In search of Gypsies and their music in the South of France.
Eberstadt’s first work of non-fiction, based on her six years in Perpignan’s Gypsy community and her friendship with one Gypsy family, each of whose children has chosen a quite different way of negotiating the conflicts between modernity and tribal belonging.
Diane is thirty, and bursting with life. She has been married to Moise, one of the greatest Gypsy singers north of Barcelona, since they were seventeen years old. Moise has toured the world with his band Tekameli, whose music is produced by Sony. But according to the rules of the Gypsy community in which they live, if Diane wants to leave her own apartment (assuming she has her husband’s permission), she must be covered in black from head to toe, and accompanied by a suitable chaperone. And Moise, now that he has been reborn a Pentacostalist, is no longer allowed to sing in public….
What does it mean, being Gypsy in a Western European city in the twenty-first century? Like many people from traditional cultures, the Gypsy families Eberstadt portrays operate in a kind of schizophrenia, where young men wear Hugo Boss, eat Big Macs, and listen to Jay-Z, but marry at fifteen a certified virgin their families have chosen for them. And religion beckons as a dangerous escape from the humiliations of being a second-class citizen, excluded from the fruits of the larger society in which you live.
“Passionate, at once exhilarating and despairing, a rich and profound work of high non-fiction literature. A portrait of the Gypsies of southwestern France, it is also about family, about consumerism, and about the ruthlessness of a world in which there is no more open road.” – Luc Sante.