry village, dogs barking, cocks crowing, neighbours calling out to each other through hazel fences.

There are sharper sounds too, like the fireworks set off by children in far-off cities.

But there is no money for such frivolities in this predominantly Gypsy village.

The sounds are made by bull-whips, lengths of rope with horse-hair tied in knots at the end.

Scrap scarcity

Cracked incessantly by the kids at the end of streets, in the yards of houses, but above all on a small hill which overlooks the village.

Splitting the sky apart for a split-second, as though in the space created, poverty might be transformed into wealth, tin into gold.

Zizin - the name itself sounds like sheets of tin falling on tin. And that is how many of the Gypsies here made a living, until the global financial crisis struck.

Like millions of scrap-metal hunters and gatherers around the world, the Gypsies of eastern Europe did well from the tinkers' trade in recent years, as the price of metals soared.

A huge hunger for metal in the construction industries of India, and China in particular, fuelled the price rises. But that has all changed now.

Bridge stolen

Gypsies and non-Gypsies alike snapped up every scrap as it fell by the wayside, and today, it seems, there is little left for anyone to gather up.

As scrap became scarcer in recent years, the theft of metal became more common in eastern Europe and beyond.

One of the first Soviet locomotives in Ukraine, all 14 tonnes of it, and a metal bridge which connected a village in the west of the country to the outside world, were the most brazen thefts.

In Hungary, the re-opening of the Freedom Bridge over the Danube in Budapest, closed for many months for repairs, was postponed after thieves in eastern Hungary went off with hundreds of steel girders prepared for it.

The guttering and even the roofs of churches, and bronze plaques to Holocaust victims have all disappeared overnight.

And copper wire, used in railway signalling, was especially prized. Sixty three trains were disrupted in one day alone near Prague, when a length went missing between two main city stations.

Prices plummet

Both the Czech Republic and Hungary have now passed laws imposing strict controls on the operation of scrap metal yards. Hungary alone has 20,000.

Now everyone selling is obliged to record their identities, and full details of their loads.

But the new legislation may prove redundant. The economic downturn means people are not spending on scrap metal. Prices paid for it have fallen in some places by 90%.

From Zizin, Ion Ocelas, a father of five children with a sixth on the way, used to make the trip to the scrapyard in the nearest city, Brasov, almost daily.

Now he says it is hardly worth it. He used to get 33 euro cents (£0.29) for each kilogramme he brought in, now he is getting three cents.

Even if his horse-drawn wagon was piled high, he would only come back with a handful of small coins, less than a beggar might make for a day's pleading on the pavement outside the famous Black Church in Brasov.

"I'd like to work as a welder," he says, as he restacks the last of his metal collection - the twisted blue bonnet of a car, pots and pans, and something white and spiked, like the head of a metallic thistle - "but there's no work for welders round here, still less for Gypsy welders"

"People here have no time to think about the future," says Father Raia, an Orthodox priest of Gypsy origin, when I ask him what hope he sees. "They have to eat today."

At the main scrapyard in Brasov, buried deep in waste land beneath the girders of a new road, the manager refuses to talk.

But on the western outskirts of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, the owner of another yard, Ciprian Porumb, is happy to unburden his concerns.

Future fears

"I used to get the $450 (£300) a tonne for this," he waves his hand at a mountain of scrap, still being unloaded from lorries.

"That fell to about $150 (£100), but I dare to hope it will improve again soon."

As he speaks, a four-piece Gypsy street band, blasting on trombones and drums, marches boisterously by, serenading the ladies at the upstairs windows of the drab flats which overlook the scrapyard.

Back in Zizin, Ion's seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca, is feverish. The doctor has been called.

We leave the village as darkness falls, and an ambulance siren mixes with another orchestra of children crying, horses braying, dogs barking and always the whips, cracking in the frost.

