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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611863406 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2019 |
| Series: | Discovering the Peoples of Michigan |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Who Are the Romanies?
Roma are paradoxically revered as musicians and reviled as people. Underlying this phenomenon are dichotomous emotions of fear and admiration.
— Carol Silverman, Romani Routes, Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora
Who are the Romanies, one of the most persecuted of all minorities throughout the world? Where did they originate? To where did they migrate? Why and when did they immigrate to America? Why do they stay hidden from the mainstream? What is their culture like? How do they travel? How do they spend their time? Why do people discriminate against them? Who perpetuates myths and prejudices?
Once we engage in conversation with the "other," it is difficult to maintain our original prejudice, of which we are all guilty to one extent or another. The "other" is no longer a number or member of a group but is human just like each of us, with a unique personality, social identity, and history. Through discovering and sharing the stories of the Romanies, we can better understand them and share that knowledge to help dissipate discrimination and prejudice.
Well-known anthropologist Anne H. Sutherland researched and wrote the first major work about the Romanies in the United States in the 1970s: "Partly, the Roma are indisposed to let people know the 'truth' about them as it has been one of their most effective survival mechanisms. A group that is generally despised by those who live around them keeps its boundaries by not disseminating full and accurate information. They understandably sense that both inaccurate and accurate information can be harmful to them."
Romanies Migrate from India to Europe
The origins of the Romanies, as well as their language, lie in northern India. As early as the beginning of the fifth century, they began to migrate to Europe. They first arrived in Ægyptus Minor (Little Egypt) in the western Byzantine Empire while the Ottoman Empire was expanding. People often confuse this with Egypt and erroneously believe that is their country of origin. However, it is possible that some of the Spanish "Gypsies" — the Gitanos — passed through Egypt and Northern Africa on their way to Spain. "During their twelve-hundred-year sojourn from India, the Gypsies have endured as landless travelers through the world, subjected to dominant group hostility and violence. Moving from territory to territory, either by desire or force, approximately eight to ten million Gypsies have survived as citizens of the world, living in forty different countries." Linguist Yaron Matras writes: "Their memory of the place of origin might be passed on for one or two generations, but ultimately it is their sense of belonging to a distinct Romani community with its spiritual beliefs and unique practices that defines who they are, not the region their ancestors left behind."
While Europeans initially welcomed Romanies, over time they developed an aversion to them, rejected and persecuted them, and began to hang and/or banish them. Discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry manifested themselves in a variety of ways and continue today. Ian Hancock writes about some of the anti-Romani laws that were created throughout Europe "to regulate the movement and treatment of Romanies," and the horrors others inflicted on them.
"In Spain, Hungary and colonial Brazil, it was illegal to call oneself a Romani or to speak Romani; in England and Finland, it was illegal even to be born a Romani, in other words, our ancestors were breaking the law simply by existing." Discrimination against the Romanies, many of whom live in extreme poverty, is still prevalent in Europe. And many of these anti-Romani laws were the precursor to early anti-Romani laws in the United States.
During the Holocaust, even before killing Jews, the Nazis rounded up, sterilized, and deported Romanies from all over Europe. They exterminated up to 1.5 million of them. Ironically, on the one hand, the Nazis were killing Romanies — on the other hand, they were listening to their music. "The Gypsies call the Holocaust, O Porrajamos, a Romanès, meaning 'The Great Devouring'. ... When the Gypsies do talk of O Porrajamos, their story often begins, 'Music saved my life.'"
Romanies Come to the United States
During the colonial period, Western European countries dealt with their "Gypsy problem" by sending them to other countries. The Spanish shipped Gypsies to their American colonies (including Spanish Louisiana); the French sent Gypsies to the Antilles; and the Scots, the English, and the Dutch sent them to North America and the Caribbean. Great Britain sent the Romanichal to work as slaves on Southern plantations.
In the 1800s more Romanies immigrated to the United States along with other ethnic groups. Many Hungarian-Slovak Romani musicians went to Braddock, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, to work in the steel mills. Some also migrated to Cleveland, Chicago, and eventually Delray, Michigan.
Hancock said, "There is thus no homogeneous Romani population but a number of sharply disparate groups differing from others in numbers, in degree of acculturation, and in aspects of their languages and priorities."
In the United States
Irving Brown, who traveled with the Romanies in Michigan and elsewhere in the United States, said that some immigrated to Latin America from Europe and then migrated to the United States, settling in Chicago. He spent time with those who had lived in Chicago and then migrated to Indiana. According to one young Romani woman with whom I spoke, others frequently went back and forth between Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Chicago.
Newspaper accounts referred to police forcing Romanies out of town, as in the Calumet Copper Country Evening News, December 4, 1907: "The gang of gypsies which had been operating in Red Jacket had been ordered out of town, and it is believed the visitors left yesterday afternoon for St. Paul."
