Gypsies
More than a thousand years on the road and opting for little more certainty than family and oral traditions.Did they remain instinct? Can man never really become more than instinct and do they belong to the few who are aware of this? They refuse to cherish all kinds of illusions that we supposedly cannot do without. Are the discoveries of our artists and thinkers to them things that go without saying? How on earth is it possible that they have largely scorned our cultures, casually using and enriching the arts?
For years I have been pondering these and numerous other intriguing questions concerning the gypsies. With their existence the gypsies present us with enigma's, doing in fact the same thing artists do: raising questions in our minds.
Jan Yoors (Antwerp, 1922-New York, 1977) as a boy of 12 went along with a kumpania of gypsies and stayed with them for ten years. Later he wrote a book about his experiences, The Gypsies. A must for everyone who wants to get some understanding of the gypsies.Jan Yoors became an artist, a designer of tapestries:
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The film Vengo by Tony Gatlif is not just about flamenco. The music is important, but the film beautifully dramatizes the importance of the family or the clan. The most appropriate individual sacrafices himself as if his life were a trifle.
It's a statement against the western world that the spastic, seemingly retarded boy in the film understands the music, as well as what his uncle is going to do to save him.
The instrumental song El Moro is full of enthusiasm and abandon, but it also contains the ability to let go: they stop it abruptly.
In the song Naci en Alamo they sing: 'I have no place, I have no country, no homeland', but apart from melancholy one hears a touching sense of triumph. We have no need for al these idiot ties and bonds, the singer seems to say, we live by the day, musical mammals that we gypsies are.
What we call progress is a process of levelling and destruction. There is this development towards a miserable worldwide monoculture in which there is no room left for things that are small-scale, local or different, no matter how valuable. The motto seems to be: 'No more primitive tribes, civilize these Papuans and that recently discovered tribe in the Amazone rainforest, modernise this backward Portugal with it's conceited language and morose music, and civilize these primitive mammals the gypsies. Why? Because we know what is best.' While we know nothing.
'New subcultures will rise automatically,' I hear people object. But these won't be authentic for long. They are to the real McCoy what hothouse tomatoes are to vegetable garden tomatoes.
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