I wish to thank especially Mark Beissinger and Speranja Rădulescu as well as Nicolae Constantinescu; Antoaneta Olteanu; Adriana and Florea Uliu; Dumitru, Vica, and Adrian Vitcu; and the anonymous referees for Slavic Review—each in various ways—for their useful suggestions, answers to questions, help in obtaining publications, and support. I also thank the International Research and Exchanges Board for funding part of my fieldwork. Finally, I am grateful to the many Romani musicians who spoke with me at length, hosted me on countless occasions, and showed me over and over their cherished occupation.

1. Due to the important distinction between the ethnonyms “Gypsy” and “Rom“—in Romanian, (igan (pi. (igani) and rom (pi. romi), I include the original terms from the Romanian quotes in my English translations. This will underscore matters of ethnonym usage, a question examined in detail below. In English, I Anglicize the plural of Rom (Roms), following the helpful suggestion of Victor Friedman.

2. As I will treat below, the assertion that lăutari speak Romanian brings with it an implicit contrast to other Roms in Romania, some of whom speak Romani.

3. Hancock, Ian, “Introduction,” in Crowe, David and Kolsti, John, eds., The Gypsies of Eastern Europe (Armonk, N.Y, 1991), 4–6 Google Scholar. On this paradox among lăutari, see Beissinger, Margaret H., The Art of the Lăutar: The Epic Tradition of Romania (New York, 1991), 29–35.Google Scholar

4. Barth, Fredrik, “Introduction,’ Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston, 1969), 9–38.Google Scholar

5. Jenkins, Richard, “Ethnicity Etcetera: Social Anthropological Points of View,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 19, no. 4 (1996): 819 Google Scholar. See also Jenkins, , “Rethinking Ethnicity: Identity, Categorization and Power,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17, no. 2 (1994): 197–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. For examples of such works, see Kenrick, Donald and Puxon, Grattan, The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Hancock, Ian, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution (Ann Arbor, 1987)Google Scholar; Crowe, and Kolsti, , eds., Gypsies of Eastern Europe; Fraser, Angus, The Gypsies (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar; Crowe, David, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (New York, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. See, for instance, Will Guy, “Ways of Looking at Roma: The Case of Czechoslovakia“ [1975]; Milena Hübschmannova, “Economic Stratification and Interaction: Roma, an Ethnic Jati in East Slovakia” [1984]; and Lemon, Alaina, “Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union and the Moscow Teatr ‘Romen'” [1991], in Tong, Diane, ed., Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, and Stewart, Michael, The Time of the Qypsies (Boulder, Colo., 1997).Google Scholar

8. Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 8, 15Google Scholar. On the communication of cultural difference as social process, see Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, “The Cultural Contexts of Ethnic Differences,” Man 26, no. 1 (1991): 127–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Lăutari in southern Romania are—like the Romanians among whom they live— Orthodox Christians. I do not treat religion among lăutari here since I did not find it to be a salient feature of their identity construction.

10. The sites of my fieldwork included villages (Blejeşti, Mârşa, Preajbă, Cartojani, Celei, Corabia) and cities (Bucharest, Craiova, Târgoviste); one family of musicians I interviewed was from a village in Transylvania (Ceuaş). All of the musicians remain anonymous in order to protect their privacy.

11. On music and song per se as performed by lăutari, see Beissinger, Art of the Lăutar.

12. The number of Roms in Romania is much disputed but at least 1 million. Elena, and Zamfir, Cătălin, ‘figanii: Între ignorare şi îngrijorare (Bucharest, 1993), 60 Google Scholar. The Ethnic Federation of Roms in Romania estimates 2.5 million. Pons, Emmanuelle, Tiganii din România (Bucharest, 1999), 7.Google Scholar

13. Wallachia and Moldova were historical regions located in the south and northeast of present-day Romania, respectively. In Hungary and especially Transylvania (central and northwest Romania), many Roms were serfs. Fraser, Gypsies, 107–10.

