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ROMA AND FLAMENCO: MYTH AND REALITY
By Ronald Lee

© Ronald Lee, 2003, all rights reserved
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Much has been written about Flamenco music and what contribution the Roma have made to its development and continuity. In the past, many authorities whose knowledge of Romani history and that of Spain was peripheral have stated that Flamenco is a mixture of various elements, Spanish, Moorish, Jewish and Romani and that Flamenco evolved through a mixing of these musical traditions over a long period of time. When examined in the light of recorded history, this theory seems to be total mythology as far as the Roma are concerned.

To begin with, the Roma (1) only arrived in Andalusia towards the end of the Moorish period. The first documented record of the appearance of Roma in Spain is a passage of safe conduct issued by Alphonso V of Aragón in 1425 in the city of Zaragoza to a certain Tomás, Count of Little Egypt. The often expounded theory that the Roma reached Spain by way of North Africa is popular mythology that can easily be refuted by the large number of Slavic loan words to be found in the Caló dialect of Romani such as pusca (firearm), beringa (chain), olicha (street) and silno (strong). These and many more Slavic loan words, plus Greek and Rumanian borrowings are the same as in other European-Romani dialects and prove that the Calés of Spain reached Spain by the same route as the European Roma reached the rest of central, eastern and western Europe. The first record of Roma in Andalusia, the home of Flamenco, is dated 1462 when two other Counts of Little Egypt were invited to dine at the palace of Constable Miguel Lucas de Irizano along with the rest of their troupe of over one hundred people and to be his guests for two weeks. Another Romani leader, Count James and his wife Countess Louisa, are recorded as visiting Andújar, in Andalusia in 1470 (2). The last Moorish stronghold in Spain, the City of Granada, was captured by the Spanish in 1492 thus ending the Moorish Caliphate in Spain, the flourishing Arabic musical culture and the University and Music conservatory of Cordova. The Jews were also expelled from Spain in 1492 which does not seem to leave much time from the arrival of the Roma in Spain, to the end of the last Moorish enclave and the expulsion of the Jews for the Moorish and Jewish musical styles to have evolved in combination with that of the Roma and the Spanish Mozarabes (3) in Andalusia to form a new style of music.

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THE ROMANI GODDESS KALI SARA
By Ronald Lee

© Ronald Lee, 2002, all rights reserved
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While there are many Black Virgins and Black Madonnas in the Christian countries of the Mediterranean and elsewhere, the black statue worshipped by the Roma. at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer in the Camargue in the South of France stands out as something of an enigma. The actual origin of this statue is lost in antiquity and there is no doubt that a Black Goddess must have existed there long before Christianity. According to some authorities the village now known as Les Saintes Maries de la Mer was originally known as Ratis, which means raft in Latin, and later, the church itself , which is shaped like a boat, and dates back at least to the 12th century, was for some time known as Notre Dame de Ratis (Our Lady of the Raft). There is also evidence that in the first century AD, Artemis, Cybele, Isis and the Celtic Triple Goddess, Matres had temples there (1).

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THE OTHERS
By Toussaint Dileau

© Toussaint Dileau. All rights reserved.
Traduit de l’originale entitulée “Les Autres Victimes de l’Holocauste”
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Others were the only population besides the Jews who were targeted for
extermination on racial grounds in the Final Solution. They arrived in
Europe about the year 1300 from India which they had left nearly three
centuries before as a military population of mixed, non-Aryan origin
assembled to fight the invading Muslims. Their entry into Europe, via
the Byzantine Empire, was also the direct result of Islamic expansion.

As a non-Christian, non-white, Asian people possessing no
territory in Europe, Others were outsiders in everybody’s country.
Other culture also ensured–as it still does–that a social distance
be kept between Others and gadje (non-Others), and thus their
separateness was further reinforced.

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ROMA AND EDUCATION
By Ronald Lee

© Ronald Lee, June 2009 all rights reserved
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Historical Background

Until this century, Roma were basically an illiterate people. Except for a small number of individuals, most Roma and Sinti in the many countries where they lived were unable to read and write. Some did learn basic reading and writing skills but contributed next to nothing in the way of literature about Roma by Roma except for a mere handful of individuals,. In the latter 19th century and especially after The First World War, a small Romani intelligentsia appeared in some of the countries of Eastern Europe and newspapers were published in Romani. In the former Soviet Union, under Communism, there was an attempt to integrate Roma into the educational system and a considerable but unknown number of Roma were educated. Others, living in the villages and the hinterlands remained illiterate. Mass education among Roma really dates from the end of the Second World War with the Communist governments in the former Soviet Bloc Countries.

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A NEW LOOK AT OUR ROMANI ORIGINS AND DIASPORA
By Ronald Lee

© Ronald Lee, 2009, all rights reserved
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“Until lions have historians,
Stories of the hunt
Shall always glorify the hunters.’’

– African proverb

The Mystery People and the Pseudo-Egyptians

For almost five-hundred years after we Romani people appeared in Europe in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, Europeans were asking where we had come from. By then, we ourselves had forgotten our origins in North-Central India although in 1422 some Romani newcomers did tell Italians in Forli, Italy, who asked them where they had come from, that their original homeland was in India. (Muratori, 1731, Vol X1X: 890) This remained buried in the archives until recently (Informaciako Lil 7-9, 1992). Our Indian origin only started to become known in the latter 18th century among a select group of scholars such as pioneer Heinrich Grellman. It then slowly spread through what came to be known as “Gypsy Studies” in the latter 19th and the 20th centuries when it became monopolized by the British Gypsy Lore Society (GLS), a fluctuating group of Victorian paternalistic racists founded in 1888 and an offshoot of the contemporary Orientalists. Their Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, a mixture of academic scholarship of the era and the literary meanderings of wealthy eccentrics and dilettantes, soon became the main source of information on the Romani people, albeit those mainly located in Britain, then the tip of the Romani demographic iceberg at that period in time, for the erudite. Thus, by the latter 19th century, the stage was set for us to be misdefined and stereotyped by outsiders. This was ably catered to by a series of armchair scribblers who penned a never-ending series of romantic novels about the Gypsies they had never met and which soon became the main source of information for the less erudite until largely bumped from this role by movies such as Golden Earrings and Hot Blood and later, by the prime-time idiot box. In the latter 20th century after the death of venerable pundit Dora Yates in 1974 at the age of 95, the old, toothless and moribund GLS was gradually metamorphosed by the rising academic Young Turks of Neolorist Gypsy Studies into what is now called the “Non-Romani Gypsy Industry” by Romani activists.

Despite the fact that our Indian origin has now proven beyond question, even today (2009), in the age of the Internet, there is still a widespread and totally erroneous belief that we originated in Egypt! I recently saw a children’s book which shows the sphinx, pyramids, pharaohs, camels and carved and decorated English Romani vardo (caravan) with an English Romanichel sitting on the caravan steps and dutifully whittling wooden clothes pegs in some secluded English dingle à la George Borrow and the romantic novelists, which stated ‘authoritatively’ that the “The Gypsies came from Egypt.” How did this kind of mythology get started?

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All content © 2009 - 2011 Ronald Lee unless otherwise stated. Copyrights for articles and song lyrics are retained by their authors. Songs labled "traditional" are of unknown authorship. Web design by Nina Bottaccini.