There was a time long ago, when Roma moved from place to place and lived in tents. This period is influenced by the name of this particular Roma community: the Cortorari, who are

the only community in the heart of Transylvania whose wealth consists of a TAHTAI. The Tahtai is a silver cup and its value varies between 100,000 and one million euros.

Some Roma claim that in the old days, it was from these cups that their ancestors’ kings used to drink and that the kings rewarded the skilled craftsmen with a cup.

The tahtai is the equivalent of a noble title and those who inherit it also inherit the story.

It secures the existence of a community, it decides the status, the life partner and level of respect. Its value is not determined by the material of which it is made but by the number of generations it transisioned.

According to some „cortorari”, very small pieces of the old pots had been broken and buried with their owners. Thus, the mark on the current owner’s cup reminds him of his connection to his ancestors. In a world that is constantly moving and changing, for this particular community, the tahtai symbolises permanent security and stability. In marriage negotiations, the girl’s family must assess the potential groom’s cup. There is a hierarchy of quality, size and especially age. The more valuable the tahtai, the more money the bride offers. In the community’s tradition, weddings are not organised, the tahtai being a guarantee that the bride and groom will stay together. According to tradition, after the wedding, the Tahtai remains in the bride’s family until their first child is born. After the birth, it needs to be returned to the boy’s family. This magic cup instigates murder, disobedience and family conflicts, as it happened in a village in Sibiu county, where about 12 families of cortorari are established. There, a particular case occurred where the bride’s parents  refused to return the chalice. The groom’s father threatened the head of the other family with death but still failed to get the Tahtai back. Everything went on normally until the day when intention turned into action and the groom’s father stabbed the girl’s father and then surrendered to the police.

In order to disclose the tahtai’s hideout, some of the cortorari were put under pressure and threatened with the murder of their children. Not even in these conditions, did they reveal the big secret.

Elisabeta Clopotar is one of the most respected women in the community because her husband inherited an extremely valuable tahtai. “A bag of chalices can’t match ours,” she says. During the communist period when everything of value was confiscated, Elizabeth’s tahtai sat buried.

The chalice is inherited in the father side of the family and only a few corturari are proud owners. Other Roma in the community have never seen it and consider it an invention, a legend.

Most of the time, these cups are invisible. In nomadic times, because the tentmakers were not allowed to keep valuables in their tents, they left them in the homes of trusted Romanians, who kept them carefully when the deportation to Transnistria happened.

Today,many cups are still kept in the homes of Romanian peasants, establishing an emotionally link between these two ethnic groups. This fact may also suggest the permanent interconnection of Roma and Romanians on the same territory.

The silver cups were made by craftsmen in Transylvania in the 17th-18th centuries. The stemless ones are considered to belong to a higher class of Roma, while the stemmed cups reveal a less valuable class. Among the cortorari, the one who sells his cup is excluded from the community until his death and the generations that come after him have the same destiny. Whoever steals the tahtai is cursed by the Roma. This curse makes it physically impossible for the thief to live a normal life until his death.

The cup has survived all the transformations in the lives of the Roma. The ability of the holders to keep this cup with sanctity despite all hardships and obstacles is beyond compare. The wealth of the Roma cortorari is not represented by houses, palaces or gold. Their entire fortune lies in this cup and the story built around it. Tahtai has an important cultural aspect to this unique community and for it to exist, the cup must remain in the family.

The post Roma and the silver cup appeared first on Roma Stories.

Roma’s culinary roots lie in nomadism. Over the years, the Roma have taken elements from the gastronomy of other countries and developed them in their own imagination. In the context of nomadic life, a hunting culture developed, so the Roma have always had a predilection for meaty dishes and have adapted recipes to the itinerant way of life.

One of the most popular dishes is the Șah Hai Mas, which has been prepared since ancient times, when the Roma lived in tents and moved from one place to another. As they had no kitchen, they cooked outside in a pot. Meat, cabbage and rice make up the recipe for Șah Hai Mas.

„Bândărețul” is prepared around the winter holidays and can be kept for up to a year if cooked according to standard rules, having pork tenderloin as the main ingredient. „Săviacul” is a pie made with salty cheese and the recipe has been preserved in Roma cuisine from generation to generation.

In general, their traditional dishes are very spicy and excessively caloric. Potatoes are an essential element of the Roma diet.

Their philosophy of life is based on the concepts of pure and impure, a philosophy borrowed from the Hindus. These two concepts structure the life of the traditional community. In their culture, the Roma place a symbolic value on the preparation and serving of meals. In order to preserve the purity of their plates, the dishes in which they cook and eat are washed and then dried out in the sun, and not wiped with fabric. Each container is intended for only one type of food. Meat is not cooked in the dish in which were the vegetables.