Dinner and a Show with the Gipsy Kings

By Cassandra Wiseman

On a bitterly cold December evening, just a few weeks ago, if you were wearing a certain kind of laminate around your neck, you could have slipped through a dark stage door at the nefarious corner of Taylor and Market in San Francisco, and found yourself backstage at the Warfield Theatre, where three of the Reyes Brothers - Andre, Nicolas and Canut, and two of their cousins, Tonino and Paco Baliardo - would have greeted you with warm hugs and invited you to sit down and sup with them at their large round dinner table. This was a very special dinner of sorts because they were being joined on this tour on stage for the first time by members of a third generation of this family of musicians–Michael Baliardo, Tonino's son, and George Reyes, Nicolas' son.

They were a handsome and elegant group of men: fathers, sons, uncles and cousins chatting animatedly, primarily in French, with, quite possibly, a little Calo being tossed about here and there in conversation. Calo, or Spanish Romani, is a dialect that originated in Spain and is spoken by the Gitanos, blending native Romani vocabulary with Spanish grammar. The round table was covered with a white tablecloth and they were eating a delicious dinner of tilapia and lemon herbed chicken, salads and profiteroles, drinking sweet iced tea, laughing and joking and offering their guests wine and food. Casually, the diners excused themselves from the table and moments later began to go upstairs to perform to a packed theatre where the excited crowd of over 2000 fans erupted in cheers.

In the third decade of the 20th Century during the Spanish Civil War, a group of Catalonian gypsies afraid for their wives and children fled Spain for France. In a recent interview, Nicolas Reyes explained the decision: "The Gypsy people were not allowed to take part in the fight, other than being shot at, so the best way to stay alive was to run away from Spain." Most of these gypsy families settled in the Camargue region, where they live now, between Marseille, Arles and Montpellier. The Reyes family joined a Gypsy encampment at Arles in 1936, and they sang as they worked odd jobs, did horse trading, harvested grapes and gathered scrap metal. In the evenings they brought out their guitars and the traditional songs and sang at Sunday village gatherings while the women danced in the safe and intimate caravan circles. They improvised with guitar players, Palmas (clapped rhythms which are derived from their Spanish heritage), and singers around the campfires of their adopted home. "They still do that, even now," Said Josquin Des Pres, who grew up in San Tropez and has known the Reyes and Baliardos for decades.

Des Pres, an award-winning record producer and songwriter here in Southern California, said that it was in the Fifties, during a traditional Gypsy pilgrimage–"Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer" in the Camargue–that their unique flamenco singing and guitar strumming gained mainstream notice. Ricardo Baliardo, or "Manitas de Plata" (Little Hands of Silver) was being feted by artists from the area including Pablo Picasso, Cocteau and Salvador Dali; his nephew, Jose Reyes, quickly became renowned as the best flamenco singer in France and was accompanied by his uncle, Manitas de Plata, who is still considered one of the best guitarists in history. Picasso is said to have exclaimed of Baliardo's playing in Arles in 1964, "that man is of greater worth than I am!" He proceeded then to draw on the guitar.

The style of their music, "Flamenco Puro" was so popular that their fame spread worldwide and they had fans like Charlie Chaplin and Brigitte Bardot to name a few. Jose Reyes and Ricardo Baliardo performed to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall in December of 1965. Manitas' brother Hippolyte Baliardo, a well known Rumba guitar player, invited his sons to become the members of Los Baliardos Players. In the Sixties and early Seventies, after he left Manitas, Des Pres said, "Jose Reyes, with Plata and Baliardo, who was an uncle, formed a group called ‘Los Reyes', which means "The Kings," which included four of his five sons, (Andre was too young at the time), and Chico Bouchikhi, who was married to one of Jose's daughters".

In 1979, the patriarch Jose Reyes died, and the Reyes Brothers formed a union with their cousins, the Baliardos. This group was a more modern fusion of the music they had played in their family for generations. There are eight members of the Gipsy Kings but you'll see six on the stage because they rotate on tour. Some like to travel more than the others. Nicolas Reyes, the main singer, Canut and Andre performed on stage at the Warfield that night, and at the new Conga Room in Los Angeles, on New Year's Eve; the two other Reyes brothers Patchai and Paul remained home with their families. They still live in the Camargue region when they are not on tour and are devoted to their wives and children. The Baliardo Brothers–Paco, Tonino and Diego–are guitar wizards. All of them have played together since they were young and prefer to compose and play their own music. Their music is derived from a form of flamenco, a sort of rumba: "Rumba Flamenca, which is easier to dance to," said Patty Weiss, who has played violin with the Gipsy Kings on some of their North America tours, including here in LA at the Greek Theater.