14. Hancock, Ian, “Introduction,” in Hancock, Ian, Dowd, Siobhan, and Djurić, Rajko, eds., The Roads of the Roma (Hertfordshire, Eng., 1998), 14–17.Google Scholar

15. Beck, Sam, “The Origins of Gypsy Slavery in Romania,” Dialectical Anthropology 14 (1989): 57–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. For an overview of European Romani music, see Silverman, Carol, “Rom (Gypsy) Music,” in Rice, Timothy, Porter, James, and Goertzen, Chris, eds., Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (New York, 2000), 8:270–93Google Scholar. See also The World of Music 38, no. 1 (1996), devoted to studies of Romani music and musicianship.

17. Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 66.Google Scholar

18. Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison, 1976), 50.Google Scholar

19. Crowe, , History of the Gypsies, 107–8Google ScholarPubMed. For an alternative chronology of Romani slavery in the Romanian Principalities, see Gheorghe, Nicolae, “Origin of Roma's Slavery in the Rumanian Principalities,” Roma 7, no. 1 (1983): 12–27.Google Scholar

20. Hancock, , Pariah Syndrome, 16–17 Google Scholar; Cosma, Viorel, Lăutarii de ieri şi de azi, 2d ed. (Bucharest, 1996), 22.Google Scholar

21. Achim, Viorel, Tiganii în istoria României (Bucharest, 1998), 33.Google Scholar

22. Iorga, Nicolae, Istoria literaturii româneşti, 2d ed. (Bucharest, 1925), 1:27 Google Scholar; Cosma, Lăutarii de ieri şi de azi, 22–24. On lăutar history, see Beissinger, Art of the Lăutar, 16–23.

23. Cosma, Lăutarii de ieri şi de azi, 24.

24. Ibid., 15.

25. These distinctions were explained in Kogălniceanu, Mihai, Esquisse sur l'histoire, les moeurs et la langue des Cigains connus en France sous le nom de Bohémiens (Berlin, 1837)Google Scholar; see Achim, Tiganii în istoria României, 36–37.

26. Achim, Tiganii în istoria României, 37, 79. In this regard, the example of African- American musicians provides a striking parallel to Romani musicians and their relationship with dominant society; and in the case of Romanian Romani musicians, the parallels are even closer given the historical experience of slavery, which both Roms and Black Americans endured. Much as hierarchical divisions based on occupation emerged among Romani slaves, among African-American slaves, rank was according to the types of work they were assigned. Furthermore, as with lautari, whose status was elevated among slaves, Black musicians were also more privileged than other slaves. See Abrahams, Roger, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

27. This is according to Romani sociologist Burtea, Vasile, “Neamurile de romi şi modul lor de viaţă,” Sociologie Romănească, 1994, no. 2–3:257–73.Google Scholar

28. Achim, Tiganii Ǯn istoria Romaniei, 171–72. See also Liégeois, Jean-Pierre and Gheorghe, Nicolae, “Romii: O minoritate a României: Anexa,” in Minority Rights Groups International Report (Oradea, Romania, 1996), 2–3.Google Scholar

29. On postemancipation, see Hancock, Pariah Syndrome, 37–48; see also Achim, Tiganii în istoria României, 76–119. Serfdom was outlawed in Transylvania in 1848. Fraser, Gypsies, 222–26.

30. See Sárosi, Bálint, Gypsy Music (Budapest, 1978).Google Scholar

31. Silverman, Carol, “Bulgarian Gypsies: Adaptation in a Socialist Context,” Nomadic Peoples 21/22 (1986): 52.Google Scholar

32. See Gojković, Andrijana, “Romi u muzičkom životu naših naroda,” Zvuk 3 (1977): 45–50 Google Scholar, and “Music of Yugoslav Gipsies,” Traditional Music of Ethnic Groups—Minorities 7 (1986): 187–94; T. P. Vukanović, “Musical Culture among the Gypsies of Yugoslavia,“yournal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3d ser., 41 (1962): 41–61; and Rice, Timothy, “The Surla and Tapan Tradition in Yugoslav Macedonia,” Galpin Society Journal 35 (1982): 122–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Achim, Tiganii în istoria României, 128.

