"Gypsies in Romania: from slavery to musical heyday"

In this course, we visit the history and culture of the Romani people in Romania. We begin our journey in the 14th century, when the first records attest to the presence of Gypsies who, as an enslaved people, served the voivodes, boyars and Orthodox monasteries of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

In order to understand the social organization of the Romanian principalities before unification, we looked at the ethno-socio-professional classification system that reflects the condition of the Roma populations until their emancipation at the end of the 19th century.

We look in detail at the history of the lautari, the segment of Gypsies who served the nobility musically and went on to become the country's professional musician class. We seek to understand the varied influences that marked the musical dialogues established by the lautari, especially the Ottoman ones, which bequeathed a set of distinctive rhythmic and melodic characteristics to their musical repertoire.

Having presented the vocal and instrumental genres that make up the so-called muzica lautareasca, we will look in more detail at the so-called manea, covering its development from the 16th century to the post-1989 period, when, after the communist regime ended, the so-called “oriental music” established itself as the main Romani genre in the country.

With regard to the manele, we visited their rhythmic-melodic characteristics, the thematic content of the lyrics, instrumentation, dance, as well as their performance context, main performers and the visual aesthetics that characterize their record products.

Format: Audiovisual documentary

Duration: 1h50

Language: English (including subtitles)

The material is hosted on YouTube in private mode. 

Access is granted when payment is confirmed, by registering your email on the platform.