There's an article in Froots magazine (worldwide roots music guide) this month explaining how you can go on an organised tour to experience the real flamenco and hob-nob with the greats (their words not mine). Unfortunately the article is not printed on the web-site, but details on how to get hold of the mag are given. There's also an article on the Ladino (Jewish Sephardic?) singer Jasmin Levy and her new CD which is very flamenco inspired.
froots magazine

Hmmm, I agree with most of the information regarding the gitanos, but why is no one mentioning the Ohio State Buckeye fans - much more annoying group of people! When I was living in Scottsdale a couple of years ago, they invaded for the bowl game held there. The streets were infested with them - black and red jackets and fat white stomachs for miles around! hahaha

hardy har....... har. Funny guy.

Yuck. So many stereotypes. Isabella, you should immerse yourself in the culture if you wish. As a journalist, I reckon that's the only way to really get to know people from a closed society. You might find they are not all thieves, peddlers of stolen goods and racist mysoginists.

If you are planning to immerse yourself for some type of scholarly endeavour such as a book or a thesis, then you should. If not, then at the end, you'll just have lots of good stories to tell.

Seriously, I saw the tide a-changing during the election and 11-M last year. But this message board has become very scary!!!

Silvita: We are not all that bad. "Just some good ole boys, never meaning no harm." "In trouble with the law since the day we were born." "Yeeeh ha."

Silvita: Amen, sister. Lo cierto es que para mi el sitio ha perdido cierto encanto. Too bad because I used to enjoy the diversity of voices
and experiences. Guess there are a lot of scared people out there. Lastima.

and you just cannot beat Catherine Bach as Daisy Duke - - - what a dish!

Yes, everyone is scared......OF WHAT ? The PC police like you. Sometimes the truth hurts, deal with it.

Silvita,

I have a feeling you might have missed part of this thread-

IsavellaSophia's posts indicated that she had a virtual lack of knowledge in this area -She had neither read much, if anything, on the situation addressed nor did she have more than a smattering of experience in being a visitor in another country.

No-one intended to sound pendantic nor biased - I do think a number of those who responded to IsavellaSophia's posts were honestly a bit concerned for her sake.

Just as an FYI - the board has some strong conservatives - and then there are the rest of us very liberal members ....

There are two kind od gitanos in Spain. In Andalucia (the flamencos) they are the gitanos most people outside Spain know. They like sevillanas, flamenco, bulería, cante...

There are another kind of gitanos here. They are more related to the romaní community. This kind have lived here for a long time but they keep their tradition: they get married very young, they respect a lot elders, they have a very impressive ceremony for wedding...

Most of them work selling things in the street. They have been very related to delincuence, because they were so illiterate: they didn't attend to compulsory school (for example).

But this things have changed a lot in the past few years. When I was 12 the government started to pull them to attend to school. This made a great difference. Now there are illiterate gipsies, of course, but there are also worships gipsies.

They keep their culture but they are being more integrated with non gipsies (what they call payos).


http://www.gitanos.org/