Their songs are mostly about love and travelling and having a good time and are sung in a mixture of French, Spanish and their own gypsy dialect, Calo.

"They learn to play a guitar as soon as they are born," said Des Pres of the Reyes and Baliardo families. "There is a Gypsy legend which says that when an old Gypsy singer or guitarist is ready to die, he will sing or play for a pregnant woman. Then that baby will get his talent. Many times when the Gypsy Kings are on tours, at the end of the show, they will put one of their younger children on stage. They all know the strum."

The crowd at the Warfield demanded two encores and the concert ended with standing ovations from the audience.

"I was pleasantly surprised at how well they did. Drums and bass guitar are not traditional gypsy instruments. Their sons did really really well tonight, "Des Pres told their manager, Michel Crupel, that night after the concert when everyone was getting ready to go to the Four Seasons. "For gypsies, as an ever oppressed and pursued community, our children have a particular importance." Nicolas Reyes has said in many interviews, "Children are Kings!"

Editors Note: Videos of the Gipsy Kings can be found on YouTube. One of the videos features Manitas and Jose from the Gipsy Kings serenading Bridget Bardot and can be viewed at YouTube). The other is of Picasso signing Ricardo Baliardo's guitar, available at YouTube).

Fenland branded the traveller capital of UK

Published Date:
14 January 2009
By ET Staff

Councillors have rejected a new claim that the Fens have become the gypsy capital of the UK.

The outburst comes after a national report found that the Fenland area, which covers Chatteris, March, Whittlesey and Wisbech, has more than 6,000 gypsy residents.

It is also claimed in the Daily Express report that the area is being earmarked for more travellers' sites as part of "highly controversial" plans to provide new pitches for 25,000 gypsies and travellers in the next three years.

And it points out that up to 180 new pitches, with space for up to three caravans each, could be built in Fenland with about £140,000 being spent in Wisbech St Mary extending one of the five official sites in and around the village.

But leader of Fenland District Council Geoff Harper said: "The report is nonsense. There are only plans to introduce about 89 new pitches, not 180."

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Gypsies 'could fill county's job vacancies'

Thursday, January 15, 2009, 07:30

Romany gypsies from countries including Romania and Bulgaria could be invited to Lincolnshire to take jobs previously filled by Eastern Europeans.
Gypsies and travellers currently suffering from persecution in their countries of origin could be persuaded to flee their "squalor" and step into jobs left by Poles returning home.

In Lincolnshire they have predominantly filled jobs in agriculture.

Peter Robinson, portfolio holder for social cohesion at Lincolnshire County Council, told colleagues this week: "If, because of the downturn, we start to see fewer Eastern European migrant workers from Poland and so forth, it's my personal view we could get replacements from Romania and Bulgaria."
He said Lincolnshire could extend a friendly hand to them saying "come to us and get a better deal".

"The main problem of course, whether we like it or not, is that gypsies and travellers are extremely unpopular people to have in the county," he added.

Coun Robinson was speaking during a meeting of the council's local community development and partnerships policy development group, which held talks on a new pilot project to deliver extra housing-related support to gypsy and traveller communities already living here.

But in a written response issued via the council's press office after the meeting, Coun Robinson said it only "might be the case that gypsies and travellers could take up the jobs that Eastern European migrants used to hold".

For more on the welcoming hand Lincolnshire could offer to Romany gypsies, see Thursday's Echo.

Gypsy families in the Gaza Strip

10. 1. 2009

We will be extremely thankful for any kind of help given to us in these difficult times. Let’s do not give up hope of witnessing peaceful days, in the same time working for making our today better.

Our organization would like to provide the most needy members of Domari community from the West Bank, but also Gaza with food boxes. Lack of food and poverty are one of the biggest problems for our society, and they require an immediate solution. As many as 1000 families need our help, and the estimated cost of one box amounts 200 NIS (equal to 40 Euro or 50 USD). Each box will contain rice, sugar, tea, milk, flour, vegetable cans and other necessary items. For traditionally big Gypsy families (often having as many as 6 children) that kind of help will be of big significance.

