Sounding romani sonic-subjectivity : counterhistory, identity formation, and affect in Romanian-Roma music
Keywords: Music.

Romani people have endured a long history of slavery, genocide during the Holocaust, and ongoing discrimination since their arrival in Europe over 1,000 years ago. Yet, a significant aporia exists in the representation of Roma in hegemonic history. During the twentieth-century, Romanian-Romani musicians developed a rich and previously unexamined oral repertoire from which a counterhistory of the Roma emerges. This dissertation traces the role of sound in shaping a markedly Romani sonic-subjectivity through the transcription of trauma, suffering and sorrow into musical expression. From Holocaust songs to communist-era popular music, I demonstrate how Romani music does not just refrain history, but through embodied practice and the affective dimensions of performance, Romani history becomes a lived social fact that shapes, cultivates and informs Romani identities. Broadening multidisciplinary debates about the role of affect in the creation of cohesive collectives, I use my work with Romanian-Roma musicians and listeners to show how sound becomes an affective process that is deeply imbricated in the project of cultural healing. My dissertation decodes the counterhistories, silences, and unheard resistances woven into Romania-Romani songs while also examining the role of music and orality in forging and negotiating minoritarian identity formation in publics. I divide my dissertation into five chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. In Chapter 1, "Reclaiming Romani-ness, " I underline the importance of identity as a theoretical apparatus for analyzing the cultural products of the Roma. I recast the discourse surrounding Romani identity within a post-positivist framework—as an identity that is hybridized, fluid and multicultural, as well as, following Glissant, embedded into a pluritopic notion of history. In Chapter 2, "'Hear the winds blowing': Music, Memory, Trauma, and the Roma Holocaust in Romania, " I tell the counterhistory of the WWII-era Romani genocide in Romania through the primary sources, interviews, and musical selections that I acquired during fieldwork. I address issues of epistemic inequality in writing hegemonic historical narratives that privilege written sources over musico-orality, ultimately arguing that embodied repertoires such as music are important mediums through which we pursue and acquire knowledge of our shared social world. In Chapter 3, "Sorrow Songs: Affect, Lăutărească, and Sonic Healing, " I trace how practitioners of muzica lăutărească (a Romanian-Roma music genre), through affective and subversive musical tactics, have participated in shaping Romani subjectivity. In Chapter 4, "The Figure of the Lăutar: (mis)-Representation, Whiteness, and Romani Musical Labor, " I treat the same musical era through a critical race studies lens, focusing on issues of socialist censorship and cultural appropriation, and the white-washing of Romani musicians. I analyze representations of Romani musicians during the Communist-era that served to reify Romania whiteness through their abject portrayal of Romani-ness. Chapter 5, "Romani Soundings of the Post-Socialist Present and Utopian Futures, " treats the ongoing resonances and fragmented dissolutions of this musically-made community, turning an eye and an ear towards post-Revolution Romanian-Roma musical practices. I parse the convoluted webs of communist nostalgia and the uptake of minority cultural products by majoritarian society. By contrast, I also highlight five case-studies that demonstrate a multi-faceted discomfort with and refusal of Roma bodies and Romani sonic presence in historically white spaces. I close with a mediation on the question: what is the future of sounding Romani in a public space that naturalizes xenophobia, disgust, and racism towards the Roma?