The gypsy diaspora came out of the Indian subcontinent around 1000 years ago, to flow up and around both sides of the Mediterranean, all the way to Spain and Portugal, throughout Western Europe as well as up and on into Central Asia.
Along the way they both gave and took from the cultures they encountered. Words, scales, tones, rhythms, and especially small, easily portable instruments were adopted into the culture. So you'll find Persian tonality, African rhythms, along with the European fiddle and the accordion. Then there's the guitar, in all it's varieties, with millennia of development from both east and west. There's a diversity of percussion from hand claps, to tambourine, to bass drum.
It doesn't really get much more "world" than this.
Titi Robin himself is French, but made the album in homage to the gypsy music which inspired him, consciously compiling a fusion of the breadth of gypsy music and inviting some truly remarkable, accomplished musicians to assist in the work. He himself plays the guitar and the oud, and his longstanding project has been to fuse the styles of flamenco guitar with the Arabic oud - extending the same vision to the music as a whole. So the musicians involved here represent entire continents and cultures;
Gulabi Sapera (vocals - Indian/Rajasthani), Bruno el Gitano (vocals, palmas, guitar - French/Catalan), Mambo Saadna (vocals, palmas, guitar - Spanish), Paco el Lobo (vocals, palmas - Spanish) François Castiello (accordion - French), Hameed Khan (tablas - Indian/Jaipuri), Francis Moerman (guitar - Belgian), Abdelkrim Sami (percussion - Morocco), Bernard Subert (clarinet, bagpipes - French).
After a short intro there's the fairly straight-ahead flamenco of "La petite mer", with Robin's dexterous, balanced, inventive guitar building and building until past the halfway when, out of nowhere comes the fiercely raw vocal from the Saadna brothers. "Pundela" is a gypsy dance with the Rajasthani singer-dancer Gulabi Sapera, this time - strikingly - with the accordian and tabla juxtaposed directly, and Robin's guitar taking a relative backseat. Yet still, to me it sounds so much like the circular group chanting of a Malian or Senegalese tribal traditional.
A guitar-tabla duet of sorts follows in the densely improvised "Payo Michto", before the profoundly moving touchstone "Martinetes Y Debla"; an achingly mournful, meditative, spiritual song led by the deeply passionate vocal of Paco El Lobo. The song evokes for me the sunburnt courtyard of a north african mosque. It's so still. So grippingly emotive.
The middle section has a set songs with a more Arabic vein - "Mehdi" with clarinet taking the lead, has that oompah sound of traditional turkish music, like you might hear in the early hours at some upmarket restaurant in Istanbul - you can almost smell the apple tobacco and sugary mint tea, "Cuivre" with Paco El Lobo once more, the a capella "Kurja" - apparently a Rajasthani village folk song, then the deftly fluid, lyrical, eastern - "Marraine".
The centrepiece is the two parts of "Hommage a matelo" - a first movement of pure classical flamenco, moving gently into an accordian led east european klezmer tune.
On "Patchiv" the accordion of François Castiello is again to the fore, duelling with Robin's guitar.
To finish, there's a change of tack, the pulsating latin funk of "Rhumba do vesou" sounding, by comparison like a celebration.
Throughout, following the distinctive musical feature of flamenco, the guitar of Robin is in a literal discussion with the other performers. Whether the other is a gypsy dancer, the tabla, the accordian, a second guitar or a singer, there's a vibrant masculine-feminine argument that is the source of the drama in the music.
Gitans is the door to a different world. Incomparable and justifiably legendary.
See;
Robin and Sapera perform live - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqlHSN-QXew
Free Download of "La Petite Mer" - http://thierrytitirobin.com/Publish/creations/11/02%20La%20petite%20mer.mp3
Album available on subscription at emusic - http://www.emusic.com/album/-Gitans-MP3-Download/11583075.html
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