Romani Musicians Busking in the Street, Paris

Came reeling out of the Centre de Pomdiou, my head full of great art, into La Place Beauborg to be meet with some beautiful spanish feeling ….. duendé… sotto, low & subtle. Fine. The violinist was a Romany from somewhere near India, at a guess, & he had a crazy hair-do. The guitarist had a southern European/Romany air; he picked, strummed & accompanied very well, a bit like Paco de Lucia.I only had one hour in the Pompidou & had to get back to the gallery, pick up bag & get quickly to Montparnasse for my train, leaving to go back home to the South West.Drawing ‘sur la vif’ for the brief duration of a song. The time of a song. Le temps d’une chanson. Never to be repeated. Never to pass again. I love a gypsy lilt to the violin. Makes me think of Yehudi Menuhin playing Bach’s Double Violin Concerto. The guitarist called the Duendé, the accords in duo were struck, the lilt danced for a perfect moment & then the event came to an end. I left to catch my train, not forgetting to throw some coins in the hat (music case).

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Another violonist (on the right) (…Tzigane, not Romani, I think…)
Karpatz, Sarlat 2006
Ink
© the artist

Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love – Yehudi Menuhin