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Documentary on the Roma and a segment on Flamencos in Spain
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to marrow3)
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The narrator's statement that, "The roots of flamenco are Roma, or Gitano, as they say here," is preposterous. The Gitanos like to claim flamenco as their own, but flamenco derives from several cultural sources, among them the Moors, the Jews, local Andalusian culture, and, yes, the Gitanos, too. That the Gitanos are now identified with flamenco says nothing about the genre's actual origins. The Al Jazeera narrator obviously bought into this myth without doing any research on his own.
As for the overall tenor of the report on the Roma and Europe, it is so one-sided as to hardly warrant comment. Thousands of Roma settle themselves on both public and private land, without permission, without attempting to integrate into local culture, and dependent on a government (read European taxpayer provided) stipend, and the Al Jazeera narrator condemns the European reaction as "intolerant." Integration works both ways. In addition to a host country's obligation to assist immigrants to integrate into a society and culture, there must be an equal obligation on the part of the immigrants to integrate into the society and culture in which they have decided to live.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 6 2011 13:20:10
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to Kate)
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quote:
I am just watching now and am annoyed within the first few minutes by the images of Spanish Gypsies used in the introduction while the narrator talks about Roma. They are two distinct tribes with distinct customs and in Spain the Cale Gypsies have been settled and on many levels integrated for centuries.
Kate,
I totally agree. The narrator not only fails to make a distinction between the Spanish Gypsies, who have been settled for centuries, and those recent arrivals in France and Italy from Romania and Bulgaria; he also obviously has not attempted to educate himself at the most elementary level about flamenco.
This so-called documentary is more than just annoying. I am tempted here to call it shoddy journalism, but to call it that would be to elevate it to the level journalism.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 6 2011 18:30:13
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xirdneH_imiJ
Posts: 1890
Joined: Dec. 2 2006
From: Budapest, now in Southampton
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to sean65)
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Sean, i'm not going to lecture you about what point you stop becoming a humanitarian...i live in a country where this problem is very real and it is being talked about without any hope of conclusion...in yours it may not be an urgency and it's very easy to talk theoretically about certain problems...it's very easy to say as they do in this film that the bastard Sarkozy wants to put the poor people out of his country...frankly, without being a racist myself, he just did what many (most!) people would love to do but are not saying it because they don't want to be called a racist...
it's really easy to be smart from the outside...in London i doubt it's a real problem...but still, imagine yourself living in a nice house you've worked for all your life, some belongings...suddenly a large group of people come and your whole neighborhood turns upside down...they steal anything they can, they're loud, they have no hygiene, suddenly you're afraid to go out of your house (btw it's price dropped 80% since they moved there), you won't let your children go anywhere alone...you get the picture...
you can act like a nice humanitarian person, you may even be well educated about the subject, but in your nice surroundings, you never had to live in this kind of situation...and this has nothing to do with race...
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Date Mar. 6 2011 20:12:26
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sean65
Posts: 414
Joined: Jan. 4 2010
From: London
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to xirdneH_imiJ)
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quote:
he just did what many (most!) people would love to do but are not saying it because they don't want to be called a racist..
Therein lies Europe's biggest problem.
quote:
t's really easy to be smart from the outside...
I wasn't trying to be smart. We have huge social problems in London and larger communities of sub cultures that have failed to integrate than most other European cities. Keep in mind that the UK is one of the hotspots of mass migration because of the benefits system we operate.
quote:
but still, imagine yourself living in a nice house you've worked for all your life, some belongings...suddenly a large group of people come and your whole neighborhood turns upside down...they steal anything they can, they're loud, they have no hygiene, suddenly you're afraid to go out of your house (btw it's price dropped 80% since they moved there), you won't let your children go anywhere alone...you get the picture...
I do get the picture. But sweeping them off the street so that they can go and unsettle other peoples (lower) middle class lifestyle isn't the answer.
quote:
, but in your nice surroundings, you never had to live in this kind of situation...and this has nothing to do with race...
You don't have any idea of who I am or how I live or what extreme conditions i've seen both at home and abroad.
quote:
This so-called documentary is more than just annoying. I am tempted here to call it shoddy journalism, but to call it that would be to elevate it to the level journalism.
Cheers,
Bill
Easy Bill, you don't want to choke on your Wurther's Original now. 
