Hartmanice - Svojanov 2003

What is the opinion of your two children on your work?

My children are brought up in non-gypsy society. Because I married an Englishman. This is why they haven’t had much of the gypsy inspiration in their lives so far. But now that I began to reestablish contact with them, I can see that they start to discover it in themselves. For example, my daughter Nikola likes gypsy boys, my son Tomáš likes the boys from my band, Romano rat, and he begins to open in him what my father used to have. My son reminded me of my father so many times that I know he has his heart.

What will be your next CD like? Also so sad?

The Old Tears CD is so sad because I realized that it is necessary to go deeply to the truth – we all should appreciate our lives more, we should realize what their essence is. Today, it’s useless to pretend anything, either happiness or anything else. The humankind went so far – both mentally and spiritually – that one should realize that everything that happens in the world is really serious. I can see it on my own example, when your own family members can’t communicate with each other, then what about the whole nation? And what about the individual states and the whole planet?!

On my new CD, I wanted to express mainly sadness because people are afraid of it. However, I don’t see sadness as a negative energy. On the contrary, it is a way to catharsis. Sadness might be beautiful – when I’m singing a sad song, I feel as relieved as if I’ve cried. Today, people don’t cry. They don’t feel relieved. They keep the pain and fear inside pretending how happy they are. Actually they are only surviving. This is one aspect of the problem. The other one is that what happens in the world is not a bit of laugh.

Although I’m a positive person and I feel happy because I achieved everything in my life, I even had the luck to find a man I dreamt up, I have two lovely children, work, success, and all in all, I could say I’m happy. Yes, I am happy. But if I look around and see all the unhappiness, all the things that happen around me, I feel sad. And this is what I wanted to communicate through my CD.

Do you consider the possibility of moving the “school of voice” to Slovakia?

I would like to do this very much! I invited the Ternipen company from Snina to my festival. And I was lucky because I had the opportunity to meet their leaders, the Kotlars, who pleased me very much. Their attitude to Gypsy art was really professional. I finally met somebody who is serious about the work for Gypsies because other people usually talk and do nothing. These people give out the maximum and they can set an example for the others. I think that I could establish a partnership with them. I don’t want to cooperate with people who don’t work at full blast.

Are you satisfied with the atmosphere of the festival?

By all means! One can hardly believe that twelve people can simply step on the stage and perform for an hour and a half without any preparation! But I would call the folklore music of the Bartošes of Medvěďov in Čierny Balog in Slovakia the highlight of the festival. They were superb! Nobody will ever forget their performance. I hope no manager, who would only want to profit from them and would misuse the original gypsy experience which is in them, will take care of them. The greatest evil in the gypsy culture is caused by people who abuse the Gypsies – they present only the “exoticism” for them, not real people. I hope the Bartošes will avoid it and play with the same identity and authenticity like today.

You subscribes to Romano nevo ľil. Do you have time to read it?

I’m glad for every issue I get – at the moment I get the Romano nevo ľil, I start reading it. I receive also another Gypsy papers but what I appreciate in your papers is that I find everything in them – from every field. In comparison to others they seem more interesting to me and of high professional level.