Throughout European musical history, influential but elusive figures lurk in the shadows - generations of now forgotten gypsy musicians who have exerted a powerful fascination on composers from Biber and Telemann in the 17th century to Ravel in the 20th. An erotic blend of expressivity and virtuosity and a sense of freedom and rule-free, unbounded creativity made the musicians in this race of persecuted social outcasts a valued social commodity for centuries.

And yet, it is becoming fashionable to assert that gypsy music as we imagine it does not exist - fashionable, and difficult to argue with. Whether it is Spanish, Romanian or Hungarian ‘gypsy’ tunes that we hear, musicologists from each country tell us that we are, in fact, enjoying the country’s own folk-tunes through the distorting prism of gypsy players. The music the Roma create amongst themselves is almost purely vocal, having very little in common with what we might expect gypsy music to sound like, with nothing of the instrumental virtuosity we a