At the end of the day we're all people trying to get on in this unnecessarily complicated and difficult world. I'm quite sure if we can find billions of pounds, euro's and dollars to fight **** wars in iraq, we could find a fraction of that amount to deal with social issues closer to home.
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Date Mar. 7 2011 6:15:05
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Kate
Posts: 1827
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: Living in Granada, Andalucía
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to NormanKliman)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: NormanKliman
Not all of them.
I know that many Gitanos go to work on the harvests wherever they may be, olives in Jaen, Grapes in France etc, and many migrate looking for work such as the Andaluces in Barcelona but are there really still groups of travelling Gitanos who have never settled ? I did not know that way of life still went on.
It's also a bit ironic that the many European countries had laws forbidding the Roma to settle, and now they want them to, settle and integrate but of course not in our back yard and not in our kid's school. I lived in a village in England which had a community of Romanichal, they lived in houses, had jobs, went to school, yet were still despised and mistrusted by the other villagers.
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Date Mar. 7 2011 9:17:27
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to sean65)
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quote:
There a popular show on in the UK at the moment called My Big Fat Gipsy Wedding. It's a fly on the wall look at gipsy life but mainly focusing on the flamboyancy of the weddings.
You'd be surprised how protective the communities are about their belief's and lifestyle. They don't want their kids going to normal schools because they don't want their children influenced by the other kids who use drink and drugs and indulge in sex before marriage etc...etc...
We all sit on out high horses looking down our noses at these 'lower forms' of beings but they're cool. They're doing exactly the same. Looking at our 'educated' kids running around stabbing each other with knives and getting drunk, pregnant whatever.
I think there are many groups around the world that adopted a nomadic lifestyle out of necessity but haven't seen any good reason to change it.
Ironically, Sean, you are praising one of the key obstacles to the Gypsies' integration and acceptance into the societies in which they have willfully chosen to live: Their (the Gypsies) own determination not to integrate into that society and culture. As I stated in an earlier post on this thread, integration is a two-way street. It is not only the host country's obligation to assist immigrants to integrate into society and culture; there is an equal obligation on the part of the immigrants to attempt to integrate into the country's society and culture. After all, the immigrants (in this case Gypsies) made a conscious choice to relocate. By willfully failing to integrate, and by willfully breaking laws (I assume that squatting on public lands, failure to send children to appropriate schools, etc., are all illegal in the UK, France, Italy, and others, just as they are here in the U.S.), the Gypsies demonstrate their contempt for the society and culture in which they have chosen to live. Is it any wonder, then, that European populations are less than enthusiastic about supporting them?
I am not suggesting that immigrants must march in absolute lock-step to the new culture in which they have chosen to live. But it is not expecting too much to suggest that they observe the basic rules and broad cultural mores of their new home. You and I, Sean, would not deliberately offend members of other countries' while living abroad, nor would we deliberately break the laws of those countries to suit our own cultural mores and outlook. Neither should immigrants, of whatever stripe, do so in the various countries of Europe and in the U.S where they have chosen to live.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 7 2011 12:24:58
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Documentary on the Roma and a se... (in reply to NormanKliman)
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quote:
Bill, it sounds to me like you've already made up your mind about a whole lot of people that you've never met. If you're theorizing to make some kind of point, that's fine. If you're making some kind of evaluation of other people's moral standards, that's dangerous.
Three quick points in response.
A. I was responding to Sean's statement regarding Gypsies' deliberate choice not to integrate in the society in which they have chosen to relocate.
B. I did not, and do not, make any value judgment regarding Gypsies', or any other peoples', moral standards. I simply stated that when one immigrates to a new country, one should observe the basic rules and broad cultural mores of the society in which one has chosen to live.
C. While I have not met recent gypsy immigrants to the UK, France, Italy, and other European countries, I am somewhat familiar with the Gypsy culture. I lived for two years (1974-1976) in Bulgaria, during which time I became acquainted with the Gypsy culture in Bulgaria (which was rigorously suppressed by Todor Zhivkov's hardline Communist government). I also was tangentially acquainted with Gypsies during trips to Greece, and, surprisingly, I met some Gypsies in Valparaiso, Chile, while living in Santiago, Chile for three years (1987-1990). This, of course, does not make me an expert on Gypsies, which I most assuredly am not. Neither, I would guess, are many on this forum taking the opposite point of view.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 7 2011 13:58:11
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