A couple of months back I got to check out the Gypsy Caravan movie when it rolled through town and scored a copy of the CD. The film kind of pops up here and there on the indie theater circuit, so watch for local listings. Meanwhile, you can get the CD to get a taste of the tunes.

Gypsy punk and gypsy electronica have become kind of hip lately, with Putumayo’s Gypsy Groove being a great party collection (scroll down to the review here) and Gogol Bordello getting all kinds of ga-ga press for their raucous CDs and stage show. Some purists see this as close to blasphemous, but as this documentary shows, there’s no such thing as “pure” gypsy music anyway. The ensembles are from Macedonia, Rajasthan (India), Spain, and Romania.

Gypsy Caravan follows a group of diverse musicians thrown together on a tour of the U.S. It has been compared to the Buena Vista Social Club documentary and does have the same charm of watching musicians on their first trip abroad. The fun is watching them play together and interact on the road (including some time with Johnny Depp even), but the concert footage is excellent.

These notes from the director shed a light on why there’s so much good footage:

“In fact, our main problem with this soundtrack was an embarrassment of riches. We have about 40 or 50 hours of music. I could make a whole album just from late nights in the Rajasthan desert with elders playing and the Maharaja musicians joining in, and learning.

Most of the musicians on tour grow up with music from childhood, “like water, like air, like bread,” as Esma says. The kids start playing as early as they can remember. And the adults play for a living - and to keep on living.”

Like any collection with this much diversity, this is more a CD for listening than for setting a certain mood. For me, the strong, intense vocals of “the queen of the gypsies” Emsa Redzopova get old fast—I’m ready for old guys with violins to pop back out—but in concerts she is often the big draw. Check out the samples on Amazon or at the Gypsy Caravan website and get a taste of the spectrum.

One of these days it will be out on DVD, so add it to your Netflix queue for later. For ongoing reviews of notable world music, see the latest issue and archives of Perceptive Travel.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 6:48 am and is filed under world music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.