Conclusions and Openings

Abstract

A musical collage based on Roman song lyrics provides the framework to explore the relationship between Turkish Roman musical practices, social representation and political agency. This chapter recaps the author’s argument regarding the symbolic power of iconicity, metaphoricity, and mimesis for providing alternative possibilities, and thus empower marginalized communities. Musical innovations at the time of publication demonstrate that musicians continue to forge responsive expressions of Roman belonging through metaphoric layering that retain older elements discussed in this book with new technologies and styles. Ethnomusicological and historiographic analyses of Turkish Roman expressions reveal that forms and practices of social identities are as much relational as they are grounded in each community’s unique matrices of collective experiences. In the current era of rising nationalist politics in which Romani groups are increasingly targeted, this chapter ends with a meditation on the promises and limits of cultural expression to challenge social and political inequities.