The traditional Roma Christmas food is blood sausage, made from pig’s blood. For reasons regarding ritual cleanliness, it is important that the blood is taken directly from the pig’s neck in the moment of slaughter, so it must not come into contact with the ground, which is considered impure.

The organisation of the dining area follows the same rules of purity. Men sit on one side of the table and women on the other or at completely different tables.

The Roma meal ritual strengthens the bonds between people in the community and establishes the status of each member of the family. The oldest man sits at the head of the table and is served first.

In their tradition, the food that is prepared at Christmas is considered an offering to God and the first portion is offered to a stranger.

A culinary custom strongly rooted in Roma tradition is the „lăsatul de sec de brânză”, when the godchildren go to the godparents with various gifts. Cheese pie and chicken wings make up the „lăsatul de sec de brânză” meal. It is said that whoever eats the chicken wing that day will have an easy life all year round.

At Roma weddings, the Shah Hai Mas is a must, and tradition requires a pig to be cut in the yard on the day of the event. Women in the community are in charge of preparing the food.

Romani poet and translator Luminița Cioabă wrote “Romane Xabenata. Romali cookbook”, a collection of culinary recipes from the Roma’s gastronomy from the time when they lived in tents.

Regarding the cooking of the dishes, the writer makes the following hypothesis: “If you are angry, you cannot cook food. Because all that negative energy will be transmitted to the people who are going to eat and instead of eating to be healthy, they become sick.” For the Roma community, both the preparation of meals and food are a ritual and a multi-sensorial  experience.

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Job shadowing or work shadowing is a type of on-the-job learning. It may be a part of an onboarding process, or part of a career or leadership development program. Job shadowing involves following and observing another employee who might have a different job in hand, have something to teach, or be able to help the person who is shadowing learn new aspects related to the job, organization, certain behaviors or competencies. Job shadowing helps both parties to learn and exchange ideas. It helps in networking, exploring opportunities, giving/receiving feedback, and collaboration with different departments.

The job shadowing activity of Roma’s Stories consists of a study visit, for five days, organized by the Icelandic organization PROJECTS, that is aimed to offer young Roma people who are already engaged in activities promoting Roma culture, the chance to deploy job shadowing activities and develop skills regarding cultural projects organization, also social and creative industries.

The creative industry refers to anything that is about art, craftmanship, design, fashion, movies, music, art of scene, publishing, publicity, arhitecture, radio, TV, video games, etc.

Based on a competition, there will be selected five participants, who will be able to benefit from this work program. Thus, for five days, the five selected participants will travel to Reykjavik for the study visit. During this stage, the participants will gain extended knowledge and specific abilities regarding cultural event planning, so they will be able to organize and implement projects and programs benefiting the Roma community back at home. Here is also where meetings with different cultural, creative, social or inclusivity associations and organizations are scheduled, in order to promote future collaborations. There will be organized workshops that are designed to help the participants to get and mentain contact with people from creative industry.

Also, the participants will get economical informations which will help them develop their projects. They will have the opportunity to develop and deepen their knowledge and skills regarding topics such as the management of financial and human resources, the management of implementation teams and cultural product development strategy, so that upon their return home the participants will be able to implement and realize events and projects targeting the Roma community.

Who can participate?

This part of the Roma’s Stories project is addressed to young Roma people, age 18-40 having an entrepreneurial spirit, students and individuals who are part of the community and are already involved in the organisation of cultural events for the Roma community or are part of private or public institutions focused on promoting Roma culture. Basic conversational English skills are a must.

So, if you are or know people who can fit into this Job Shadowing program, we invite you to follow our social media posts, and when we publish the start of registrations in this campaign, apply with confidence. Good luck!

The post One part of Roma’s Stories project will be a five days long job shadowing activity. appeared first on Roma Stories.

The Roma have for centuries been a nomadic group without a stable place. Many of them had no homes and lived in tents on the edges of villages. While on the move, they rarely settled near their place of origin. They always preferred to settle where they were completely unknown.

At first, they were not interested in houses and invested in gold, but after the fall of the communist regime in Romania, the Roma minority felt the need to redefine their identity. After several centuries of slavery, they wanted to recover their lost social prestige and places like Huedin, in Cluj county, or Recaș in Timiș county, are famous for the impressive palaces, with their bright colours and dozens of turrets. On every Roma house in Huedin, the names of the owners are written in large letters, usually illuminated with multicoloured lights. They are easy to recognise due to the excess exterior decorations, statues or marble columns. Often the roofs of the villas are adorned with lions’ heads, emphasing the power and prestige of the Roma. The walls inside are decorated with the “Kidnapping from Serai” carpet. The carpet has become a symbol of kitsch, but the Roma associate it with their nomadic history.

