Chirayliq report from Kežmarok, Slovakia

I spent the extended weekend at a video art festival in the small town Kežmarok in the High Tatras in eastern Slovakia.

Slovakia has a large Roma minority, mostly in the eastern parts of the country. As in most other post-communist countries, there are ethnic tensions and a lot of racism directed towards Roma people. Even the question of how many Roma people there are in Slovakia reflects racist problematics:

"... According to estimates of the urban and communal offices of the state administration from 1989, however, as many as 253,943 Roma live in Slovakia, thus constituting 4.8% of the population. Since these statistics did not include Roma who have a standard of living comparable to that of the majority population, Roma political and cultural activists estimate that the number of Roma in Slovakia is even higher, citing a figure of 350,000 to 400,000 in Slovakia." (Klara Orgovanova at Slovakia.org; my emphasis)

Anyway, I secretly made some photos of a handsome young man walking his puppy ...

(click the images for larger view)









(Photos by Tinet.)

Amadeus, King of Tango

Once in a blue moon, reading Finnish tabloids can make you shout for joy, and today was such a memorable occasion. Ilta-Sanomat reported that Amadeus Lundberg, 20, had been elected tango king of the 2009 Tango Festival in Seinäjoki by a narrow jury vote and an overwhelming call-in vote from the general audience in the semi-finals. Lundberg's repertoire included the titles Romanesca, Rakkaus ei oo pysyvää (Love Isn't Permanent) and Onnemme kyyneleet (Our Tears Of Bliss). (More about the cultural significance of the tango in Finland.) Lundberg has promised to be kind and humble during his reign.



(Photo: yle.fi)

The tango festival in Seinäjoki is a very Finnish institution, albeit a rather recent one (the idea was conceived in a sauna in 1984). This year, a change was introduced: instead of a king and a queen, only one single person could win the crown. This ensures that the best, and only the best, will win, regardless of gender. Perhaps the judges were wary of Lundberg due to his young age. He shows a lot of promise and who knows how far he can go if success does not quench the flame. One of the tango king's privileges is a guaranteed place among the 12 national Eurovision finalists. I almost hope that Lundberg will decline this "honour", although he could beat Alexander Rybak in a cuteness competition ...



(Photo: Helsingin Sanomat)

Amadeus Lundberg comes from a musical family. From a young age, he was taught to play the violin and to sing professionally. His father, Taisto Lundberg, is a founding member of Hortto Kaalo, the first commercially successful Romani band in Finland. We nostalgically remember their hits from the folk wave of the 1970's, such as the international Gypsy classic Tsaiori, the socially conscious Miksi ovet ei aukene meille (Why Won't The Doors Open To Us) and the comical Ei raha tekis pahaa (Some Money Wouldn't Hurt). Amadeus has toured the last 3 years as Hortto Kaalo's lead singer.



Taisto and Amadeus Lundberg (Photo: Turun Sanomat).

More Finnish Romani tango singers

According to blogger "Life after Helsinki 2007", Lundberg won the televote in the semi-finals "to visible dislike of the jurors". Yet, he went on to win their hearts and minds in the finals. To quote Unelma-tango (The Dream Tango, 1932) by Arvo Koskimaa and Erkki Ranta:

… tummien silmien taa
viittoopi kultainen maa.

… beyond dark eyes
a golden land beckons.

Finnish Romani tango musicians

It all started when mum sent me a YouTube link to the song Kuumat tuulet ("Hot winds") from the Aki Kaurismäki film Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds), performed by Markus Allan, and swooned about how cute he was when he was young. I found a photo of the young Markus Allan on the record cover on the right - a compilation of Finnish tango music. Markus is, of course, in the middle. (You can buy the record here.)

Maybe it is appropriate to take a moment to explain something about Finnish tango. People unfamiliar with the eastern tango traditions might only think of tango as fiery and temperamental, but in Finland, tango is slow, dark and melancholic. (Russian tango is kind of like that, too.) There is a strong tradition of going out to dance, mostly to tango and various other types of schlager music, so there is a lot of demand for this type of music.

Some Finnish tango musicians are cute guys of Romani descent.

Dimitri (Sjöberg) was born 1980 in Vammala.
At the age of 14 he participated in the preliminaries of Tangomarkkinat ("the tango market", the big tango festival in Seinäjoki). However, he was still too young, and had to wait another two years: at 16, he got to the semifinals and was made "Prince of Tango" in 1997. In the following year he won the same title again.

After his victories in Seinäjoki Dimitri dropped his last name and called himself only Dimitri.

Dimitri has no formal musical education, but he not only sings, but plays guitar and piano as well.

Here is his profile (in Finnish) at the venue Halssin lava in Nilsiä ...




Saska Helmikallio is another young and charming singer. He was born in Helsinki, also in the year 1980.
In 2005 he was crowned "King of Tango" at Seinäjoki (the second Rom to have won the title after Sebastian Ahlgren in 1997).

Next year Saska Helmikallio will be acting at the Imatra theater as the main character of the play Rakkauden rikkaus ("the riches of love"), which tells the story of the legandary tango singer Taisto Tammi, who died at a young age.

Here is Saska Helmikallio's official website, with some photos. Unfortunately they are quite small. Auraviihde, on the other hand, has a few high-resolution photos of him for press use, and a short audio clip.
Here is a slightly disturbing Titanic-themed fan made music video with his song Niinkuin tähdet ("like stars") ...

