Kajda. Music and Women’s Rites among Kosovarian Roma

This book is about the music played for women’s rites in Kosovo by specialized Roma musicians, both women and effeminate men. These musicians, usually in pairs, sing and play the frame drum. With their complex repertoires requiring specialized technical and musical expertise, there are not many effeminate male players (and the same is also true of female musicians). These musicians are also rather reticent, showing little eagerness to talk about themselves, their roles or their music outside of the sites and moments in which they play. This reticence may contribute to making the role of effeminate players seem marginal or less important in relation to this musical and ritual tradition. Indeed, their role is neither highly evident nor essential, seeing as the same function can be carried out by female musicians. However, there are differences between the way that female musicians and effeminate men perform themselves during the parties where they lend their services. The latter seem to accompany their musical performances with a certain affected, theatrical manner of enacting feminine behaviors that becomes part of the way the ritual is staged; this manner is not female but rather specific to effeminate players and thus not found among women musicians […]