We also are in touch with charitable organizations who are able to transport food, clothes or blankets to Gypsy families in the Gaza Strip.

Your contribution can be sent via PayPal to Mr Valery Novoselsky, founder of Roma Virtual Network, our brother and supporter.

PayPal account: nov_val@zahav.net.il

We will be extremely thankful for any kind of help given to us in these difficult times. Let’s do not give up hope of witnessing peaceful days, in the same time working for making our today better.May God bless you all

Amoun Sleem

Director
Domari Society of Jerusalem
P.O. 51488 Jerusalem (Al Quds)
GSM: +972 (0)54 2066210

Angry Gypsies take to the streets over posters

Saturday, 10 January 2009

Angry Roma residents of Rakamaz in northeastern Hungary took to the streets on 2 January to protest against anti-Gypsy posters plastered around the village by members of the extreme right paramilitary Magyar Gárda organisation. Some were armed with gardening equipment, and the police found one man with a samurai sword after they intervened to keep the peace. The would be swordsman is being prosecuted. The local Gárda "commander", Tamás Seres, denied this. "Some in Rakamaz believe the local Gypsy leaders want to win back voter support by trying to create conflict," he told the local news website Borsod Online. "It is unacceptable that hundreds should arm themselves, attack and lynch innocent Hungarians, and demonise the Magyar Gárda," Seres added. The spontaneous demonstration passed without incident, and the crowd of several dozen had returned home by midnight, said a police spokesman.

Born to Roma

Dan Rule
January 10, 2009

On the eve of legendary Romanian group Fanfare Ciocarlia's Melbourne appearance, Dan Rule looks at the motivations behind our fascination with Gypsy music.

THE story behind Fanfare Ciocarlia's rise to prominence is the stuff of myth. Hailing from a line of Roma farming families in the tiny north-eastern Romanian village of Zece Prajini, until 1996 the 12-piece ensemble had played no stage larger than a local wedding, baptism or funeral. Twelve years on, their frenetic brass sound - born from traditional Roma melodies and the brass bands of the Turkish military, which had occupied the region at the start of the 19th century - is one of the drawcards of the world music circuit.

"They were unlike anything we had ever come across, just letting the music flow out from themselves, completely different to trained musicians in Western music," says Helmut Neumann, one of the group's label managers at German imprint Asphalt Tango Records.

"It's very human and very emotional - so honest that you can't leave it. You are automatically attracted by it."

But according to Neumann, who discovered the group with business partner Henry Ernst in 1996, there was no great fable to Fanfare Ciocarlia's unearthing. It was pure chance.

"We were both living in Leipzig, which is a city of about half a million in East Germany, so until the '90s the East was our only possibility for travel," he says, talking on behalf of the group (who don't speak English) on the eve of its Australian tour, which will take in next week's Gypsy Queens and Kings concert at Hamer Hall as part of the Arts Centre's Mix It Up series.

"We had gotten to know Romania very well," he continues. "But it was just good luck that Henry entered the village where Fanfare Ciocarlia were living. Very quickly Henry made the decision to bring them to Germany and France to do a tour. We thought of it as a one-off because we were so fascinated by the music - it was not thought of in a professional way. Financially it was a disaster."

The archetypal image of the Gypsy - boundless, anchorless and free - is instilled with romanticism and mystique. But the Roma's signifiers are still the source of both reverence and derision in the West. While their cultural product, from the great Django Reinhardt to the pop chart-ready sound of the Gipsy Kings, has been happily consumed, as a people they have been held at arm's length by a Europe still fixating typecasts of the thief and the mystic.

Today, the Roma remain one of the most persecuted communities in Europe. Discrimination abounds across the continent. Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni sparked outrage in mid-2008 when he announced that government agencies had begun fingerprinting the country's 150,000-strong Roma population in a proposed bid to curb the crime rate. Meanwhile, according to reports in international affairs magazine Monocle, Roma children are being routinely dumped in the worst-performing schools across Eastern Europe and are 10 times more likely to be erroneously classified as intellectually disabled.

