3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A musical people on the move, July 6, 2008
This review is from: Rough Guide to the Music of Balkan Gypsies (Audio CD)
Here you have a medley of gypsy ('romany') music from the Balkans, which includes Romania, Bulgaria, the modern states carved out of the old Yugoslavia, and Albania, Greece, and also Turkey.
Although 'touched up' a bit with orchestration, etc.., you get the energetic sound of a vibrant people's musical tradition, a culture unwilling to bow to assimilation, let alone extermination. Persecuted from Russia to Ireland, and in recent memory, the target of genocide, from the German fascists in the 1930s and early 40s, to their modern counterparts in eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet empire, in the 1990s and since, the gypsies have survived. And they remain resilient.
This compilation, in great sound, full of life, full of emotion, from joyous to melancholic, is a fitting record to a musical traditon which influenced so profoundly the music of eastern Europe, absorbing and adding to the traditional music of their locality, be it Christian, Jewish, or Islamic.
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