On Gitanismo

R is a Sevillana dancer who is, I think, one half gitana. She and I were waiting at the international arrivals terminal at SFO, waiting for a dancer coming from Japan to come through the doors. Because our friend had neglected to bring his visa, we had been waiting for some time after the airplane had landed. Then a couple of Indian women wearing saris came through and brushed past us.

I sensed that R was suddenly alert. She turned to me:
“¿Gitanas?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, “ Indias.”
“¿Indias de India?” she asked for confirmation. (In Spanish, I should have used the word hindús or hindúes, rather than indias, which generally refers to indigenous people from America..)
“Si” I replied.
She nodded.

I thought that it was interesting that R would make the mistake of thinking that Indian women were gitanas. She perhaps had never seen an Indian woman in traditional dress before, but the body style and skin color and the clothing triggered her interest.

It was about two hundred years ago that European philologists recognized that many words in the various roma languages were probably derived from Sanskrit, or Northern Indian languages which were themselves derived from Sanskrit. This suggested that so-called gypsies were a people which originated in Northern India. The date of leaving India was later put at about 1000AD. It is possible that they left as refugees from the invasion of Northern India by Mahmoud of Ghazni, one of a series of Islamic invaders. Or perhaps they were enslaved in order to help carry his mountains of loot. On leaving India they had to cross an ominous twenty thousand foot mountain range - the Hindu Kush. An early use of this name was by the famous Muslim traveller, Ibn Battuta, from what is now Morocco, who wrote (circa 1330): "Another reason for our halt was fear of the snow, for on the road there is a mountain called Hindukush, which means 'Slayer of Indians,' because the slave boys and girls who are brought from Hind (India) die there in large numbers as a result of the extreme cold and the quantity of snow."

After surviving the mountains the future gitanos then embarked on a five hundred year, five thousand mile diaspora, which took them first through Afghanistan and into Persia. On leaving Persia they split into several streams, some going north to Russia, others going west through Turkey into the Balkans and northern Europe, and the stream which would eventually lead to Spain going south through Syria, Palestine and Egypt to North Africa and across the narrow sea crossing to Al Andalus.

It is not clear how or when modern gitanos became aware of the research findings about their origins. It is believed that the knowledge of their origins had been lost along the diaspora as had their religious beliefs. Presumably they became aware of the eighteenth century payo (non-gitano) research findings by word of mouth, since theirs was a largely non-literate culture.

Now, there seems to be a somewhat lighthearted acceptance of the fact that they have roots in India. One time when Diego and I were visiting the ruins of the Roman city of Italica, a few miles outside of Sevilla, there was a self appointed parking attendant at the bar across the street. He was a large, handsome, and quite dark, gitano. As we were leaving, Diego asked him how he was treated by the local people. He grimaced and said: “Not so good because I am hindú.”

Another time, some of us were taking a class with the well known gitana dancer Concha Vargas, at La Carbonería in Sevilla. When we arrived, Concha was just ending a class with a graceful young flamenca, who was quite dark-skinned. Concha was clearly proud of her student, and introduced her by saying: “Es mi pequeña hindúe.” She’s my little Indian.

One should also point out that the world is not composed of only pure gitanos and pure payos. Many of the gitano families of Andalucia have lived as city dwellers in Sevilla, in Jerez de la Frontera, in Cadiz or the other flamenco towns, for hundreds of years. In that time there has been steady ethnic and cultural mixing, and so there are all degrees of gitanismo among the peoples of these towns. The census of 1785 showed that, in Andalucia, 7.3% of gitano marriages were with non-gitano partners. If this incidence continued down to the present day, about 50% of nominal gitanos would be of mixed race. And as in other cultures with a history of an oppressed minority, it is not polite to enquire as to the exact ethnicity of an individual. Questions from strangers in Spain have in the past led to the galleys. In other European countries, during the years of Nazi dominance, “gypsy research” led to sterilization or to horrific so-called medical experiments in Auschwitz-Birkenau and to the gas chambers.

Many aficionados of flamenco will say that one of the things that attracts them to the art is the knowledge that it is a gypsy art. The gypsy people of Spain – the gitanos - have long been a subject of fascination (one writer calls it an obsession) for the bourgeoisie of western Europe. English and American writers in the nineteenth century such as George Borrow and Washington Irving found that their readers were eager to hear about these people because, perhaps, they envied their seeming freedom from the moral strictures of Victorian society. (In fact, gitanos of that time were often trapped in a tribal culture that was far more restrictive than Victorian society, and violations of the tribal code were punished severely. Gypsies in Bulgaria and Rumania were held as slaves long after the end of slavery in western Europe and the United States. So much for illusions of freedom.)

But art is art, good and bad, regardless of the ethnicity of the artists.. There are good flamenco artists who are payo (non-gypsy) and there are bad artists who are calo. Sometimes a payo artist performing outside Spain will use their publicity material to suggest that they are of a gypsy background. On the other hand, one California dancer who, when learning the art, had lived with one of the famous part-gypsy familes in Spain, when it was suggested that her bio should reflect this, objected, saying : "They are not gypsies, and besides it leaves the wrong impression."

There are many great gypsy flamenco artists, because the gypsy community has been developing and nurturing the art for hundreds of years and, often enough, the individual flamenco artist has been living with the art in one of the great flamenco families since he or she was an infant. Moving in a flamenco way and en compas is as natural as breathing.

The rest of us owe a tangible debt to the gitano community that preserved and enhanced this art form over the centuries to the point where it burst out from Andalucía onto the world stage in the last hundred years.

Gracias. ¡Vamo ya!

Sources:
George Borrow; The Zincali, John Murray, London, 1846
Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra, London, 1829
Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford University Press, 2000
Bernard Leblon, Gypsies and Flamenco, (Tr. by Sinéad ní Shuinéar), Gypsy Research Center, University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995
Juan de la Plata, Los Gitanos de Jerez, Catedra de Flamencologia y Estudios Folkloricos Andaluces, 2001
Lou Charnon-Deutsch, The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession. Pennsylvania State University, 2005
Wikipedia; Hindu Kush, Ibn Battuta.

Flamenquito April 2007