So, you’ve been searching around Klezmer.com? Check out Rom Archive!
Rom Archive is a digital museum funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and started by Franziska Sauerbrey and Isabel Raabe. Their mission is to create a digital space where Rom can represent themselves in a world of distorted representations. The site features articles by Rom scholars like Carol Silverman, Petra Gelbart, various ethnomusicologists, rights activists, and artists of all mediums. The site is available in English, German, and Vlachs Romani (the lingua franca of Romani dialects).
The digital museum format of the site is a brilliant approach to educating users and serves as a model for what we hope to do with the blog for Klezmer.com. The site has a curated section (like a museum tour) for some of the most common areas of interest or misconceptions, with links to authors represented on the site. Additionally, Romarchive functions as a corpus or archive. Terminology is easily searchable and presented in an informative and accessible way. I’ve used the site several times as a launch point for investigating topics with poor representation on other "jumping-off point" websites or search engines like wikipedia or google scholar.
Like Yiddishkayt as a whole, the Romani diaspora holds many cultures bound by common practice and experience. Answering questions like “What is Romani music?” or "Who are the Romani people?" are broad and brilliantly addressed by the authorship and curation to refute myth, find commonality, and present historical background. The multitude of authorship sponsors a wide perspective of Romani voices in answering some of these broader questions and highlights experts on some of the more specific topics.
Please take a look at;
The curated section: https://www.romarchive.eu/en/sections/
Some of the amazing art, audio, and stories available in the archive section can be filtered by section, collection (curator), and specific terminology: https://www.romarchive.eu/en/collection/i/
At Klezmer.com, we believe that Romani voices are critical in understanding the history of European diasporic music, marginalized people throughout the history of the West, the demystifying of the insular image of the shtetl, and how we arrived at our present day.