One of the biggest villas in Huedin has a lounge on the ground floor that can accommodate about 400 people. The house is designed like a fortress and was built by the owner together with his craftsmen. When running out of ideas, they used to put on a video tape about houses in India and Japan, and then they would get back to work.

Many Roma in Huedin built these palaces in order to offer some justice to their ancestors, but also out of a need for stability. This architectural phenomenon is representative not only for Huedin, but also for Buzescu commune, in Teleorman county, Recaș in Timiș county and Strehaia, in Mehedinți.

The “Gypsy architect”, Nicolae Bușilă, has designed dozens of Gypsy palaces since 1990. The architect had many bizarre commissions, from a copy of the Capitol to the former Central University Library in Bucharest.

The architecture of these buildings is different from region to region. In the southern regions, the palaces refer to traditional Romanian houses, in Transylvania they are inspired by the architecture of Catholic churches and in Banat by neoclassical architecture.

Some palaces are built after a particular official building which had a deeply emotional impact on the owner’s life. Such is the case of a Roma man from Buzescu commune, who died in 2012, that built his house after the Caracal court-of-Law, where he was sentenced to prison.

One of the Roma leaders from Buzescu says that “the first palaces were built in the early 90s, when the Roma managed to recover some of the gold confiscated by the communists.” The gold was represented by gypsies’ chain of gold coins handed down from generation to generation. Since nomadic times, they invested all their wealth in those coins since they were easier to transport.

In obvious contrast to the extravagance of the palaces, many poor families in the commune of Cotlău, Maramureș county, seem not to have evolved much since the times of tent or cart, were they used to live. The Roma here were given a one-room house by the state, without a fence, with a plank closet and a curtain instead of a door. A few kilometres from Cotlău, in the Craica district of Baia Mare, the reality is even harsher. Around 750 families live here and their houses are made of a variety of construction materials or of cardboard, canvas, pieces of abandoned doors or bricks.

Many of them pick things from rubbish bins, sleeping in the cold during winter. When it rains, water drips through the cracks of the rooftops, so they collect it in rusty pots and use it for washing.

The vast majority of them make their daily living by searching in trash bins and the unsanitary living conditions lead to the complete marginalisation of this community by the population.

The present lives of the Roma are rooted firmly in their past and in the end, this ethnic minority, divided into two contrasting ways of living, is seen through the same discriminatory lens of a free and untainted society.

The post The Romas: From a tent to… palace appeared first on Roma Stories.

When talking about Holocaust, we tend to remember the extermination of Jewish people, even though there were many other communities who suffered during that time. One of those communities is the Romas. In Ion Antonescu’s fascist Romania, Roma people were put on trains and taken to Transnistria, where they lost everything, from their homes to their belongings and even their lives.

Many of us associate the Holocaust with the deportation of the Jewish people to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War. However, few know that in the same time, by order of Marshal Ion Antonescu, more than 25,000 Romas were loaded onto wagons and taken to Transnistria. 11,000 of them died of hunger, cold or typhus or were killed by shooting.

Hitler gave Antonescu the territory from east of Basarabia, between Nistru and Bug rivers, in exchange for supporting his campaign against the Soviet Union. In 1941, the deportation of Jewish people to Transnistria began, and a year later of the Roma ones. The name „Transnistria” is a combination of the prefix “trans” meaning “beyond” and the name of the Nistru River.

The Romas died in silence and their death was hidden from the Romanian people who were not supposed to know that those at the helm had turned Romania into a criminal state, like Nazi Germany in terms of violence and number of victims. Romania under Marshal Ion Antonescu had become a fascist state.

In the first wave, nomadic Roma were deported and one measure that deeply affected them was the confiscation of their horses and carts and with them the possibility of earning a living. For many, the wagon served as a home.

The second wave included Roma who could not justify their existence, homeless and without a stable job, living by theft and begging.

At the time of deportation, the Roma were forbidden to carry material goods, but instead the rumour was that, once in Transnistria, they would have land, a stable job and everything else necessary for a good living.

Actually, the real reason for the deportation of the Roma was the ethnic policy of the Antonescu regime. The aim was to achieve an ethnic homogeneity by excluding minorities and bringing back Romanians from neighbouring countries.

In the hope of improving their way of life, the rumour prompted many of those who owned property to sell it, go to the train stations and go among the other Roma.

Hundreds of families spent about a week en route to Transnistria, accommodated in cattle train wagons.

Once in Transnistria, the Roma were sent to farm work on a state farm and had to live in stables like animals.

The Roma were deprived of the most basic things. They had no medicines or medical care, and in the event of illness they resorted to healing spells and herbs, which were very common among their community.

Everyone between 12 and 60 years of age were subjected to compulsory labour and those who could not work were shot.

