By Tom Carlson

Since first watching it nearly 10 years ago, “Latcho Drom” has remained one of my favorite films that consistently gives me new insights each time. “Latcho Drom,” which is Romanes for “safe travels,” is a 1993 film by Tony Gatlif with a narrative that is half documentary-half. “Latcho Drom” captures musical performances and images of life along the trail of the historical Romani migration from northwest India to Spain by stopping in places along this near thousand-year route to see the lives, rituals and culture of the diverse Romani cultures home to these areas. 

Gatlif’s works center around Romani cultures. My copy of “Latcho Drom” is an old VHS given to me by someone who collected it from the overflow of the Portsmouth, N.H. public library. Other Gatlif films are not so easy to find… If you can find them, however, and better if you can find them with subtitles, I recommend “Swing,” starring the great Tchavalo Schmitt, or “Gadjo Dilo,” a film about a man traveling to a Romani community to find a seemingly mythic singer named Nora Luca, whose singing he had fallen in love with from an old cassette. 

The film has almost no dialogue, and when there is, most of it is intentionally unintelligible to the audience. The film features Rajasthani, Arabic, Turkish, Hungarian, Slovak, French, Spanish and many other variants of the Macro-Language Romani. 

“Latcho Drom” gives the illusion that we are traveling forward in time while remaining in the “present” of 1993, and despite the enormous language barrier, it has made me cry all 12 times I have seen it.  

The film begins with a collection of beautiful dance performances from the Kalbelia people of North-Western India to a seamless transition to Egypt where more dance and music are found. The film’s transitions between countries are smooth and only apparent when the scene has already progressed and the audience begins to notice the cultural differences. From Egypt, we move into Turkey, and then a small village in Romania, just after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

Shot with members of Taraf de Haidouks, a young boy goes to a river’s edge where a violinist and cymbalom player stand by a tree singing a tale of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a Romanian politician whose secret police caused mass abuse and horrors. The violinist in this scene plays through a fishing line, creating a creaky, haunting sound. 

By the time the film has progressed to Slovakia, we hear the voice of an old woman, Margita Makulová, singing in Romanes about her time in Auschwitz. The one translation I was able to find reads as, “Oh the blackbird went into my heart and stole it. Here I live in Auschwitz...”

“Latcho Drom” also features performances at the pilgrimage to Saint-Marie-de-la-Mer in France, where many Romani travel to pay homage to Sarah Kali, the patron saint of the Romani. Tchavalo Schmitt, Dorado Schmitt, and Hono Winterstein (and unidentifiable others) play a ballad and swing tune in worship and kiss the head of the bronze Sara Kali, asking for good tidings for their families. 

The film ends in Spain with flamenco. As the singers continue, we see the Romani community forced out of their homes and their housing boarded up with bricks. They are forced out of the poor neighborhood beyond the city limits, just as their ancestors were forced to do. This scene ties together one of the suspected motivations for the great migration from India to the rest of the world. Racism has forced the Romani out of every place they’ve stayed. Field to field, town to town, border to border.

Tom is a culture writer for La Tonique.