We Share Our Joy of Music

Legacy of the Project Music4Rom (M4R) resonates with more than twenty youngsters from our community centers in Rankovce and Stará Ľubovňa – Podsadok, as well as with a number of other young people who have participated in the project via complementary ETP activities.

At the M4R workshops organized throughout the year, twenty one musically talented young boys have developed their skills in playing various musical instruments under the supervision of expert trainers and students from the Conservatoire on Exnárova in Košice.  They proudly showed what they had learnt at the public performance in Stará Ľubovňa and Rankovce that turned out to be a great success.

Two main objectives of the M4R project are to build bridges between cultures by promoting Romani music and to use music as a tool for educating children of European society. The Project also included workshops on building musical instruments from recycled material. Methodology for building musical instruments was introduced to more than forty American volunteers from the Dramatic Adventure Theatre (DAT), who during summer holidays came to our community centers to conduct theatre workshops. Thus, the methodology has been further spread via their work in many other countries of the world.

As the two-year long project is approaching the end, all project partners met at the fifth partnership meeting in Barcelona to reflect and evaluate the outcomes. Along with the meeting, a M4R webinar – a live form of communication or videoconference – took place where ETP Programme Director Lenka Orságová presented goal and outcomes of the M4R workshops conducted in Slovakia.

Theme of the webinar focusing on the cultural value of music in Romani communities was enriched by an amazing musician and the soul of project’s pedagogical activities Jorge Chamine who talked about the influence of Romani music on European cultural heritage. The online webinar audience had a unique opportunity to listen to the Romani anthem Gelem, Gelem performed by the attendees of the Master Class in Paris. President of the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Marianne Poncelet shortly explained Lord Menuhin’s appreciative attitude towards the values of Romani music, and highlighted the common features of Roma and Jewish people of being pushed aside from majoritarian society during a long historical times. Pedro Casermeiro from the Union Romani introduced a rich repository which was compiled and created during the implementation of the M4R activities and is available on the M4R website.

The final activities of the international Project Music4Rom, in which partners from seven European countries have cooperated, are going to be a November webinar and Closing Concert in Brussels.

The impact of the project is far-reaching and is expected to raise intellectual awareness of residents of common European house what will be demonstrated via joint appreciation and further development of the musical contributions of Romani people. In a given context, a nice story was told by the President and one of the founding fathers of Union Romani Juan de Dios about how God while creating the world and dividing the wealth said to Romani people: “You’ll find joy in music .“ And today, every European has a chance to benefit from the given gift and share the joy of music.

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of thein formation contained therein.