The amount of food, which consisted of cornmeal and potatoes, was often not enough, sometimes not at all. Thousands of deportees died, mostly children. Desperation drove some of them to resort to shocking acts of cannibalism. In some cases, the Romas, after their child died, had to cut off parts of the child and burn them to feed their other offspring. Others ate the flesh of corpses. Because of the miserable and completely unhuman living conditions, thousands of Roma died of typhus.

To prevent the risk of disease, the Ukrainians would tie their mouths shut and, using a stake, would pick up the dead and throw them on top of each other into a pit fenced with barbed wire.

This desolate chapter came to an abrupt end on August 23rd 1944, when Marshal Ion Antonescu was dismissed and arrested. In September 1944, an order was issued stipulating that the Roma returning from Transnistria were allowed to resume their work and occupations, as if nothing ever happened and that the living in harsh conditions and the death of thousands of people was just a parenthesis in the Second World War.

Romani-language writer Luminița Cioabă has collected fragments of the experiences of her family deported to Transnistria: “My family, both my father, my mother and my grandparents during the Second World War were deported near the Bug River in Dumanovca, Ukraine. I heard these testimonies long ago, when I was a child. I want to tell you that I come from a world of nomadic Romas who used to travel by tent and in the evening the old men would tell this story of theirs, the story of the Bug as they call it, and they cried and remembered the ordeals they went through, saying that not even the baby snake should go through what we went through. It was a different Auschwitz, an Auschwitz that people don’t know, an Auschwitz of hunger and cold.”

After the war, the subject of Roma deportations was hushed up, only after the fall of the communist regime were the horrors of the Holocaust revealed. In today’s Romanian society, the statement “It would have been nice if Antonescu had lived!” can sometimes be heard and are words guided by racism and discrimination. But if we allow ourselves to break away from stereotypes and get to know the history of this minority that is always on the edge of modern society, these words begin to lose their voice.

The post Deportation of Roma to Transnistria. The Holocaust appeared first on Roma Stories.

“I don’t explain, I paint. For whom? For everyone. Till when? Till the end”

The painter Eugen Raportoru was born on December 8, 1961, in Bucharest, in a Roma family with modest resources. There were eight brothers, he being the youngest of them. All were born with talent, but only he stuck to his talent and became a painter. His path in life was not a simple one, because he often had to face problems and outdated concepts about the Roma ethnicity. Although he grew up and lived in a wealthy neighborhood of Bucharest, Banu Manta, this fact did not benefit him because he suffered from the discrepancies between the two social classes: the Roma and the rich people.

However, he got lucky and met the stained glass artist Ion Brodeală from a young age, who took him under his “wing”, guiding him into the secrets of art. From the age of 12, Raportoru worked as an apprentice in the artist’s studio, who lived very close to him. He was the apprentice boy for everything in the yard: casting lead for stained glass windows, cleaning clogs, making lead bars, pewtering, anything. He went every day to master Ion Brodeală with his works, and he corrected it, a touch there, a more intense color over there. Thus, he got in touch with the work and perseverance behind each work of art. He considers himself “the most beloved of persons” because he had neighbors who loved art, well-known craftsmen, great artists who immediately recognized his talent and appreciated him, encouraged him. There were even three painting workshops on his street.

There is one thing that few people know about Eugen Raportoru: he is color blind. And he’s also a little “dim”, as he likes to say jokingly. This is the irony of God towards him! People wonder how he puts the colors, how he combines them, how he harmonizes them. He replies that he could paint with his eyes closed.

At the age of 14 he had his first painting exhibition, where 30 works were presented and he sold his first painting. The first money made from painting!

At the urging of the artist Ion Brodeală, whom he calls his spiritual father, Raportoru enrolled in the courses of the “Nicolae Tonitza” School of Fine Arts, where he was noted for his talent, but also judged for his ethnicity. That’s why he dropped out of school and followed a different path in life.

At 18, he married the woman who is still by his side today, and since then his life has taken a different path. In order to support himself, he worked as a wall-painter, but he always promised himself that he would return to his studies: “I’ll start in the winter, after I finish painting this work, then in the spring and so on!…”, but it took 20 plus years before he returned to school. At 40 he finished high school, and at 45 he got in college. In 2011 he also finished his master’s degree in painting. However, his rising came after the age of 50, a sign that it is never too late. He has only one regret: that his mother is no longer alive to see all his success. She always bragged to her friends, saying “my boy is a painter!”, but Eugen knew that this was not true because he did not have the necessary education. But today, he can truly say: “mother, now I’m a painter!”

In 2022, he participated in the Venice Biennale, being the first Roma artist invited to this grandiose event. Eugen Raportoru’s works were also noticed in the Vatican. He also had exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London, where he was very successful.

