Abstract
After a period of eclipse following the revolution, the characteristic music of the Russian Gypsies has been revived on lines, it is claimed, more in accordance with its distinctive racial peculiarities than were the Russianised music and singing of the town Gypsies popular under the Tsarist regime. According to an account by M. A. Barannikov (J. Gypsy Lore Soc., ser. 3, vol. 13, pts. 3–4) of Russian gypsy singers of to-day, the Ethnographical Department of the Russian Museum, Leningrad, has formed a gypsy choir selected from both town and nomad Gypsies—of which the repertoire includes all types of gypsy music from the traditional songs of the nomads—in the original form in which they had never been sung by the choirs of town Gypsies—to the Tsigane settings of modern music. Performances have been given in the State Theatre of the Ethnographical Department, of which the object is the preservation, study and presentation of the folk dances, songs and music of the various races under Soviet rule, such as, for example, the peoples of the Caucasus and the Ukraine and even, on occasion, of Turkestan. A similar gypsy studio is now attached to the State Theatre of Moscow.
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Gypsy Art in Russia. Nature 131, 271 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131271d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131271d0