History and anthropology of popular violin ensembles in Europe.
The strong similarities between the old violin ensembles and the present Central European Gypsy - Gypsy bands allow the hypothesis of cultural transfers.
As Gypsies have been present in Europe since the fifteenth century, the processes of contact between them and the local populations (Gadje) are multiple: human circulation of all kinds, repressive and prison environment associated with vagrancy, attendance by Gypsies, noble, courses, the economic and performance space of the fair, traveling theater circles. Moreover, in the seventeenth century, violin bands - mostly French - spread throughout Europe, especially central Europe. As a result, today's European violin bands, testifying to Gypsy migratory history, exchanges between Gypsies and Gadjé and between Europeans themselves, constitute an intercultural memory of Europe.
If homelessness, orality, the social and cultural periphery, the dilution of the "Bohemian" in the "vagabond" complicate the treatment of such research because of the scarcity of direct sources, one of the objectives of this This work is intended to reveal the dynamism and movement of ancient European societies, the extreme complexity of their musical functioning, the entanglement of their social, economic, political and cultural realities. This history of violin bands in Europe must, of course, be apprehended within the framework of the courses, but also of an urban, rural, sometimes fairground and marginal culture, itinerant and nomadic.
The other ambition of this book is to propose a new approach to the violin technique and play of the old violinist minstrels, starting from the study of the current popular violin folks from certain regions of Western Europe (Italy), central and Balkan.