Despite all these achievements, the painter is still unusually modest: “I don’t know how others are, but when I arrive at the workshop in the morning and see my colors, canvases and brushes, I feel blessed by God. I paint as I breathe, as I drink water. It’s simple. Anyway, time will tell everything. I don’t explain, I paint. For whom? For everyone. Till when? Until the end”, declares the artist in an interview for the banutulazi.ro website.

Elvis Romano: “I bought my first stage costume from a second-hand shop”

Tudor Lakatos, known to the public as Elvis Romano, became famous at the end of 2014 when a BBC team came to make a documentary about him in his native village, Șomcuta Mare, in Maramureș.

Elvis “from Romania”, as he is also called, says that he was never interested in traditional Roma music and that he was mesmerized by the music of Elvis Presley, the famous rock&roll star.

He first listened to Elvis’ music as a child and says that the moment was a special one: “When I listened to Elvis for the first time, I panicked. When he played the guitar, I got goosebumps,” says Tudor Lakatoș.

Even though he grew up without electricity in the house and without a TV, he listened to Elvis’ music whenever he could, on a radio. In his songs, he sings about himself, his life, the life of the Roma people in the village, their troubles, poverty, etc. His first costume was made from clothes bought at second-hand store, a satin shirt, on which his mother sewed some fringes.

He is the only one in the world who managed to translate Elvis Presley’s music to the Roma language. How hard was that for him? Quite difficult: there are many things in Elvis’ songs that do not find a correspondence in the Roma language. For example “Blue Suede Shoes”, because Roma people don’t wear such things, and then he said briefly in Romani “don’t step on my foot”.

But Tudor Lakatoș’s life is not limited to music only. He is also a teacher of Romani language and history. At classes, children always ask him to teach them English, but he tells them that first they need to study the subject, and then English. He tries to set a positive example, to influence others to be honest people, to work, to be able to earn their living.

Few people know that Elvis Romano first appeared to the general public as an actor, not as a musician. He played in the film “California Dreamin” (2007), by the late Cristian Nemescu director and in “Marilena de la P7”, (2006) in which he played Elvis himself.

As for his personal life, the artist has five children: three girls and two boys. Three of them are named after the rock star he impersonates: Elvis, Elvisa and Priscilla (n.e. the name of Elvis Presley’s widow).

Fanfare Transilvania: from the streets of Cugir at the opening of Goran Bregovici’s performances

From ancient times until today, Roma people have been considered some of the best musicians. “He who doesn’t know how to sing is not one of us”, says a well-known Roma music performer. In fact, when they began their migration from India to Europe, more than 500 years ago, they were influenced by the music of the countries they travelled. Arriving in Wallachia, they became slaves, but were often used as clowns, singers or comedians because they had art in their blood.

Today, Romani people play rock music, such example is Elvis Romano above, and others folk music. An example like this is the Fanfare Transilvania from Cugir, Alba county.

“We sing folklore from Transylvania and Moldova, and sometimes at weddings we have to approach folklore from the regions of Banat, Muntenia, Maramureș, but in general we manage to sing folklore from all areas of Romania because it comes from our country,” says the leader the group, Nicolae Gălan.

The ensemble consists of ten members who come from generations of Roma musicians related to each other: brothers, cousins, uncles, etc. The roots of this family of fiddlers are in Vaslui County, where the grandparents of Nicolae Gălan, the group’s leader, are from. They had 12 children and who all carried on the traditional songs. In order to preserve the tradition in Cugir, every child is encouraged to learn to play brass instruments.

Fanfare Transilvania from Cugir quickly got the attention of Romanian audience, not only the Roma one, and they are nowadays invited to perform at many folk festivals in the country, but also abroad.

In October last year, the music group represented Romania (Transilvania region) in Spain, in Bilbao, and performed artistic programs in private events.

The activity of training and guiding young people in the secrets of brass band music continues by including them in the current group. Recently, the music group was promoted by TVR (Romanian Public Television) and BBC (Public Television in Great Britain), in shows that promote local traditions. In more than 20 years of activity, among their many artistic achievements is the fact that they opened the shows of Goran Bregovici.

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Dr. Nicoleta Bițu is the director of the RomArchive committee and co-president of the European Institute of Roma Art and Culture, and is currently the president of the Democratic Federation of Roma in Romania. She is one of the leading activists for Roma and women’s rights in Romania and has been doing so for over 25 years. She began her career in the 1990s, under the guidance of Nicolae Gheorghe, a renowned Roma activist and sociologist, during the inter-ethnic conflicts that were taking place across the country.
Nicoleta Bițu is a recognized and published expert in her field, having collaborated with organizations for Roma CRISS, Open Society Foundation, Council of Europe and European Commission, Romano ButiQ. She was part of the team of the Museum of Roma Culture.
Former president of the Democratic Federation of Roma in Romania and of the Centre for Roma Studies at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Nicoleta Bițu now lives in London, where she works as a Roma homeless rights activist.

