The "Rose Garden": Against Racism in Ethnomusicology

In 2004 Ethnologia Balkanica, Journal for Southeast European Anthropology, the international scientific journal of the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology, published an essay by the Romanian scholar Marin Marian-Bălaşa entitled “Romany Music and Gypsy Criminality.” Marian-Bălaşa’s argument are disconcerting on multiple levels, not to mention disrespectful: first, in relation to the expertise of ethnologists and ethnomusicologists who have dedicated their research to Gypsy culture, and second in relation to the Romany people, and Romanian Roma in particular, who he addresses in explicitly racist and discriminatory ways. Quite some time has passed since Marian-Bălaşa’s essay was published, and a few years since my comments were made public. In Romania as in Europe, however, the situation has certainly not improved in terms of the integration, civil rights protection and valorization of Romanian Romany culture. Quite the opposite: problems of alterity and the social and cultural marginalization of Roma minority and immigrant groups have become more serious and acute in Europe and throughout the world. These years have seen a radicalization of policies and cultures of exclusion throughout the Western world, with sweeping political and social changes driving people in Eastern Europe to migrate West while wars, oppression and misery have caused entire populations to seek refuge in Western Europe and North America – although many of these journeys have ended face to face with a border wall, or in accidental death along the path or in the Mediterranean sea. Today ethnomusicology has an important cultural and political role to play: that of giving voice to those who cannot speak out, of showing, on a tangible level, the importance of the cultural contribution of those who do not write or simply lack the means to be heard. Ethnomusicologists can play this role concretely through their everyday work of research, teaching and spreading knowledge.