Bass and Belonging: The reverberating heartbeat of Romani sound systems

"Music holds us together."

At a celebration with our Roma tribe | Picture by Martina Petkova

We live about an hour away from our Roma tribe so sometimes we or they get lazy and stay home instead of visit. But when Pepi called his 18-year-old son, Naiden, and told him “I bought The Diamond, I need help carrying it home,” Naiden flew over like Superman, together with his best friend Kamen.

The Diamond is a Samsung GIGA Hi-Fi sound system that weighs about 220 lbs (100 kg.) Naiden had injured his hand at work pretty badly just the previous day and Kamen had injured his leg after a brush with the police last week and was still limping. And yet, they heroically hauled The Diamond home and installed it in our living room.

Our previous sound system was already very powerful. It was already causing the walls of our Soviet-era apartment complex to vibrate if we turned it up. “This is nothing,” Pepi would say. “Just wait until we can afford something real.”

Now something real had arrived. Kamen immediately connected his phon…