Cătălina Oltean is the first Roma woman to be part of the National Council for Combating Discrimination (NCCD). Originally an activist for human rights, her career started when during her first year of university, she found out about the 500 years of slavery endured by the Roma community, a revelation that pushed her to volunteer for NGOs that help the community. For 11 years, she worked for the Agenția „Împreună” pentru Dezvoltare Comunitară NGO, where she organised workshops on inclusive education, identity and non-discrimination for projects such as “What do you want to do when you grow up?”, in collaboration with UNICEF Romania. In 2020, she ran and was elected as part of the Executive Council for the National Council for Combating Discrimination (NCCD). At just  33 years old.

„Discrimination is real and I have felt it since I was a little girl because I am also a bit darker skinned and come from a Roma family of music players” she says.
Cătălina Olteanu, who recently turned 36, was born in a village in Giurgiu county, one of the poorest counties in Romania, in a family with no material resources. She was brought up by her grandparents, who, despite not having any school degree, saw the education as the only way for their granddaughter to escape the environment in which she grew up.
“I was very lucky with my grandparents because they brought me up and because they really wanted me to go to school and succeed”, says Cătălina, with tears in her eyes.
At 15, she left the village where she was born and moved to Bucharest, to the boarding school she had just entered. She didn’t have an easy life here either. She wanted very much to study law, but was discouraged by one of her teachers. The reason is still etched in her mind: “it’s too difficult for someone like you” she was being told. After high school, she volunteered in Zalău, including working with disabled children.

For a while she didn’t even want to talk about her identity until she saw that the University of Bucharest had a department in her mother tongue, Rromani. It wasn’t until her first year of university, when she was 20, that she learned about the history of her people and the 500 years of slavery. “When I learned that, I came out of the classroom crying. I was a good student at history, meaning I had an A average, but I never knew that,” she adds.

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Lajos Gabor, known to the public as Lali, was born on March 1, 1968, in the village of Haieu/Băile 1 Mai, in Bihor county, but later his parents moved to Crăciunești, Mureș county, the “Gypsy Jerusalem” as he calls it.

He is a gypsy boilermaker, tinsmith and blacksmith, but Lali’s talents do not stop at craftsmanship. Prompted by a university professor, he held, in an unconventional setting, a cafe, free Roma language courses for a semester.

He also starred in a reality TV show called “Fifty, Fifty”. The show followed the adventures of Lali and the actor Vasile Blaga, sent “in the field” to sell products at fairs, to survive in the Danube Delta, and even sent them to visit the prison.

He didn’t go to school much! He only graduated from middle school, but he is a good storyteller and a very good craftsman. Copper and brass craftsman. From his hands, true works of art come out: hats, hammers, cups, violins, a pair of shoes, a pyramid, etc.

The coppersmith artist Lali Gabor, from the Gabor craftsmen family, learned to shape copper from his father, who took him to the forge as soon as he came home from school. He would stay there until late in the evening, to learn the secrets of this art.

With fire, hammer and anvil, he created medieval lanterns for parks in Switzerland, where he was praised for the realization of these highly complicated engineering works. Engineers, who were specialized in metal processing, were not able to accurately reproduce, using high-performance techniques, the model of the medieval lanterns in the swiss parks. But alone, Lali Gabor managed to bend the copper as even the 3D printer could not do. With only fire, hammer and anvil, Lali demonstrated how valuable the gypsy craft can be, so appreciated in Western Europe.

However, in Romania, Lali thinks that he is not appreciated. He was often discriminated in his own country. The artist tells how he was refused by taxi drivers. Or how once he arrived at a hotel and he was told at the reception that there were no rooms available, but later, calling from his mobile phone, he found out that in fact, there were! Likewise, he once entered a pharmacy with his wife dressed in a gypsy outfit. Immediately a young pharmacist appeared to prevent them from stealing something from there. He goes through this trauma several times daily and says that he is sick of it!

Even if he is one of the few craftsmen gypsies left in Romania, his talent is more appreciated in countries like Norway or Sweden, where he is known as the “man with the hat” or the “fire tamer”.

He participated in countless traditional art festivals organized in these countries, where he learned that payment is not necessarily made in money, and people’s smiles of gratitude are much more valuable.

