In the early 20th century, the streets of Berlin were filled with organ grinders, peddling their music to passersby. Their music seemed to hug the city's walls, alleyways and side streets.
Berliners, ever appreciative and a touch sentimental, would open windows to toss a few coins wrapped in scraps of paper to the pavements below.
No longer. Leierkastenmaenner, as they are known in Germany, are rarely to be seen these days pushing their barrel organs from street corner to street corner in spite of rain and snow.
At the height of the hurdy-gurdy era in 1920s Berlin, there were three barrel organ manufacturers in Berlin. But by the late 1960s, the only firm still surviving was that run by Giovanni Gacigapupo, the son of Italian parents.
At one point he had 50 employees. But when he died, the firm died with him. The demand for barrel organs had dried up and his few remaining workers found themselves reduced to repairing broken down church organs to keep themselves busy in the troubled communist era in East Berlin.
Chairwoman of the Berlin-Brandenburg Sinti and Roma Association Petra Rosenberg (R) addresses guests during a commemoration of the Sinti and Roma victims of the Nazis in Berlin 12 June 2005. Between 220 000 and 500 000 Sinti (Gipsy) and Roma were killed under the Nazis. AFP PHOTO DDP/OLIVER LANG
Nowadays, only two or three organ grinders are to be found in Berlin, playing in front of big city stores like the KaDeWe or at the annually held Leierkasten music festivals.
In their wake, gypsy musicians from Romania and parts of former Yugoslavia have begun to proliferate throughout the city. Equipped with their accordions and brass instruments, they entertain Berliners and tourists alike with a distinctly Balkan-flavored brand of music.
You can see them on Berlin's overhead suburban (S-Bahn) and underground (U-Bahn) trains, playing a mix of numbers for a little spare change between station stops.
Constantly on the move, they arrive to play at curbside restaurants and cafes along the Kurfuerstendamm and Unter den Linden boulevards and at other haunts around the Savigny Platz and Alexanderplatz.
For the most part, Berlin authorities tolerate their activities.
Several gypsy groups, whose members received music school training earlier in eastern Europe or elsewhere in Germany, have now settled in Berlin, forming bands that feature regularly at city swing and jazz venues
Ask Berlin officials how many gypsies or Roma there are living in Berlin and they tend to shrug their shoulders, hinting that some among them may be here illegally without papers.
Of the several hundred officially registered, a disproportionate number are musicians.
One of the best-known Gypsy Balkan brass bands in Berlin is "Fanfare Kalashnikov," who first began performing on Kudamm boulevard and around Alexanderplatz, according to Robert Rigney, a local writer.
Clemens Gruen, a young German anthropologist-cum-DJ and Latin music aficionado who, in earlier years, worked with the famous Buena Vista Social Club, was swift to recognize their talents and became their manager.
Nowadays the band plays to packed audiences at venues throughout Europe. As for their "Fanfare Kalashnikov" band name, tuba player Sergiu explains: "We play just like a Kalashnikov: very fast and very precise!"
Another prominent Roma singer in Berlin is Anicka Fecova, who arrived from eastern Slovakia via Prague in the 1980s.
"I have been a professional singer my whole life, although I can't read notes and can't play a musical instrument," she told the ExBerliner, a Berlin-based monthly English language magazine recently.
Fecova, often hailed as the "mother of Berlin Roma Music," has never had much trouble finding work in the West. She often plays with her band at the city's Junction Bar, Jazz Train and House of World Cultures.
Like many Roma in Berlin, she finds Berlin's multicultural environment liberating. She stresses that back home in the now Czech Republic, she never experienced any racism and was always seen as a gypsy.
In Berlin it is different. "Here I'm often mistaken for an Arab or Turk," she says a trifle whimsically.
Life is not always easy for gypsies in Berlin. In 2005, the city authorities began organizing the deportation of about 50,000 refugees, mostly Roma, back to Kosovo after a period of asylum in Germany. In some cases, refugees had been settled in Berlin for over a decade or more.
Human Rights groups claimed Berlin's action reflected "deeply held prejudices in Germany's immigration system" and was insensitive, given the large number of Roma killed in the Nazi era.
City officials reject such talk, saying the Kosovar refugees had known from the outset in the 1990s that their stay in Berlin was of limited duration.
Clive Freeman/DPA/Expatica
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Roma musicians are flocking to Berlin, filling the city’s streets and subways with their Balkan-flavored brand of music.
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