By 1980, more than half a million Romanies were living in the United States and Canada. Today, "the largest concentrations of Gypsies are in major urban areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, and Portland."
Approximately one million Romanies now live in America but remain hidden from mainstream life.
Their culture too is insular, and intentionally so, to protect what's theirs. Yet in rented dance halls and event centers, for weddings and anniversaries and birthdays and Super Bowl parties across the United States, American Romani are celebrating with their music.
In the 1880s, Romanies began to settle on Cleveland's west side. Within forty years, at least one thousand of them lived in the area known as Ohio City. Romani musicians as well as some nomadic bands who worked as fortunetellers lived there. By the 1970s, the Romani population declined to a few hundred. Some of those migrated to Parma and North Olmsted, Ohio; others went to Delray, Chicago, and New York.
Romanies also followed Hungarian and Serbian immigrants to the Southeast Side of Chicago who worked in the steel mills in the late 1800s until World War I. While the Romanies did not want to work in factories, they created opportunities for themselves to perform music familiar to these immigrants. The Machwaya came from Serbia and parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Serbian populations such as Croatia and Vojvodina. The Kalderash Gypsies also followed Hungarian immigrants to Chicago. Some of the Gypsies living in Chicago also migrated to Delray. In the late nineteenth century, Romani band musicians came from Hungary and performed in the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. They also performed in the Great Lakes Exposition (also known as the World's Fair) in Cleveland in 1936.
Today, the Romanies still migrate across the United States from the Midwest to Nevada, California, Texas, and elsewhere to live close to family and friends or for jobs. Some of those who had once lived in Delray and then in the Dearborn area moved to the Las Vegas area to work or retire. Sometimes they return to Michigan where their friends and family live. When a relative or friend dies or gets married, many Romanies also travel long distances to attend the life-cycle events. Some perform traditional Romani music at these occasions.
Romani Identity
The Romanies are a huge, complex, diverse group of people who have traveled and continue to travel worldwide. It is not possible to make any succinct generalizations about their beliefs or religious identity globally, specifically, or individually within Michigan. As a means of survival, Romanies are determined not to assimilate into other cultures. This originates from their belief in marimé codes "which keep the physical and social contact between the Gypsies and outsiders to a minimum. ... From the Gypsies' point of view, life within the Gypsy community is safe and secure, while life outside the community is reckless and even dangerous."
Because of their belief system, history of constant migration, and the necessity to adapt to different cultures and societies, the Romanies are amazingly adaptable and resilient, even without a country of their own.
The American Roma traditionally ... have a strong sense of identity, an essentialized identity that is rooted in kinship, language, marriage and group practices, as well as timeworn ways of constructing and reproducing negotiations with the outside world. ... Their ability to negotiate many languages, and different cultures and states, is crucial to how they make their living — by persuasion, fortune-telling and salesmanship.
After experiencing prejudice as a child, Steve Piskor, who grew up in Cleveland researched his identity and ethnic history. He also spent much time in Delray and is familiar with the community who once lived there. He said that as a child, other children would say to him, "'Well you're Gypsy. Well, my father told me there's no such thing as Gypsies and where'd you come from and you don't have a country,' and stuff like that. I couldn't answer the question. So, I went to look for an answer. At that time, I really started the genealogy of them and actually, I didn't know it, but the Cleveland Public Library had the largest collection on the Gypsy people, on Romani people."
Richard S. Martin grew up in Delray, where he went to Holy Cross Church, Redeemer High School, and then Southwestern High School. His father worked for General Motors for about eighteen years in a Cadillac plant and also played in a Romani band on weekends as a lead violinist. When Richard was twenty years old, he married and moved to Riverview, Michigan, where he began working in the logistics industry. After fifty-five years, he retired and moved to the Portage area in Michigan, where his daughter and her family live. He talked about his Romani identity: "My children and grandchildren know they have a Gypsy heritage. However, they also share a Hungarian, Polish, Irish, and Japanese bloodline. ... As my extended family continues to grow and as time passes, the knowledge of them having Gypsy blood will probably be forgotten."
Casey Kanalos, whose photograph of family and friends appears on the cover to this book, also talked about his Romani identity. His family were "Zemp" Gypsies, who emigrated from Slovakia in the early twentieth century and worked for the steel industry in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Around 1929 or 1930 his family moved to Delray to work in the booming automobile industry. His father, Steve Kanalos, was the primas violinist, who played in the Steve Kanalos Band.
I am proud of who I am. I am proud of what my parents had given me and my grandparents. They have given me love. They've given me tradition. Oh, they've given me respect for others. Now, we didn't know much about ethnic groups, where we were raised. To us, we were known as two things: you were either Catholic or Protestant and that was all we knew. ...