It was hard for him to get rid of the feeling of discrimination he lives with every day in Romania. It was not easy for him to understand the fact that the police team that followed him on the streets of Kwam (Norway) was actually doing it to protect him: “I was leaving at two o’clock at night and I was walking to my room when I just saw the police car behind me. I was wearing a big gabor hat, known in Transylvania. I remembered the habbit of militia from the time of Ceauşescu. Finally, I said to myself that they have nothing to do to me. But you know what happened? Those people knew about me and came behind me to protect me so that a car or a truck wouldn’t hit me. When I entered the courtyard of the guesthouse, they turned on the traffic light and greeted me. That’s what it’s about”, said Lali in an interview with Adevărul.ro.

In our country, the craftsman had less appreciation of this kind. In 2019, Lajos Gabor participated in the Art Encounters biennial in Timișoara, where, together with Norwegian and Swedish artists, he was invited to restore the decorative metal elements in the Huniade castle park in the city along Bega river.

From the Romanian Peasant Museum to Calvin Klein

Another example of a boilermaker who works with metals is Victor Clopotar. The ethnic Roma artist was born in 1981, in Brateiu, a village near Mediaș, Sibiu County, in a family of boilermakers who have been involved in the processing of copper, brass and silver since ancient times.

He remained among the few alive ones who still practice this craft, however. As he himself remembers, in 1986, there were 200 families engaged in this occupation. Today there are only six left.

He learned the art of craft from childhood. After the age of 5, when his mother died, he used to spend more time with his father, in fear of losing him too. In just two years, three family members perished: his grandfather, grandmother and mother. It was not easy for his father who began drinking a lot of alcohol. Little Victor, scared that he might lose his father too, didn’t leave him alone at all. That’s how he was always around the hammer and anvil, slowly learning the trade of a boilermaker.

At just 9 years old, he made his first 10-liter brandy kettle by himself, without help from his father. At the age of adolescence, he already participated in craft fairs where he sold objects he had made. But he realized that the fee he was paying for a few days of fair was too high and the business was not profitable. So he started selling on the high road, where he owns a plot.

He also goes quite often to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, in Bucharest, where he has a stall, where he sells together with his wife. No one taught him “marketing”, “management”, or “business development”, but all thess are in his blood. He talks to everyone who passes by his particular stall, whether they buy something or not. Give explanations of how the objects were made or recommendations. Because he knows very well that it’s not enough to do something good, but it also has to have a story behind it.

Few people know that they can bring him any metal object that needs adjustment. That’s how he became a jeweler: Victor Clopotar started exhibiting his jewelry, but also the decorative objects created by him on the website Meșteshukar Butiq, a social enterprise that works to revalue traditional Roma craftsmanship. You can find the link here: https://mbq.ro/product-category/decoratiuni-pentru-casa/.

And the years went by and Victor Clopotar became well-known, not only in Romania, but also abroad. He is invited to the most important exhibitions in the world in New York, Vienna, London, or Venice. In 2012, it was selected by Calvin Klein designers for the millimetric precision he works with.

He is also presented by the Michelangelo Foundation, where his latest collection can be seen here: https://www.homofaber.com/en/ecollection/corizom-743

But for him all these are not very important, as fame was not something he sought in life. More important was that whatever came out of his hands to be good, beautiful and useful. But the most important thing was, is and will be his family and someone to carry on the tradition.

Fortunately, he was lucky with this as well. Victor Clopotaru, has an 18-year-old son and two daughters. The son was named after him, Victor, and he is taking over his skills, being a craftsman in metal processing too.

Traian Căldărar ia another craftsman from Brateiu, Sibiu County. He learned this craft at the age of 4. As well as being a skilled craftsman, he has become a member of the local council and tries to support his community as much as he can. The cauldrons, the kettles he makes have made their way across the ocean, where the owner of a restaurant in Portland, USA, had a Traian-made kettle in the corner from which his customers are served. “Since I was a little kid I’ve been a coppersmith, it’s a job that is passed down from generation to generation, and as little kids we sit next to the older ones, already established in the business. I got my hands on the hammer when I was four or five years old, like our youngest, who also comes along. Already at the age of 13/14 he started to master the craft,” says Traian.

Another old craft is wicker weaving. These crafts are most common among the Rudar, a subgroup of the Roma ethnic group. The wickerwork (răchita) is a species of willow with narrow, long leaves, which craftsmen used to braid in various sizes and shapes. Among the most popular handmade wickerwork objects are baskets.

Wickerwork is harvested in autumn and stored in airy places to prevent mould. It is sorted according to size and thickness so that it meets the requirements of the products to be made.

Zoltan Bojody from Viișoara, Cluj county, is a third-generation wicker weaver. His parents and grandparents carried on the same craftship. Zoly has collaborated with Swedish designers Mattias Rask and Tor Palm for Vienna Design Week and Stockholm Design Week. He is also a member of Meșteshukar ButiQ.

