Our 2024 Wrap-up, Christmas Offer, and BIG News for the New Year
including a couple of Top 5 lists
Dear friends,
This post will be packed with great things, so here is a quick list of what to expect:
What were the Top 5 articles about Romani culture readers enjoyed the most in 2024?
What were the Top 5 translated Romani songs people around the world loved the most?
[Bonus surprise] What were the Top 5 dance clips from our tribe?
Our exciting work with Pixar on a movie featuring a Romani character.
Our 25% Christmas Discount for the paid subscription of The Sky and Earth Know.
The BIG news: What we’re launching in January 2025.
Top 5 articles of 2024
In 2024, we wrote 43 articles about Romani culture, history, customs, psychology, and hidden realities.
Here are the top 5 pieces that our readers enjoyed the most.
Number 5: “What will happen if you walk into a Romani ghetto?”
Number 4: “Until the candle burns down: How the Roma and their dead say goodbye”
Number 3: “Beyond borders: The beauty and wisdom of the Romani flag”
Number 1: “Kali Sara: How the Romani hid their Goddess in plain sight”
Top 5 songs of 2024
We are so happy and proud to have been able to translate 45 songs from Romanes into English throughout this past year.
Here are the top 5 songs people around the world loved the most.
Number 5: “Lakoro bijav dikhava| Her wedding I watch” by Selver Demiri
Number 4: “Mo selami si katar sae Romenge | My luck is from all the Roma” by Džansever Dalipova
Number 3: ”Аvereste geljan | You left for the other” by Sofi Marinova
Number 2: “Elena” by Djemail Gaśi
Number 1: “Mo zhivoti | My life” by Liko Pleven
Top 5 dance clips of 2024
On social media, we post a lot of video content from our tribe, showing celebrations, customs, the reality of street cleaning, the reality of recycling and scrap shops. Some of these clips have gone viral and, unsurprisingly, they are all dance videos. Pepi’s tribe is known among the Roma in Sofia for being very good dancers, and it seems that people on Social Media agree.
Here are the top 5 dance videos from our Instagram - and if you haven’t already, feel free to give us a follow.
Number 5: “This is the Roma not yet celebrating”
Number 3: “Sabri, one of the elderly women in the tribe, dancing next to the sound system”
Number 2: “A glimpse into a Romani birthday party taking place in a small room”
Honorary mention (it blew up not so much because of the dancing technique, but because of the electrifying atmosphere): “Outdoor party with our Romani tribe”
Number 1: “A glimpse into the Romani soul: Dancing to the drums”
Our work with Pixar
In June, something so incredible happened that we couldn’t believe it at first. Quite literally, our first thought when we saw the message, was “This must be a scam,” until we realized that it was, in fact, the real deal. We were contacted by a representative of Pixar Animation Studios, who had discovered our website and invited us to join their Cultural Advisory Board.
Pixar are working on an amazing animated movie where one of the central characters is Romani, so we joined a small and bright group of people whose job is to help craft the character and the design in an authentic, true-to-life way.
At this stage, we can’t tell you more other than that the movie is still in the works and will not be released for another couple of years - but it is shaping up to be, hand-to-heart, wonderful.
The 25% Christmas Discount
This holiday season, we are offering 25% off our paid subscription! If you redeem this offer by January 1st, you will have 25% off for the entire 2025, regardless of whether you choose an annual or monthly subscription. You can also gift a subscription to someone who you believe will enjoy our publication.
We follow a steady rhythm:
Every Monday: one article about Romani culture, history, customs, psychology, and hidden realities.
Every Friday: one Romani song (the audio recording,) along with the lyrics in Romanes and the English translation.
Every other article and every other song is behind a paywall.
Also, every post, at the 6-month mark after being published, goes into our Archive, which is also behind the paywall.
Free subscribers receive 2 full articles every month, 2 songs with lyrics and translation, and 2 songs without lyrics and translation.
Readers who join us as paid subscribers get:
4 articles every month
4 songs with lyrics and translation every month
Full access to our archive
Our BIG news for 2025
Both of us co-authors, Pepi and Martina, share the same strong view about the best way to battle racism against the Roma: showing the truth. Pepi very often says that if people “join us at our table” and “see the reality”, their hatred towards the Roma will melt away. Martina is often reminded of a great piece of advice she was given one time in 2022 over coffee by her mentors and friends, authors Hannah Stevens and Will Buckingham, on the topic of writing for activism and social justice: “It can’t all be anger. For people to care about someone, they need to be shown that he or she can experience joy.”
This is why The Sky and Earth Know is about everything that comprises the Romani reality: the good and the bad. In other words, the whole truth.
So, with this in mind, our next step is to lift the curtain even more. In January next year, we are…
launching a YouTube channel!
We will start by posting one song a day, from the 70+ Romani songs we have already translated, with the lyrics in English running on the screen.
For the past two months, we have been hard at work preparing the videos and are beyond excited to start publishing them. We hope to battle some stereotypes when “outsiders” peak into the endless beauty and poetry of the Romani soul by understanding the music that has shaped so many cultures across continents.
Later on, we are planning to branch out the channel and post other videos alongside the songs, but we will tell you more about this down the road.
What’s next?
This will be our last post for 2024!
Оn the Romani New Year Vasilitza, January 14th, we are launching our YouTube channel - so stay tuned! You will be the first to know when it’s live.
Then, we will be back on Monday, January 20th with our first article for 2025.
We wish you a wonderful holiday season, endless joy and health to you, and your beloved people and pets, delicious food, laughter, and a happy, happy 2025!
Love,
Pepi and Martina