Robert Christgau, senior editor of the Village Voice, writing for the LA Times, December 29, 2002
It’s a beautiful and important work recommended to anyone who cares about how ordinary outsiders get by and get over.

Alan Trachtenberg, author of Reading American Photographs. letter to Wesleyan, C. Feb 20, 2002
Dick Blau’s amazing photographs give the book a sense of presence, an inviting pulse, an inwardness that takes human shape.


Feld’s sensitively recorded CD makes an already extraordinary book truly unique.

Richard Henderson, Wire 224, October 2002, p.79
Charles Keil points up the charm, style, and ardour missing from most accounts of Third World culture.

Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol.15 No.2 2003
"Revelatory portrayal of music’s profound and daily meaning in the lives of settled "Gypsies." A treat for multiple senses."

Book Description
A celebration of settled Gypsies and music-dance in Greek Macedonia with CD.

From the Publisher
11 x 9 3/4 trim. 161 illus. Audio CD.

About the Author
The authors have worked together on a variety of projects, including Polka Happiness (1992), co-authored by Dick Blau and the Keils. Dick Blau is Professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Charles Keil is author of Urban Blues (1966) and Tiv Song (1979), and co-author (with Steven Feld) of Music Grooves (1994). Angeliki Vellou Keil is the compiler/editor of the Autobiography of Marcos Vamvakaris (1973). Steven Feld is Professor of Music and Anthropology at Columbia University. His sound recordings include Voices of the Rainforest (1991) and Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea (2001). Papua New Guinea (2001).He is also Romani representative member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

An illustrated interweaving of first person narratives, photographs, cultural commentary and soundscapes, Bright Balkan Morning provides an unprecedented view of settled Romani lives in the Balkans and the unique roles of "Gypsy" instrument players in the region. These Romani instrumentalists from Iraklia, an ancient Greek Macedonian crossroads and market town that is home to about 2,000 Roma, provide the sounds that facilitate parties and rites of passage, performing an essential and highly valued service for their multicultural neighbors.

SYNOPSIS