After marriage, the need for a better living pushed Zoltan to start wicker picking and develop his skills to practice this craft. He weaved his first basket at the age of 22.

The post The art of cooper processing: roma craft or national treasure? appeared first on Roma Stories.

No matter if we speak about celebrations organized by the nobility, weddings, baptisms or funerals of peasents or the parties that were taking place in the most famous restaurants in Bucharest, such as „Capșa„ or „Caru cu Bere”, Roma lute players were a mandatory presence because of their native musical talent and the way they knew how to entertain. ”There was not such thing as a party without Roma singers,” says Viorel Cosma in his book, Roma Artists from present and past.

Barbu Lăutaru or Vasile Barbu as it was his real name, is considered the first big traditional Romanian artist and was born in a family of enslaved lute players from Moldova. He started playing in the nearby areas where his father was already known when he was young, but built his fame because of the numerous instruments he knew how to play such as the fiddle, the pan flute or the kobsa, and his unique style of singing different traditional songs and dances. Unbeaten by any other artists of his time, Barbu Lăutaru was invited to play at inns, different social gatherings and even at balls or in public gardens.

În such place, he crossed paths with Franz Listz, the famous Hungarian pianist and composer, whom he impressed by his native talent. Many sources cite Listz as saying to Lăutaru, ”You are a true artist!”.

Dona Dumitru Siminică arrived in Bucharest because he needed a place to work. His family was composed from singers and lute players, but he moved to the capital in the 40s to look for work on the many construction sites. Dona learned how to be a bricklayer at the same time as learning how to play the violin from his father. Soon, he formed his own band with whom he used to play in different bars in Bucharest.

His unique androgynous voice is what made Dona Dumitru Siminică different from any other artists of that time, especially when it came to singing sad ballads. Maybe that is exactly why all of the big restaurants and bars from Bucharest wanted each week to have him play on their stage. He is also the first lute players to record songs in the Romani language.

Johnny Depp described Taraful Haiducilor din Clejani as a very fast train, „It’s gone before you know what is happening in front of your eyes”. Internationally, the band was known as Taraf du Haidouks and are considered one of the best Roma lute players of all time. They made appearances in movies such as „The Man Who Cried” alongside Johnny Depp and Radu Mihăilean’s „Le Concert”, were given by BBC World the World Music Award and used to be an international phenomenon. But all of these will come later, so let’s start at the beginning.

The band was formed as a traditional Roma band from Clejani, a village where almost all families are of musicians or artists. In Clejani, it was known that if you are a musician, money will not be a problem. But the band had the luck to sing not only at local weddings and events but in international concerts like in Geneva and Paris too, an unusual occurrence in communist Romania. Their true success though came at the beginning of the 90s, when two Belgian managers who saw them play in Paris came to Clejani with the thought of signing them in. That was the beginning of Taraf du Haidouks, as they will be  internationally known, a band of 12 Roma singers from Clejani who made such waves in the music industry that they played in almost each corner of the world.

While the Romanian public didn’t have much interest for the band, the foreign press wrote about their improvisation skills, the way they transformed once on stage and their free and vibrant way of singing traditional songs. All of these while none the players had any official musical studies.

Currently, Taraful Haiducilor is still an active band, playing in different concerts around Romania, but many of the original members are not part of it anymore. The old ones went and the young came to replace them, while some other members such as Ioniță Manole (known today to the Romanian public as Ioniță de la Clejani), met success with their own bands and projects.

Depending on whom you ask, people can tell you that Damian Drăghici is known for either his very famous band, Damian & Brothers, that has collaborations with many other successful Romanian artists or for his self-titled podcast that gathers millions of views and where Drăghici has guests from a variety of industries and domains.

He escaped communist Romania at the age of nineteen and ran to Greece, where to survive, he played the pan flute at tables or in different bars. That is where he was discovered and offered a private scholarship for Berklee Music College, one of the most prestigious private music colleges in the world. In America, Drăghici signed for Sony Music, starting his string of collaborations with artists such as Joe Cocker, James Brown and Cindi Lauper. His collaboration with Paul Winter Consort is what earned him a Grammy.

Back in Romania, Damian Drăghici kept adding successful projects to his portfolio. He starts Damian & Brothers, a traditional Roma music band, and then has multiple collaborations with big Romanian artists such as Smiley, Delia, Andra or Dan Bittman. He had a short political career to then he focused on music and business. He also starts a self-titled podcast, where diverse guests discuss a plethora of subjects.

Traditional Roma songs that are still being played today are decades, if not even centuries old, having universal messages of love, sorrow, betrayal or sadness. The singers who sing them changed though. We are no longer talking about enslaved lute players, but of artists who are also businessmen, have concerts all over the world and use technology to create and promote a different type traditional Roma music.

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