Latcho Drom (Safe Journey)

Latcho Drom (Safe Journey) (103 min., France, 1993)

Having left India almost 1,000 years ago, for reasons as yet unknown, gypsies have roamed the byways of Europe, Egypt, North Africa... Through the long exile outside the borders of India, the terms gitano, "halah," Tzigane, bohemian, gypsy... have been applied to the Romany people.

A WORD ABOUT GYPSY MUSIC

The treasures of Gypsy heritage throughout the world, from India to Spain, make up an exceptional musical palette… Tony Gatlif's Latcho Drom is the first film ever to give a panoramic view of the extraordinary variety of the Rom's songs, music and dances in more than eight countries.

Since leaving ancient India around the year AD 1000 on their westward journey, they have constantly contributed to our cultural life in a multitude of ways. Scapegoats of our sedentary world, targets of the most primitive social rejection or the most rabid literary or cinematographic romanticism, they pursue their quest far from our technological and social upheaval.

The Gypsies live a constant paradox: in spite of their refusal to be integrated, they have become the (sometimes exclusive) repository of the culture of the country they inhabit. Throwing tradition and fashion to the wind, the Gypsies have always used their versatility and sense of improvisation to adapt their musical style to others they discover during their travels. Each time traces of the previous country mark them as foreigners who stick out amid their now hosts.

Being a musician means constantly choosing between two options: either acting as the fierce guardian angel of a given musical style, or using the wealth of information gathered during their travels to shuffle the deck.

But these borrowed factors, often adopted in order to survive, don't prevent the Gypsies from having a music with its own personal character. Gypsies don't copy; for them, playing is a synonym for creating. That is reflected in the artful expressions and gestures of the poet Rajasthan as he recites his verse, or in the determined steps of a ghaziya dancer from Upper Egypt, or in the way a Gypsy from Andalusia strikes the ground with her foot as she dances, as in a fertility or death ritual.

Whether the Gypsy violins are from Turkey, Romania, Egypt, or India, they all seem to play one single melody: that of the history of a people whose sole destiny is to travel.

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