Give Me Wine

Hungarian band Romano Drom have been together for at least 20 years; in that time they have established themselves as one of the country's most important Romani groups. As the helpful sleeve notes explain, the musicians are from the Oláh subgroup of Hungarian Roma, and are thus a minority within a minority, whose name comes from an old Germanic word meaning ‘foreigner’. Perhaps this ‘foreignness’ is something that has encouraged them to combine their own traditional melodies with distant echoes of flamenco, Russian Gypsy music, sometimes even a relaxed cowboy swing, and capable guitar solos from Antal Kovács.

There are a few original compositions, but much of the material consists of contrafacta, new lyrics in the Romani language written to traditional melodies. Singers sometimes burst out into a flourish of nonsense syllables, like a particularly energetic form of scat-singing, while the addition of a string quartet, used especially effectively on the ambitious ‘But Te Trajisz’, gives a special touch of class.