Finally, Benja (Jean-Benjamin Rooth) became known as a child star when he made his first solo album at 11 years. He studied music at the conservatory, and later on piano, composing and arrangement with a private teacher. In 1995, when he was 16, Benja won the competition Syksyn sävel ("autumn song") together with the duo Pelimannet (whose name is a pun on "pelimanni", musician, and "manne", a common, perhaps slightly derogatory, term for Roma among Finns). They toured together and recorded an album. Benja continues to make music and works in various studio projects.

Johann Trollmann, 1933 German master in light-heavyweight boxing

Johann Trollmann (above left), called "Rukeli" among his friends, grew up in the poorer quarters of Hannover. With his featherlight, acrobatic style of boxing he was ahead of the times - this style would become popular with Sugar Ray Robinson and not least Muhammad Ali much later on in boxing history. Trollmann went on to win the German boxing championships in 1933, when the Nazis were already in power.

His charisma and flamboyant looks, dark locks and "romantic gaze" made him very popular among the ladies. Among some of the gents he was much less popular, and his fighting style was scoffed at as being "unmanly", "a circus attraction", and (by the NSDAP party organ Völkischer Beobachter) "not German".



In the increasingly racist climate in Germany, Trollmann's ethnic background was held against him. He belonged to the Sinti minority (a subgroup of Roma), and "the fact that a sportsman from a despised minority - 1933 there were approximately 15,000 Sinti and Roma living in Germany - would make "Aryan" athletes look like fools in the martial sport boxing, of all things, and thus rebut the supposed superiority of the Nordic race, was terribly annoying to the Nazi ideologists", as der Spiegel writes.

Trollmann fought for the German light-heavyweight title on June 9th, 1933. The German boxing federation was at the time already infested with Nazis, and although he clearly led by points over his opponent, the fight was judged "no result". The audience rebelled, and the Nazi officials were forced to acknowledge Trollmann as the victor. Still, eight days later his title was taken from him due to "pathetic behaviour", perhaps referring to his tears of joy when his title was finally announced.

On July 21st, Trollmann was scheduled for the next fight. He was threatened that he would lose his boxing licence if he would continue "dancing around in the ring". Trollmann entered the fight with his hair bleached blond and his skin powdered white with flour. He stood still and took his opponent Gustav Eder's blows without countering or fighting back for five rounds until he collapsed.



When the war began, German Roma (unlike German Jews) were drafted into the army, and Johann Trollmann was wounded while serving on the eastern front. But in December 1942, Himmler enacted the "Auschwitz decree", which declared Roma to be on the same level as Jews.

Trollmann was arrested and brought to the concentration camp Neuengamme, where he was repeatedly forced to fight with SS officers. He has been thought to have died under unclear circumstances in 1943; the research of Roger Repplinger (author of a double biography of Trollmann and footballer Tull Harder, who became an SS officer and served in Neuengamme) points to him dying in 1944 at a smaller camp in Wittenberge.

It was only in 1993 that Trollmann got recognition and was posthumously taken into "the ranks of German masters" as German champion in light-heavyweight boxing. In 2003, seventy years after his victory, Trollmann's surviving relatives received his championship belt from the German professional boxing federation. A small street in the old town of Hannover was named after him.

Photos from Leg dich, Zigeuner - Die Geschichte von Johann Trollmann und Tull Harder by Roger Repplinger, via der Spiegel.

See also Manuel Trollmann's website about his great-uncle (in German).

Update, July 2010: A temporary memorial has been designed for Johann Trollman by Bewegung NURR. Check the website to see where it is currently being shown.

Anonymous construction worker in Bulgaria

When I was in Romania, I used to secretly drool over all these handsome construction workers and streetsweepers of Roma descent. Due to discrimination and extreme segregation, Roma in many parts of Eastern Europe for a very large part only have access to the lowest-paid and "dirtiest" lines of work.

So, anyway, apparently I am not the only one appreciating handsome young construction workers in the Balkans - Flickr user "Bulgaria Gypsy" seems to have quite the fetish for the ones he meets in his home country Bulgaria. Here is a particularly handsome young man from his photostream, working on demolishing a building in central Sofia.
(I took the liberty of cropping the photos and adjusting the levels a bit ...)

Click to enlarge:

Racial stereotypes for Soviet policemen

Click to enlarge. This was sent to us by reader Ilshat Nazipov (unfortunately, he didn't include any nice photos of himself ... see his homepage).

It's a diagram of how males of different races in the Soviet Union supposedly look, used by Soviet police to identify nationalities.

It's funny how the 'Tatar' looks just like Lenin, though Tatars weren't such a prominent part of his very mixed ancestry ("Russian, Kalmyk, Jewish, German and Swedish, and possibly others", according to biographer Dmitry Volkogonov.) It's strange that the 'Georgian' doesn't look exactly like Stalin (probably because this was post-thaw, when the Soviet regime had distanced itself from Stalin). I wonder if it's a pure coincidence that the 'Tatar', the 'Jew' and the 'Gypsy' are next to each other. And we suspect that when the artist got to the 'Tajik' and the 'Turkmen', it was already close to deadline or the end of his workday, so he just drew something random - that's why they look a bit more imaginative than the others.

Ainur can't get over how cute the 'Jew' is.