34. See Ioanid, Radu, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944 (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar. See also Huttenbach, Henry R., “The Romani Pořajmos: The Nazi Genocide of Europe's Gypsies,” Nationalities Papers 19, no. 3 (1991): 373–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Quoted in Crowe, History of the Gypsies, 134.

36. See Crowe, History of the Gypsies, and Poulton, Hugh, The Balkans (London, 1993).Google Scholar

37. See Crowe, David, “The Gypsy Historical Experience in Romania,” in Crowe, and Kolsti, , eds., Gypsies of Eastern Europe, 61–79 Google Scholar, and Achim, Tiganii în istoria României. On Bulgaria, see Silverman, “Bulgarian Gypsies“; on central Europe, see McCagg, William, “Gypsy Policy in Socialist Hungary and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1989,” Nationalities Papers 19, no. 3 (1991): 313–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. The most notable state-run folklore festival was “Cîntarea României” (The singing of Romania). See Speranţa Rădulescu, “Traditional Musics and Ethnomusicology under Political Pressure: The Romanian Case,” Anthropology Today 13, no. 6 (1997): 8–12.

39. See Rădulescu, Speranţa, “Consequences of the Political Changes in Romanian Peasant Music,” Revue roumaine d'histoire de l'art 31 (1994): 27–30 Google Scholar. On comparable prohibitions in Bulgaria, see Silverman, Carol, “Reconstructing Folklore: Media and Cultural Policy in Eastern Europe,” Gommunication 11 (1989): 141–60.Google Scholar

40. See Barany, Zoltan, “Living on the Edge: The East European Roma in Postcommunist Politics and Societies,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 321–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Barany, , “Grim Realities in Eastern Europe,” Transitions 1, no. 4 (1995): 3–6 Google Scholar. See also Crowe, David, “The Gypsies of Romania since 1990,” Nationalities Papers 27, no. 1 (1999): 57–67 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Latham, Judith, “Roma of the Former Yugoslavia,” Nationalities Papers 27, no. 2 (1999): 205–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Verdery, Katherine, “Nationalism and National Sentiment in Postsocialist Romania“ [1993], What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, 1996), 97–98 Google Scholar. See also Pavel, Dan, “Wanderers: Romania's Hidden Victims” [1992], in Tong, , ed., Gypsies, 69–73.

42. On music and Roms in postcommunist Romania, see Rădulescu, Speranla, “Metisaje şi globalizări muzicale,” Secolul 20: Balcanismul 7–9 (1997): 108–12Google Scholar. On east European music in the 1990s, see Slobin, Mark, ed., Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe (Durham, 1996)Google Scholar. See also Vidić Rasmussen, Ljerka, “Musical Practice of Nomadic Rom in Bosnia,” in Salo, Matt T., ed., 100 Years of Gypsy Studies (Cheverly, Md., 1990), 203–13Google Scholar, and Rasmussen, , “Gypsy Music in Yugoslavia: Inside the Popular Culture Tradition, “Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 5th ser., 1 (1991): 127–39.Google Scholar

43. Horowitz, Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, 1985), 110.Google Scholar

44. Marushiakova, Elena, “Ethnic Identity among Gypsy Groups in Bulgaria,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 5th ser., 2 (1992): 107.Google Scholar

45. Liégeois and Gheorghe, “Romii,” 1.

46. Gropper, Rena C., Gypsies in the City (Princeton, 1975), 38.Google Scholar

47. See Drăgulescu, Agatta, Lungu, Ovidiu, and Neculau, Adrian, Jiganii: O abordare psihosociologică (Iaşi, 1996), 41–59.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 65–66.

