Music and "Gypsies"

Drew Davies, Associate Professor, Musicology Block Museum Auditorium

An aptitude for musicality counts among the few positive stereotypes commonly directed toward the diasporic Romani peoples. The Romani perform their own distinct folkloric musical traditions as well as the mainstream repertoires of the societies in which they live. Furthermore, the Romani long have been evoked asRomantics and "Gypsies" in the Western classical tradition through a system of gestural stereotypes of virtuosic performance and a liberation from social norms.

While the best known imaginary Gypsy in classical music is Carmen, examples abound from Haydn to Sarasate and continue today in the marketing practices of the world music industry.

How did classical music appropriate and mimic Romani music over time? How does "gypsyness" in music fuel narratives of exoticism, nationalism, and exclusion? This course will reveal how dependent European cultures and composers have come to be on this "internal other.