According to Neumann, this "heavy" lineage engenders the music of Fanfare Ciocarlia and other Gypsy artists. He frames their sound in the context of a kind of activism and adaptation. "They've dealt with long travels, persecution and racism all the time, because they have basically been considered as outlaws, not involved in any society," he says.

"But somehow they've adapted to each society in which they arrive, so the question then becomes: what is their own culture? What is their way to express their own culture? Because they have been adapting so many of the local things wherever they settle, there aren't many things of their own left. I think one of the last ways they have to live their own culture is through music, and there's a real pride in that."

Billed as "an epic celebration of Gypsy life", the Queens and Kings project seems to embody these ideas of both expression and fusion of culture. Along with Fanfare Ciocarlia, the concert features Gypsy vocalists and musicians from throughout Europe, including twice Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Macedonian Gypsy Queen Esma Redzepova, Hungarian master-vocalist Mitsou, 21-year-old Romanian star Florentina Sandu, Bulgarian songwriter Jony Iliev and Perpignan guitar trio Kaloome, and blends several disparate Gypsy styles and stories.

"It's the common way of performing music, but it's not common music," says Neumann.

"The Gypsy music is very human and not about reading music from a page. It's more about feel and emotion and the stories of life, and I think that's why audiences relate so much."

Indeed, Roma music has survived longer than most in a world music market constantly on the prowl for something new. But is our fascination really connected to the tales of the Roma, or is their visage simply more exploitable?

World music observers, such as veteran Melbourne broadcaster, journalist and DJ Kate Welsman, tend to the latter. It's the exotic and the quixotic, rather than our sense of empathy, that draws us to Gypsy music, she says.

"I'd like to think that there's this understanding and compassion for what they've been through, but I think the reality is quite different. I think the notion of Gypsy or Roma has been so romanticised that it's basically become all about layers of beads and big frilly skirts and hitting the road.

"Meanwhile, the reality is that these people are still persecuted and hated throughout Europe."

But Welsman, who also curated Africa (the first concert in the Mix It Up series) and will be DJing under her Systa BB moniker in support of Gypsy Queens and Kings, also sees the music's appeal in terms of it's sonic relationship to rock.

"Some of the tones that are used in Gypsy or Balkan music and the timings are very, very different, and there's a shrillness and a big bass that comes through, so much so that people relate to it almost as punk," she says.

"Anything is possible with this music. You don't have to do a particular style and there's constant dancing and there's an energy to it."

It's what Neumann hopes the audience will take away from what promises to be a typically frenzied set from Fanfare Ciocarlia and their guests at Hamer Hall. "With this music, it's definitely about experiencing it firsthand," he says. "There's a magic to it."

And according to Neumann, the songs will ring on for years to come. "You know, the world music community, they just want new, new, new exotic things all the time. It's something we've really had to fight against.

"We took Fanfare Ciocarlia from a far-flung corner of Eastern Europe and brought them to the rest of the world because we loved their music. And it is our responsibility to help them travel the world and play their music for as long as they want."

Mix It Up: The Gypsy Queens and Kings is at Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre, Sunday, January 18, at 5pm (free pre-show activities from 3pm). Tickets $79 premium/$63 adult/$34 concession: theartscentre.com.au, 1300 136 166 and ticketmaster outlets.

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American Gypsies

A Hawk and a Hacksaw does Eastern Europe with an American accent
By Amre Klimchak

JEREMY BARNES HAS no greater passion, at least from a musical standpoint, than Eastern European folk. During our conversation, Barnes uses the word “love” more than half a dozen times to describe the intensity of his feeling for the region’s fervent, dizzyingly passionate sounds.

But Barnes (who made his name originally as the drummer for one of indie folk’s most lauded bands, Neutral Milk Hotel, and brings his duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw to town this week) became an ardent fan long before his fellow lovers of socalled gypsy music in Beirut, Gogol Bordello and Devotchka gained a following. Barnes first heard Bulgarian women’s choirs while driving through West Texas in 1996 on a tour when he was 19, and he was hooked. He moved to Hungary two years ago to live among and learn from some of the area’s masters but has always sought to interpret traditional styles through the contemporary lens of his American background.

