Romany style music and celebration are going full force at the Drom nightclub, the epicenter of a three-week New York Gypsy Festival.It highlights the musical cultures of a people who migrated north from India about one thousand years ago and settled mainly in southern and eastern Europe, the Balkans and present-day Russia.Producer Mehmet Dede said the festival is geared to those, like him, who are “Gypsy at heart.”“And I would like to think that in New York City we’re all a little bit of Gypsy,” said Dede.Just as the Roma have been influenced by the lands where they have lived, New York has been shaped by the immigrant groups that settled here, including the Roma.Ismail Lumanovsky leads The New York Gypsy All Stars. He sees himself as a cultural ambassador.“By playing Romany music, I want to offer the New York audience a very free way of looking to music, of expressing their feelings in the moment," said Lumanovsky.The Gypsy spirit seems to work for New York’s downtown music scene.“I think they have something like an energy you don’t find in any other music. So that’s why I like it,” said one girl.“It’s kind of like the European blues,” said a man at the festival.“They can feel music. You feel that they love playing,”Petra Gelbart conducts workshops where she introduces Romany language, dances and music to non-Roma, or “gadje.”
