Vlax song & Central European families

Loki djili · Loke gila · Khelimaske gila · Chachi vorba · Rom-pop

Hungary · Slovakia · Czech Republic · Poland · Serbia · Austria

The inward repertoire: slow songs and dance songs in Romani, often unaccompanied. Boyash song as a neighbouring tradition. Later, Rom-pop. Alabanzas sit on their own page.

Slow song and dance song in Romani. Often unaccompanied. Oral bass. Learned in the family, sung at fairs, weddings, pilgrimages. Kovalcsik’s 1981 fieldwork among Vlach Roma in Slovakia (published 1985, Institute for Musicology, Budapest) is a core collection: fifty transcriptions, slow songs (1–37) and dance songs (38–50), with Hungarian and English translations. Fennesz-Juhasz describes khelimaski gjili among Lovara and other Vlach Roma in the Hungarian language area: duple time, descending melody, lyrics from the road (horses, deals) often from a male, joking point of view.

Imre and Sándor Csenki collected this inward repertoire in Hungary from 1940 because it was not the café music foreigners had already decided was “Gypsy.” RomArchive (Orban): Hungarian Roma are commonly grouped as Romungro, Lovari, and Boyash; Joseph II in 1783 forbade the Romani language. Many Romungro and Boyash in Hungary speak Hungarian, not Romani. The café book and this inward song are different jobs in the same country.

Boyash (Beás) in Hungary speak a Romanian-related dialect, not Romani. Kovalcsik (1993): about 30,000, traditional wood-tub makers; Munceans and Ardeleans in southern Transdanubia (Tolna, Somogy, Zala, Baranya), Ticeans around Tiszafüred. Their song world looks more like a peasant repertoire living in layers: Christmas songs related to Romanian colinde, three-line slow lyrics, ballads, four-line slow songs, dance tunes, and borrowed Hungarian and Romanian popular songs. Kanizsa Csillagai (Stars of Kanizsa) is the named public Beás family on this page.

From the 1970s in Czechoslovakia, Rom-pop put Romani-language songs on a backbeat. Věra Bílá & Kale remain the filed public name. Eva Davidová’s field tapes of Czech and Slovak Romani song (1958–71), later reissued as Romane Gil’a, are the older vault under the pop. Giľora (gilora.eu) is the living Czech archive of songs filmed with the people the singers actually sing with.

Kalyi Jag, Hungary, from 1978, is a named public group of this inward song. Rombase (Kovalcsik): Ternipe stayed close to that folk approach; Ando Drom, Amaro Suno and Rományi Rota tried new genres; Kanizsa Csillagai is the Beás public name. Austrian Lovara: Ruža Nikolić-Lakatos (1945–2022); Hemetek; ICH Austria 2011. Fekete Vonat is 1990s Romani hip-hop, named on RomArchive — a present-day line, not the café book. Roby Lakatos on a folk playlist is still the café family, listed on that page. Alabanzas are Gitano church music. They have their own page under Spain and Portugal.

History of this style