"Homemade" gypsy recordings

bopster

In Michael Dregni's books, he describes gypsy jazz groups making and selling their recordings at gatherings, and pilgrimages before world interest gave some wider commercial distribution. Any folks/stores/sites know if these recordings are out there for our discovery?

scot

There were several types of these recordings made in the 60s-80s. In Paris there were small record labels like Pyral and Treteaux that produced records and tapes by musicians like Mondine Garcia, Jacques Montagne and Maurice Ferre that were sold at gigs etc. There were also self produced cassettes in Paris, I have a few of these by players like Zlatcho (or Blatcho) Meinhardt and J-P Oliveri. Many of the best groups/guitarists in other regions and countries also made records for small labels. For example, Bakaro Rosenberg (Stochelo's father I think) made records with his group "Romanesj" on the Tsjerka label. As for private cassettes from rural guitarists and groups in other regions, I wonder about this. I am inclined to think that field recordings were made by documentarians and enthusiasts like Luc Moiseef, the best of which were given to the musicians who then sold them to other gypsies. I have 40 or 50 cassettes from Luc Moiseef's collection and the labels are written in the way musicologists and field collectors do, very orderly and complete. Some of these are exceptional and others are not so great.

More information on this subject can be found in"Un Heritage sans Transmission" by Patrick Williams in "Ethnologie Francaise" July/September 2000. This is a very interesting article.

I'm slowly getting around to digitizing all those old cassettes but it's a long-term project...

François RAVEZ

Hi Bopster, Hi Scott,

Like you I strongly doubt that there will ever be some commercial records made of these 'home-made cassettes". For instance in the case of Zlacho Meinhardt, his bandmate don't know what he became (Zlatcho Meinhardt was not even his real name). It would probably be too difficult to arrange a re_edition of these works.
Also most of the music recorded by guitarists like Samy Daussat, Ramon Galan, Hélios Fernandez can only be found in these cassettes and later CDs.
It has not completely disappeared and for instance even Moreno used to sell some CDs after some concerts in cafés (at least a few years ago).
I believe that if you go on sunday to Place des Vosges or rue Mouffetard you still can find some bands playing music and selling CDs.

Best

François RAVEZ