More on irritating our fixed orders

Let the Gypsies come and blossom.
We miss them.
They can help us by irritating our fixed orders.
They are what we pretend to be; they are true Europeans.
They do not know any borders.
Günter Grass
That quote is used by Garth Cartwright in the introduction to his portrait of the Gypsy musicians of the Balkans, Princes Among Men. The frontispiece of the book includes the following puff:
An insightful and poignant travelogue which should be handed out free to every Daily Mail reader ~ Big Issue
Please could a copy also be handed out to President Sarkozy?

Titi Robin's album Gitans, which is powered by the 'gypsy queen of Rajasthan' Gulabi Sapera, featured here. Germany's new generation of Gypsies are here, the forgotten holocaust victims are here, and before anyone points it out, yes, I know. Our pilgrimage to the gypsy shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is here.

My candid header photo, which shows some some of the new Europeans rather that authentic Gypsies, was taken in the French Catalonian town of Elne last week and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Any other copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Garth Cartwright's Princes Among Men was borrowed from Norwich Millenium Library. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Comments

The Wound Dresser said…
welcome back, by the way.My wife is half-Romani,so i guess only half of her would be unwelcome,and 1/4 of our kinder.Perhaps Solomon could come up with an equitable response...Romani are the only folks on the planet it is legal to discriminate against.They have no homeland officially recognized by the UN, so...
4:51 pm
Pliable said…
Trivia from Princes Amongst Men.

Joe Zawinul, of Weather Report and Bitches Brew fame, was born to an Austrian Roma family and from age six played accordion in the family gypsy band.
8:57 pm
Pliable said…
Thanks Billoo. One of the fascinating chance, or maybe not so chance, things about this post is that all the subjects in my header photo together with Gulabi Sapera, the black gypsy Saint Sarah and Denise Levertov, the source of your inspirational quote, are women.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/41
7:08 am
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