“We’re really into music from Eastern Europe and from Turkey, and that is a huge influence, but we have to keep in mind that we’re not a cover band and it’s not our intention to recreate music from that region,” Barnes says from Chicago, where he is finishing the mix of the group’s fourth fulllength album, due out in the spring. “We have to bring something of ourselves into it in order for it to be fulfilling.”

And like their gypsy inspiration, Barnes, who sings, plays accordion and handles percussion, and his cohort Heather Trost, whose primary instrument is violin, have lead a largely a nomadic lifestyle, following their hearts.The couple met in Albuquerque where they subsequently encountered Beirut’s Zach Condon, whose musical aesthetic matched their own.They later contributed to the first Beirut record, and Condon, in turn, to A Hawk and Hacksaw’s albums. But they relocated to Budapest in 2006 to plunge themselves into a thriving international folk scene with Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Bulgarian elements.

Their chemistry with a particular group of musicians led to the formation of the Hun Hangár Ensemble with whom A Hawk and a Hacksaw recorded a sweeping, sophisticated EP that bears the unmistakable marks of the duo’s cultural immersion. Barnes and Trost sound both incredibly well versed in the musical idioms of their surroundings and confident in their ability to maneuver among the accompanying sonic ambiguities.

“Whenever we do traditional music, we try to put it in a different setting or adapt it somehow so that it’s not just a song that we love,” Barnes says. “It’s kind of like half and half—like a folk song has inspired us to write a melody and then we combine the two.” The duo returned to Albuquerque in October, partly because they wanted to vote (and were thrilled with Obama’s win) and to finish recording their latest album, but also to reconnect with their roots, their families, their American friends and their homeland.


“In our lyrics we’re usually commenting on things that are happening here. That’s part of what I mean about bringing in our own identities into this music,” Barnes says. “In the end it’s not Eastern European music that we’re playing, even though we’re influenced by it.We’re Americans and we have to present that as where we’re from.” And the new album, which was partly recorded in Hungary, partly in Albuquerque, is a distillation of what they’ve learned after completely steeping themselves in music that holds an unending allure, Barnes says. “I feel like it’s an obvious progression from what we were doing previously. I do think it’s a lot stronger than any of our other releases,” Barnes says. “It’s still focusing on what we love. And I think we’ll always be doing that, whether or not it’s trendy or fashionable, we’re still going to be doing it… In a way, we’re just a little bit lost in it, I guess. And I can’t really do anything else.”

> A Hawk and a Hacksaw

Jan. 10, Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (at Essex St.), 212-260-4700; 7, $13/$15.

Also Jan. 11 at Union Hall.

The Situation of Domari Gypsies in Gaza

As the director of the Domari Society of Jerusalem, an organization taking care of Dom people, I would like to give you some insight about the realities of our life.

I am saddened to inform you about the plight of our Gypsy sisters and brothers in Gaza. They live together with Palestinian people, thus also becoming the victims of the conflict. Until now the people in Gaza Strip did not have an easy life, it was riddled with poverty, anxiety and lack of hope.



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It is not racist to state that gypsy camps frequently cause an increase in crime and mess - it is a statement of fact

By Harry Phibbs
Last updated at 9:22 AM on 06th January 2009

The Government has issued a decree to local Councils to provide more caravan pitches for gypsies. Their argument seems to be that people have a 'right' to be gypsies and that if councils provide more authorised sites there will be less of a problem with gypsies occupying land illegally.

This is a policy of appeasement of lawlessness. If people want to spend their lives travelling around in caravans then they must operate within the law. They should also rely on finding people willing to accommodate them - not expect special favours from the state.

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EUROPE: Roma Pay the Price for Far-Right Rise

By Zoltán Dujisin

BUDAPEST, Dec 29 (IPS) - The alarm bell is ringing in Central Europe: as the region braces itself for an economic crisis, extremism grows and gains popular sympathy by targeting the Roma.

The collapse of social rights in post-communist central-eastern Europe has been most harsh on the Roma, a minority that is believed to have migrated to Europe from India since the 14th century.

