This project explores the globalization of Balkan Gypsy music in Western Europe and the United States by analyzing its performance, consumption and production in relation to issues of representation and political economy. Considering how collaborations and hybridity may be liberating and/or exploitative, I explore symbolic strategies through which non-Roma, including celebrity patrons appropriate and transform Gypsy music. In summer 2009, when Madonna was booed by Romanian fans after she bemoaned the plight of Gypsies, she exposed the paradox that Roma, loved for their music, are hated as people. These twin poles of admiration in the arts and marginalization in social life form a historic pattern, and their current manifestation in western popular music deserves attention.

Since the fall of communism, Gypsy music has become a global phenomenon in world music contexts. As Europe’s largest minority and its quintessential “other,” Roma are socially, economically and politically marginalized in virtually all arenas of society but their music has found a secure place in European and American festivals, dance clubs and on CDs, DVDs and YouTube. The current purveyors of this Romani music, however, tend to be non-Romani DJs and members of Gypsy punk and other pop and fusion bands. What attracted these artists and their audiences? What are the iconic signs of “Gypsiness” in pop music? How and why is Balkan brass band music consumed as authentically Gypsy? How and why is the label “Gypsy” used in band names and genre categories? How is Gypsy music marketed through tropes of exoticism and authenticity? Who is collaborating with whom, and how are power relationships implicated in these exchanges? Who benefits from the popularization of Gypsy music? This project involves analysis ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, and media analysis in transnational locations, including several US and Western European cities.

This is a hybrid event, please register here: https://myumi.ch/y14ew