49. Stewart, 7Ime of the Gypsies, 13.

50. Szántho, Dénes, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” New Hungarian Quarterly 9 (1968): 156.Google Scholar

51. A young Romani musician from Skopje told me emphatically that between musicians like him and Macedonians “there are no problems, no differences! We are all people.“

52. For a brief discussion of settlement patterns in six villages in Romania where lăutari live, see Rădulescu, Speranţa, “Gypsy Music versus the Music of Others,” Martor 1 (1996): 138–42.Google Scholar

53. During the interwar period, however, many lautari evidently did live in Ferentari (personal communication, Rădulescu).

54. Silverman, “Bulgarian Gypsies,” 59.

55. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,” 241–42.

56. Szánthó, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” 156.

57. This does not mean, however, that lăutari never perform with Romanians; they do, but only with professional musicians.

58. There are about 150,000 nomadic Roms in postcommunist Băcanu, Romania. M., Tiganii: Minoritate naţională sau majoritate infracţională? (Bucharest, 1996), 49.Google Scholar

59. Fierari were among the first Roms in Romania to abandon Romani; many assimilated and became well educated. Liégeois and Gheorghe, “Romii,” 3.

60. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,” 236–41, 255. Blacksmiths also are prestigious among Roms in Slovakia (236–45).

61. Cowan, Jane, Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece (Princeton, 1990), 102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Liégeois and Gheorghe, “Romii,” 4; Lemon also points out that Romani performing artists in the Moscow Romani Theater comprise an elite among the local Roms. Lemon, “Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union,” 147-48. See also Lemon, Alaina, Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism (Durham, N.C., 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,” 241.

64. Guy, “Ways of Looking at Roma,” 37. As Lemon notes, Roms who perform in tin- Moscow Romani Theater “see themselves as ‘more civilized’ than rural or traveling Roma, and speak of their responsibility to educate the others, to ‘raise the cultural level.'” Lemon, “Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union,” 156; see also Lemon, Alaina, “In Russia, a Community Divided,” Transitions 1, no. 4 (1995): 12–18.Google Scholar

65. Szánthó;, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” 156.

66. Lemon, “Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union,” 156.

67. Stewart, Time of the Gypsies, 93.

68. Gropper, Gypsies in the City, 30.

69. On notions of caste and jat in the context of east European Roms, see Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction.“

70. In Slovakia, occupational endogamy among Romani groups is typical. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,” 245–46. Among Hungarian Romani musicians, “Gypsies … almost never marry girls who are not Gypsies.” Szánthó, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” 156.

71. When a woman's closest lăutar relative (by descent) is her grandfather, it means that her mother was the daughter of a lăutar but married a non-lăutar.

72. Because lăutari travel frequently for their jobs, marriages can take place between men and women from the same village or city, from different villages or cities, and from both village and city; all of these combinations are relatively common. Hubschmannova also notes the “spatial mobility” of Romani musicians on the job in Slovakia, thus affecting their choice of wives. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,“ 257-59.

73. Urban lăutari sometimes perform with family members though ensembles are more often composed of unrelated musicians.

74. Hübschmannová, “Economic Stratification and Interaction,” 244.

75. See Sutherland, Anne, “Gypsy Women, Gypsy Men: Paradoxes and Cultural Resources,“ in Grumet, Joanne, ed., Papers from the Sixth and Seventh Annual Meetings, Gypsy Lore Society (New York, 1986), 104–13Google Scholar. See also Gropper, Rena C., “Sex Dichotomy among the American Kalderaš Gypsies” [1951], in Tong, , ed., Gypsies, 219–32.Google Scholar

76. Okely, Judith, “Gypsy Women: Models in Conflict” [1975], Own or Other Culture (London, 1996), 78.Google Scholar

77. This contrasts with patterns observed among nomadic and seminomadic Roms in North America and Britain, where husbands are not bound, as are lăutari, to demanding— albeit uncertain and periodic—professions but rather stay out of the public eye and tend to the politics of the extended family community. Their wives are both responsible for the domestic labor and expected to earn income outside the home (among non-Roms) such as in fortune-telling. See Silverman, Carol, “Pollution and Power: Gypsy Women in America,” in Salo, Matt T., ed., The American Kalderash: Gypsies in the New World (Centenary College, N.J., 1981), 55–70 Google Scholar; see also Cropper, Gypsies in the City, 1975.

