Prelude: Sounding Social Identity

Abstract

Opening with a description of a Roman oyun havası (Roman dance tune), this chapter describes the gestures, movements, and self-identifying references that this genre evokes. While European, Ottoman and Turkish literature seem to have a rich body of information regarding “Gypsies,” those representations are largely presented in the absence of actual Romani voices. Given the historical experiences of social exclusion political marginalization and discrimination by Turkish Roman, the struggle for control over self-naming was also channeled through and refined in the ongoing creation of their own narratives in commodified and mass-mediated Roman oyun havası. The philosophical concepts of iconicity, metaphoricity, and mimesis as applied to Roman oyun havası suggest one means for examining the dynamic relationship between cultural practices, performances, and their social effects. This chapter also discusses issues of representation in historiographic research, provides an outline of the book and chapter topics, and describes the author’s field work and positionality.