While anti-Roma prejudices are strong in Central Europe, so far no political force has managed to garner support by rallying the population against them. But extremists now see a window of opportunity in mobilising anti-gypsy feelings.

"The gypsy theme doesn't create political divisions, it's an everyday thing for people on the left or right, and they (extremists) are trying to use this to gain some power outside of politics," Hungarian anthropologist Gergo Pulay told IPS.

This is the case with the Hungarian Guard, a quasi-paramilitary group created in August 2007 and whose 2,000 or so members get physical training and promise to preserve Hungarian traditions and protect its citizens.

In October Czech extremists followed suit, setting up the pseudo-paramilitary National Guard, also about 2,000 member strong.

Conditions are set for a spiral of violence: extremists accuse their countries' police forces of failing to protect citizens from "gypsy crime", while members of Roma communities say they are ready to set up their own militias to protect themselves.

Several provocative marches by Hungarian Guard members in Roma-inhabited settlements have coincided with sudden new attacks on Roma inhabiting Hungarian villages. The Roma constitute 6 percent of Hungary's 10 million population.

In one incident in November, grenades were launched into a Roma-inhabited house in Pecs, 250 km south of Budapest, killing two adults and injuring two children. The Hungarian police was criticised for ruling out the possibility of a racist motive in the attack before launching an investigation. They later retracted the statement.

Such scenes are also becoming familiar to Czechs following successive clashes between extremists and the Roma in the Janov housing estate in Litvinov in the northern Czech Republic.

In one incident, supporters of the far-right Workers Party tried to invade the heavily Roma-inhabited estate Nov. 17. Policemen, extremists and locals were involved in the clashes where Molotov cocktails were thrown and police cars put on fire.

Many were appalled by the large number of elderly locals who sided with the extremists, signalling that far-right extremism is not isolated. Encouraged by signs of local support, Czech far-right supporters have spoken of further action.

There are some 300 Roma ghettos across the country. Many of them have appeared as a result of a recent spree in evictions. Approximately 80,000 inhabitants of these ghettos are often unemployed, welfare-dependent and uneducated.

Often they are moved to better quality but more isolated flats, hindering their integration in mainstream society.

In the neighbourhoods where they are placed, they are usually received with fear and suspicion by locals, feelings fed by the many Czech politicians who express blatantly anti-Roma opinions.

"I am absolutely disgusted by the latest events in Litvinov and especially by the lack of reaction from the Czech political elite," Cyril Koky from the government council for Roma affairs told media in November.

Politicians in the region, and especially in the Czech Republic, have reacted mildly to anti-gypsy incidents. They tend to depict the Roma as living off welfare and as having been overprotected under the defunct communist state.

"If they take welfare benefits and don't work, they are more likely to keep stealing from people," Istvan Kovacs, one of the few protesters willing to speak to journalists at one of the far-right rallies in Budapest told IPS.

He denies that the clearly anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy utterances of younger protesters around him are fundamentally racist. "We just need to help them become better Hungarians," he says with a kind smile.

The Hungarian Guard denies any involvement in the latest incidents. It boasts some "honorary" Jews and Roma among its ranks, and handed out Christmas presents to Roma children to fence off accusations of racism.

Extreme-right movements are beginning to relinquish Nazi symbols, opting instead for more home-grown imagery and ideological patterns, while increasing international cooperation with similar movements.

In a region where left-wing politics is stigmatised due to a failure to deal with the heritage of socialism, the anti-globalisation mood has been channelled by a nationalistic right that accuses domestic elites of selling out state property to multinational corporations.

Authorities in the region have promised to monitor the activities of such groups, especially paramilitary ones, but they have become highly skilled in avoiding breaching the law, and legal shortcomings mean that even a ban can be easily circumvented.

Moreover, far-right groups like those in Hungary intimidate opponents by publishing the full names, telephones and addresses of lawyers, judges or journalists who get in their way.

In Slovakia a far-right party has even made it into the governing coalition in 2006, and since then racially motivated crimes have increased exponentially in what some consider the result of the state legitimating xenophobic views. (END/2008)