What can a wedding do without?
For the Romani, the answer is “a lot.” Roma culture is known for its elaborate weddings. The customs and rituals around a wedding are strong, strict, and ancient. However, it’s not always possible to afford a traditional wedding. So there are Roma weddings without a reception. There are weddings with a bridal dress borrowed from a cousin. There are weddings without more than most traditional customs.
But weddings without an orchestra? No. Not a single one.
If the family has very little money to spare for a wedding, they’ll spend it on the orchestra.
If they can afford a bigger wedding and have to book the venue, the cameraman, cars and transport, and countless other orders and deliveries… then the first thing they’ll book, the thing everyone else is coordinated around, is the orchestra.
Music is, for the Romani, a conduit for the Divine. They don’t have priests at their weddings. The blessings are bestowed, instead, by the music. Specifically, by “live music” - a singer and a band at the reception.
But if you are really strapped for cash and can’t afford both an orchestra and a sinfer, what would you choose?
The orchestra. Always the orchestra.
Not of the quiet kind
The Roma orchestra is as ancient as Roma culture. One theory about why the Romani left their motherland, Ancient India, is that the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr asked the Indian king to send him 1,000 flute musicians so that they could play music for the poor. These 1,000 musicians then became the wandering Romani.
The Romani have played music at innumerable weddings, at innumerable courts, for innumerable audiences. Historically beloved and revered by Middle Eastern, Byzantine, and Balkan nobles and villagers alike, the Roma orchestra has been around for centuries, with its distinct, singular style.
Today, if you find yourself in front of a Roma orchestra, you will forget which century and country you are living in. The music is so loud and powerful that it engulfs everything around it - traffic noises, horns, and sirens all scatter to dust under the drums of the Romani.
Modern mainstream culture, of course, looks down on the Roma orchestra. It’s seen as too loud and primitive. And sure, there is no “elegance” in drums that engulf all noise and sense of time and place. These drums are unmistakable. When you hear them, you know what’s happening: “The Romani are celebrating again.” And you find people from mainstream society glued to the windows of their homes or their cars, unable to look at anything else.

And this is the thing about the Roma orchestra. This is the entire point. You can’t miss it. Everyone hears it. Even the Gods.
Declarations and unapologetic joy
One key area where the Romani differ from most mainstream cultures and sub-cultures is in the sense of pride.
Unlike everyone around them, the Romani are not prideful about lineages, wealth, belonging to this or that nation and country, not even about their own thousand-years-long rich history. This, along with their sense of identity, is very internal for them and nobody else’s business.
What they are proud of and boast about is anything that brings them joy. And you will know what this is because it will be announced with the drums of an orchestra. Weddings, a birthday, a new baby - all this is celebrated loudly, declared to the world.
Here in Bulgaria, mothers usually leave the maternity ward quietly - baby in hand, with the husband and maybe one or two grandparents, as a big exception a very close friend too. They get in a car and drive home to have a secluded welcoming of the newborn, get settled, and get comfortable.
The Romani bring an orchestra to the hospital’s gates. They arrive in scores and form an entire crowd. Then, they take the mother and the baby and go back to the tribe, where - again with the orchestra - they hold a huge celebration. The baby has a special room prepared where it stays with the mother and a few other women who make sure it’s taken care of when the mother wants to have a bite to eat, or relax, or join the celebration.


You know the expression, “I’m so happy, I want to scream it from the rooftops?” This is exactly what the Romani do when they are happy. They declare it with joy and with pride. But not the kind of pride that makes you believe you’re better than everyone else. No, the kind of pride that makes you want to connect to your fellow human beings even more.
When the Romani “beat the drums” they are announcing a celebration from their heart. The joy is so big that they can’t help but share it.
Making it “official”
The Romani don’t exactly trust mainstream institutions and structures, least of all with legitimizing the relationship with their loved ones. They don’t get married in churches, only get married in courthouses if they need it for bureaucratic reasons and have found no other alternative, they don’t care much about who - if anyone - is listed as the father on the birth certificate of a newborn, and they don’t use officiants to tell them that now this or that is “official.”
The “legitimizing” happens in the act of celebrating. And for that, you need two things. The orchestra. And the tribe.
If the entire family gathers and celebrates, but there’s no orchestra, it would be a fantastic party, but not a true wedding, or welcoming of a child. It would be considered a “gathering.”
It is a custom for the Romani celebrations here to have a cameraman to film the entire thing and then publish it. Martina and Pepi were watching a recording of a wedding that took place a few weeks ago in another tribe that we’re close to. The orchestra was there, the family of the groom each took the hand of the bride to dance in the traditional procession called horo, but nobody from the bride’s family could be seen.
“This is not a wedding,” Pepi said, “it’s a walk.”
What made it less of a wedding in his eyes? The absence of the bride’s tribe.
The link between the orchestra and the tribe is as strong as it is difficult to define. The orchestra is there to give expression to the joy. If it’s not there, the joy remains unexpressed. Unannounced. Hidden from the world. And if the orchestra is there, but the tribe is not, then whose joy is the orchestra expressing? Whose love? Whose welcoming? No ones. The music might still be loud, but it will be without fire.
To understand the power and connection of Romani tribes, listen to how loud they beat the drums when one of them gets born, or gets married, or has a birthday.
Watch how the entire tribe dances to these drums.
Listen to what they’re declaring: Pure love. And pure joy.