Gypsy Music” and Deejays Orientalism, Balkanism, and Romani Musicians Ioana Szeman
“Gypsy Music” and Deejays Orientalism, Balkanism, and Romani Musicians Ioana Szeman Figure 1. Fanfare Cioca˘rlia, Queens and Kings tour concert, 7 December 2006, Bucharest, Sala Palatului. (Photo by Sonja Balcells, courtesy of Asphalt Tango Management) Romanian Romani bands such as Taraf de Haïdouks, Fanfare Cioca˘rlia, and Mahala Raï Banda have become popular in the West in the last decade, playing at prestigious venues in interna- tional festivals and featured in documentaries and Hollywood films. Taraf de Haïdouks, who hail from southern Romania, with their furious violin playing, flute, accordions, and cimbalom, count stars like Johnny Depp among their most famous fans. Fanfare, a group from northeastern Romania, play brass and percussion instruments and are known for their irresistible beat. Both Taraf and Fanfare won BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards in 2002 and 2006, respectively. Ioana Szeman is a Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at Roehampton University, London. She is currently completing a book project based on fieldwork carried out over a 10-year period called Stages of Erasure: Performing Romani Culture and Gypsiness in and out of Post-Communist Romania. TDR: The Drama Review 53:3 (T203) Fall 2009. ©2009 98 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.3.98 by guest on 28 September 2021 The popularity of “Gypsy music”1 performances in the West in the last decade has created not exactly a scene, but what the Guardian has identified as “something in the air, something that is hard to label, let alone define” that spreads from “world music” performances with “authentic” Gypsy musicians to electronic and dance music (Lynskey 2006:6).
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