Aims:
Filippo Bonini Baraldi lived several years in a Roma community of Transylavania (Romania), seeking an answer to intriguing questions such as:
Why do the Roma cry while playing music?
What lies behind their ability to move their customers?
What happens when instrumental music and wailing voices come together at funerals?
Findinds:
Through the analysis of numerous weddings, funeral wakes, community celebrations, and intimate family gatherings, Filippo Bonini Baraldi showed that music and weeping go hand in hand, revealing fundamental tensions between unity and division, life and death, the self and others. Tensions that the Roma enhance, overemphasize, and perceive as central to their identity. In addition to improving our understanding of a community still shrouded in stereotypes, this research is an important contribution for current theories on musical emotion, which thus far has focused almost exclusively on western classical music.
You can find more about the research of Filippo Bonini Baraldi here
Readings:
Bonini Baraldi, Filippo
2021 – Roma Music and Emotion (Revised translation “Tsiganes, musique et empathie”, foreword by Steve Feld, translation by Margaret Rigaud). New York: Oxford University Press.
2020 – “Between Film and the World. Roma Ways of Seeing and Perceiving Persons.” Visual Anthropology Review 36(2) : 361-378.
2018 – « L’ethnologue, les images et les fantômes. Trois histoires de science-fiction tsigane et leurs implications pour l’anthropologie visuelle. » Ethnologie Française 172(4) : 715-728.
2017 – “Embodied Interaction with Sonic Agents. An Anthropological Perspective.” In: Lesaffre, Micheline; Maes, Pieter-Jan & Leman, Marc (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Embodied Musical Interaction. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 207-214.
2015 – « La douceur, critère d’appréciation esthétique chez les Tsiganes de Transylvanie ». Cahiers d’Ethnomusicologie 28 : 23-41.
2010 – «Jouer aux noces, puis entre soi. Le cycle de l’émotion chez les musiciens tsiganes de Transylvanie. » Cahiers d’Ethnomusicologie 23 : 83-100.
2010 – ““C’était toi ma pitié!” Le discours pleuré dans les veillées funéraires des Tsiganes de Transylvanie“. In : C. Calame, F. Dupont, B. Lortat-Jacob & M. Manca (eds.) La voix actée. Pour une nouvelle ethnopoétique. Paris, Kimé, p. 221-228. URL :http://www.editionskime.fr/la-voix-actee-pour-une-nouvelle-ethnopoethique/
2009 – “All the pain and joy of the world in a single melody. A Transylvanian case-study on music and emotion.” Music Perception 26(3) : 257-261.
2008 – “L’expérience de la musique instrumentale dans les veillées funéraires des Tsiganes de Transylvanie.” Frontières 20(2) : 67-70.
2008 – “The Gypsies of Ceuas, Romania: An “Emotional Minority”?“. In R. Statelova, A. Rodel, L. Peycheva, I. Vlaeva & V. Dimov (eds.) The Human World ands Musical Diversity: Proceedings from the Fourth Meeting of the ICTM Study Group “Music and Minorities” in Varna, Bulgaria 2006. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Science, p. 255-261. ISBN: 978-954-8594-11-0
Bonini Baraldi, Filippo, Bigand, Emmanuel, & Pozzo, Tierry.
2015 – “Measuring Aksak Rhythm and Synchronization in Transylvanian Village Music by Using Motion Capture”. Empirical Musicology Review 10 (4): 265-291.