The Manouche People
Who are the Manouche
Within the vast and varied group of the Roma population there are different subgroups that must be distinguished and whose mutual differences are to be found primarily in the different paths followed during the migration process that they endured during the centuries. It’s a sure thing, however, that the Roma people have many more similarities between them, rather than differences. Differences that are much more evident when they are compared with the so-called gadjè, that is to say the vast multitude of non-gypsies.
Regarding the Manouche, it is one of the first group of the Roma population that went to the Western Europe and settled. Already in the fifteenth century, in fact, we have several documentary evidence to certify their presence in France, and to date it is on French soil (in Paris and Ile de France in particular) that we find their highest concentration.
For instance, they had been spotted in 1419 in Chatillon-en-Dombes (today Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne) and in the province of Bresse; during the same year they spread throughout the whole Provence. Two years before a major band of gypsies (three hundred people) had crossed Germany from south to north and had reached Paris -at that particular time occupied by the British, since it was during the Hundred Years War- during August 1427, prompting an intense curiosity. According to contemporary evidence, the gypsies roaming in France in mid-fifteenth century were at least five hundred.
The Manouche are distinguished from other Tsigane for the history of their arrival in Europe. As already mentioned, to each Tsigano group corresponds a different migration pattern and different settling periods (more or less extended) in different countries. The Roma, for example, remained for a long time in the Danube surroundings, in Moldavia and Wallachia, in the territories of Romania and Hungary, while the Gypsies avoided the path of the Balkans and went to the Iberian Peninsula, passing through Egypt and throughout North Africa.
The Manouche, however -that may also be called Sinti- certainly remained in Germany for a long time before moving to France; their language, in fact, features a certain number of German words and often the surnames are German, as Reinhardt, Ziegeler or Rosenberg.
The Manouche have also been the victims of a cruel repression, just like the Rom and Gypsy brothers (the expert Scott McFire points out that between 1497 and 1774 one hundred and forty edicts against Tsigane were issued). They found themselves involved in centuries-old tensions between us, the stationary people. It’s also because of this that it is extremely difficult to truly understand their beliefs and customs, especially if you do not know their story exhaustively.
The difficulties arise primarily because of our extremely rich cultural background of prejudice and stereotypes against all “gypsies”, then because of their hostility against the outside world -towards the gadjè precisely- which leads them to conceal and treasure their traditions; a strategy that enabled them to pass all their knowledge only by word of mouth, thus preserving it through centuries of persecutions.
Luca Leimer
Oncle Archibald
Nuages is a medium-slow in 4 / 4, in the key of G Major. Its structure is A-A ‘, each section 16 bars long.