78. On job recruitments where an ethnic division of labor is operative, see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 108–13.

79. Hancock, Pariah Syndrome, 37.

80. Barany, “Living on the Edge,” 325; Merfea, Mihai, Integrarea socială a romilor (Braşov, 1991), 24.Google Scholar

81. The lăutari from Transylvania (members of a family ensemble) acknowledged that they speak “Gypsy” at home but Romanian or Hungarian in public. For a consideration of varying levels of knowledge of Romani in villages in Romania where lăutari live, see Rădulescu, “Gypsy Music,” 138–42.

82. Szánthó, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” 157.

83. See Zamfir and Zamfir, Tiganii, 22.

84. Merfea, Integrarea, 24. Some urban Romani intellectuals have also sought to cultivate Romani, especially since 1989.

85. Tong found that Roms in Greece in the process of assimilating seek to lessen the negative ethnic stigma surrounding them by abandoning Romani. Identity for them is ambivalent “and their attitudes toward Romani reflect this,” since it is seen as “a hindrance to upward social mobility.” Tong, Diane, “Romani as Symbol: Socio-Linguistic Strategies of the Gypsies of Thessaloniki,” in Grumet, Joanne, ed., Papers from the Fourth and Fifth Annual Meetings, Gypsy Lore Society (New York, 1985), 182.Google Scholar

86. The references to this point are too numerous to be provided here; examples can be found in Liégeois and Gheorghe, “Romii,” 6; Carol Silverman, “Music and Marginality: Roma (Gypsies) of Bulgaria and Macedonia,” in Slobin, ed., Retuning Culture, 250wl; and Stewart, Time of the Gypsies, 247. In 1971, the first World Romani Congress adopted the Romani form Rom (pi. Roma) as preferable to “Gypsy” and its European cognates.

87. Drăgulescu, Lungu, and Neculau, Tiganii, 47.

88. Ibid., 57-58. Similarly, in 1995, the Romanian government decided “to switch the minority's official designation from ‘Roma’ to ‘Tigani’ … without informing Romani leaders“ in order “to prevent confusion between ‘Roma’ and ‘Romania.'” Barany, Zoltan, “Favorable Trends for Romania's Roma,” Transitions 1, no. 19 (1995): 28.Google Scholar

89. Gheorghe, Nicolae, “The Social Construction of Romani Identity,” in Acton, Thomas, ed., Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity (Hertfordshire, Eng., 1997), 158.Google Scholar

90. Lemon, “Roma (Gypsies) in the Soviet Union,” 161re3.

91. Gheorghe is an internationally known activist and the head of the General Union of Romanies. Crowe, “Gypsies of Romania since 1990,” 63. Păun is the president of the Party of Roms. Băcanu, Tiganii, 53.

92. Szánthó, “Gypsy Musician, 1968,” 156. The translation as “Gypsy” is, I assume, from the Hungarian “Cigány.“

93. Noting a similar phenomenon in Greece, Tong noted that yíftos is a derogatory term for Rom in Greece, yet it is frequently employed by Roms among themselves. Tong, “Romani as Symbols,” 184.

94. Răducanu is a member of parliament who represents the Romanies’ Democratic Forum. On postcommunist political developments among Roms in Romania, see Crowe, “Gypsies of Romania since 1990,” and Barany, “Favorable Trends.“

95. See Barany, “Grim Realities.“

96. Gheorghe, “Social Construction of Romani Identity,” 159.

97. A Romani musician from Macedonia also expressed civic disinterest and apathy. He told me that he had no interest in being politically active with other Roms; as he put it, “It's not my thing.“