Now we're known as Gypsy. And I know we're trying to get away from that word "Gypsy," but I have to be honest with that area. To me, it would be like spitting on their grave. And everything that they went through in Europe. Everything over there. I am a Gypsy, I don't change. I know they refer to us as Roma, or Romani now, but I'm still a Gypsy and when I say that, people look at me and say, "Ok, you're a Gypsy. What's a Gypsy?"
Musician Billy Rose's granddaughter Lauren Slepsky-Chicko, a contemporary and jazz vocalist in the Metro Detroit area, performs with her grandfather and her father, Chris Slepsky, a multi-instrumentalist whose primary instrument is drums. She talked about growing up as a "Gypsy" in a multiethnic community in the Dearborn area.
Most of the people we went to school with in Dearborn, and in Delray that our parents and grandparents grew up with, knew we were Gypsy. However, you go out into the world today and they're not exposed to our culture, and it's just too foreign for them to understand. If they ask what your ethnicity is, and you tell them, all you hear about are the stereotypes: "Wow, are you a traveler? Are you a fortuneteller?" The other reaction is that they have no idea what it means, and people respond with something such as, "You're a Gypsy? What is that? What do you mean you're a Gypsy, is that a real thing?" ... And once in a while, they just think you're joking or being sarcastic and just laugh and smirk, "Yeah right, you're a Gypsy."
It's just very difficult and frustrating to respond to any of these reactions. How do you explain your whole culture and your whole being in a couple of sentences to someone you've just met? In most instances you feel that you already have to defend yourself that you're a real person, with real morals, and a real culture that explains who you are and that it's not anything like the stereotypes.
Most of us won't say we're Gypsy to the outside world because if we do, we are looked upon and judged differently. All of a sudden, we're so different than we really are, and so different than everyone else. If something goes missing at work or if there is a problem that is not of our own doing, we are the ones who are going to be blamed because all that is in people's minds are the stereotypes.
Šani Rifati, the founder of Voice of Roma, said,
My name is Šani and I am a Rom. Rom means human being, or person, or man (Romni is for woman) in the Romany language. ... Being a Rom is not about belonging to a country or a piece of land. It is culture. It is language. It is tradition. It is hundreds of years of oppression, suppression and depression. I am sure that many Rroma can't even come out and say, 'I am a Rom' without fear of repercussions — i.e., people counting their silverware before we leave. I won't play you a sad song on my violin. I do not have a bandanna. I do not have a golden tooth. I do not have long hair or a golden hoop in my ear. I am just trying to speak up for my people: the Rroma.
Religious Beliefs
Religious affiliations among the Romanies vary and are complicated. Many believe in Romani spirituality. Some are Catholics. Others are Lutherans. Those who have joined the Pentecostal Church are obligated to give up fortunetelling. Some of the Romanies originally from Delray are deeply religious, devout Catholics. Many of them attended the Holy Cross Hungarian Catholic Church as well as the Holy Cross Religious School in Delray.
In 1997 about three thousand Romanies gathered in Rome at St. Peter's Basilica, where Jimenze Malla was beatified "as a martyr to his faith" during a ceremony at which Pope John Paul II presided. Romani violinists performed, and a prayer was read in Romani. Malla had tried to protect a local priest from an anticlerical Republican militia attack when he was seventy-five years old in 1936. "He was held in a former Capuchin monastery, converted into a wartime prison, where he was taunted for his refusal to part with his beloved rosary." He was then killed.
Gypsy spirituality, part of the core culture of Gypsies, derives from Hindu and Zoroastrian concepts of kintala — balance and harmony, as between good and evil. When that balance is upset, ancestors send signals to keep people on track. The mysticism of fortune-tellers and tarot readers — though such services to non-Gypsies are not the same as Gypsies' own spirituality — has bases in Gypsy spirituality. Many Gypsies are Christians, with denominational allegiances that reflect their countries of origin. ...
[M]ost Rom Gypsy Americans are Eastern Orthodox.
Today, around the world, Christian fundamentalist revival movements have been sweeping through Rom, Romnichal, and other groups of Gypsies.
Anne Sutherland wrote about the Romanies in California in her book Roma: Modern American Gypsies. She said that since she had studied the American Roma forty-five years before, they have changed in many fundamental ways. The new evangelical or Pentecostal Gypsy churches have trained preachers and focus specifically on the Romanies in Europe and the United States.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Romanies in Michigan"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Martha Aladjem Bloomfield.
Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Ian Hancock ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xix
Who Are the Romanies? 1
Always Traveling 11
Prejudice and Romanies 19
Romanies in Outlying Michigan 33
Hungarian-Slovak Romani Music in Delray 43
The Romanies Today 65
Appendices
Appendix 1 Recipes 75
Appendix 2 Timeline of Laws and Injustices 77
Appendix 3 Romani Groups Who Live in the United States 79
Appendix 4 Timeline of Romani Migration to the New World and United States 81
Appendix 5 Interviews 83
Notes 85
Resources 95
For Further Reference 99
Index 103