Translated from the Polish, Anna G. PiotrowskaÕs Gypsy Music in European Culture details the profound impact that Gypsy music has had on European culture from a broadly historical perspective. The author explores the stimulating influence that Gypsy music had on a variety of European musical forms, including opera, vaudeville, ballet, and vocal and instrumental compositions. The author analyzes the use of Gypsy themes and idioms in the music of recognized giants such as Bizet, Strauss, and Paderewski, detailing the composersÕ use of scale, form, motivic presentations, and rhythmic tendencies, and also discusses the impact of Gypsy music on emerging national musical forms.

Gypsies have for centuries been simultaneously vilified and romanticized—associated with criminality and dirt, but at the same time with color, magic, and music. Gypsy music is popular around the world and often performed with gusto at major events, including at weddings in Bulgaria, jazz bars in Paris, and festivals in the United States. In Gypsy Music, Alan Ashton-Smith explores why this music has such wide appeal, surveying the varied styles that are considered to be gypsy music and asking what links them together. The book begins in the Balkans, home to the world’s largest Romani populations and a major site of gypsy music production. But just as the traditionally nomadic Roma have traveled globally, so has their music. Gypsy music styles have roots and associations outside of the Balkans, including Russian Romani guitar music, flamenco and gypsy jazz, and the more recent forms of gypsy punk and Balkan beats. Covering the thirteenth century to the present day, and with a geographical scope that ranges from rural Romania to New York by way of Budapest, Moscow, and Andalusia, Gypsy Music reveals the remarkable diversity of this exuberant art form.

In the early twentieth century, Bela Bartók and his circle argued for a new definition of "Hungarianness," one which centered around folksong rather than the "Hungarian-Gypsy" style relied upon by Franz Liszt and his contemporaries. This book traces the historical process that defined the conventions of Hungarian-Gypsy style, and reveals through this decades-long debate what it meant to be Hungarian, European, and modern.

A formidable challenge to the study of Roma (Gypsy) music is the muddle of fact and fiction in determining identity. This book investigates "Gypsy music" as a marked and marketable exotic substance, and as a site of active cultural negotiation and appropriation between the real Roma and the idealized Gypsies of the Western imagination. David Malvinni studies specific composers-including Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Janacek, and Bartók-whose work takes up contested and varied configurations of Gypsy music. The music of these composers is considered alongside contemporary debates over popular music and film, as Malvinni argues that Gypsiness remains impervious to empirical revelations about the "real" Roma.

Transcultural modernism -- Verbunkos -- Identity, nationalism, and modernism -- Modernism and authenticity -- Listening to transcultural tonal practices -- The verbunkos idiom in the music of the future -- Idiomatic lateness

A radically new reading of the origins of recorded music Noise Uprising brings to life the moment and sounds of a cultural revolution. Between the development of electrical recording in 1925 and the outset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the soundscape of modern times unfolded in a series of obscure recording sessions, as hundreds of unknown musicians entered makeshift studios to record the melodies and rhythms of urban streets and dancehalls. The musical styles and idioms etched onto shellac disks reverberated around the globe: among them Havana’s son, Rio’s samba, New Orleans’ jazz, Buenos Aires’ tango, Seville’s flamenco, Cairo’s tarab, Johannesburg’s marabi, Jakarta’s kroncong, and Honolulu’s hula. They triggered the first great battle over popular music and became the soundtrack to decolonization.

This book highlights the role of Romani musical presence in Central and Eastern Europe, especially from Krakow in the Communist period, and argues that music can and should be treated as one of the main points of relation between Roma and non-Roma. It discusses Romani performers and the complexity of their situation as conditioned by the political situations starkly affected by the Communist regime, and then by its fall. Against this backdrop, the book engages with musician Stefan Dymiter (known as Corroro) as the leader of his own street band: unwelcome in the public space by the authorities, merely tolerated by others, but admired by many passers-by and respected by his peer Romain musicians and international music stars. It emphasizes the role of Romani musicians in Krakow in shaping the soundscape of the city while also demonstrating their collective and individual strategies to adapt to the new circumstances in terms of the preferred performative techniques, repertoire, and overall lifestyle.

Examines Liszt's piano arrangements of music originally created for other instruments, especially the symphony orchestra and the Hungarian Gypsy band.

Now that the political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity of their music are objects of international attention, Romani Routes provides a timely and insightful view into Romani communities both in their home countries and in the diaspora. Over the past two decades, a steady stream of recordings, videos, feature films, festivals, and concerts has presented the music of Balkan Gypsies, or Roma, to Western audiences, who have greeted them with exceptional enthusiasm. Yet, as author Carol Silverman notes, Roma are revered as musicians and reviled as people. In this book, Silverman introduces readers to the people and cultures who produce this music, offering a sensitive and incisive analysis of how Romani musicians address the challenges of discrimination. Focusing on southeastern Europe then moving to the diaspora, her book examines the music within Romani communities, the lives and careers of outstanding musicians, and the marketing of music in the electronic media and "world music" concert circuit. Silverman touches on the way that the Roma exemplify many qualities--adaptability, cultural hybridity, transnationalism--that are taken to characterize late modern experience. And rather than just celebrating these qualities, she presents the musicians as complicated, pragmatic individuals who work creatively within the many constraints that inform their lives.