The Romani, also known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan people, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, as well as diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani are widely known in English by the exonym Gypsies, which is considered by some Roma people to be pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.
Romani is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities. According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani, Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.
Romani music is the music of the Romani people, who have their origins in northern India, but today live mostly in Europe.
Hungary has made many contributions to the fields of folk, popular and classical music. Hungarian folk music is a prominent part of the national identity and continues to play a major part in Hungarian music. It is also strong in the Szabolcs-Szatmár area and in the southwest part of Transdanubia. The Busójárás carnival in Mohács is a major Hungarian folk music event, formerly featuring the long-established and well-regarded Bogyiszló orchestra.
The Sinti are a Romani people in Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today only a small percentage of Sinti remain unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities. The Sinti of Central Europe are closely related to the group known as Manouche in France. They speak the Sinti-Manouche variety of Romani, which exhibits strong German influence. They were first mentioned outside Sindh in 1100 by the Arab chronicler Meidani, and are an ethno-linguistic group that is one of the oldest Indian Subcontinent diasporas in Europe.
The Romani people have long been a part of the collective mythology of the West, where they were depicted as outsiders, aliens, and a threat. For centuries they were enslaved in Eastern Europe and hunted in Western Europe: the Pořajmos, Hitler's attempt at genocide, was one violent link in a chain of persecution that encompassed countries generally considered more tolerant of minorities, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark. Even today, while there is a surge of Romani self-identification and pride, restrictive measures are being debated and passed by democratic states to curb the rights of the Romani people.
In Romania there are several spoken languages. Beside Romanian, the countrywide official language, other spoken languages are spoken and sometimes co-official at a local level. These languages include Hungarian, Romani, Ukrainian, German, Russian, Turkish, Tatar, Serbian, Slovak, Bulgarian, and Croatian.
Romani people constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621,000 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 percent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Roma.
The Kalderash are a subgroup of the Romani people. They were traditionally smiths and metal workers and speak a number of Romani dialects grouped together under the term Kalderash Romani, a sub-group of Vlax Romani.
The Roma people have several distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of the Indian subcontinent beginning about 1st century - 2nd century AD. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
Romani people, or Roma, are the third largest ethnic group in Serbia, numbering 147,604 (2.1%) according to the 2011 census. However, due to a legacy of poor birth registration and some other factors, this number is much lower then the real one. this official number is likely underestimated. Estimates that correct for undercounting suggest that Serbia is one of countries with the most significant populations of Roma people in Europe at 250,000-500,000. Anywhere between 46,000 to 97,000 Roma are internally displaced from Kosovo after 1999.
Romani people in Hungary are Hungarian citizens of Romani descent. According to the 2011 census, they compose 3.18% of the total population, which alone makes them the largest minority in the country, although various estimations have put the number of Romani people as high as 7% of the total population.
There have been Romani people in Croatia for more than 600 years and they are concentrated mostly in the northern regions of the country.
Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra is a Hungarian symphony orchestra of Romani (Gypsy) musicians. It emphasizes works by composers inspired by Hungarian folk and urban music including Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Vittorio Monti, Piotr Tchaïkovski, Johann Strauss and Johann Strauss II. The orchestra has been performing for 30 years as a classical symphony orchestra.
Carpathian Romani, also known as Central Romani or Romungro Romani, is a group of dialects of the Romani language spoken from southern Poland to Hungary, and from eastern Austria to Ukraine.
The Romani are an ethnic group that has lived in Austria since the Middle Ages. According to the 2001 census, there were 6,273 Romani speakers in Austria or less than 0.1% of the population. Estimations count between 10,000 and 25,000. A more recent estimation count between 40,000 and 50,000 Romani people or about 0.5%. Most indigenous Romani people in Austria belong to the Burgenland-Roma Group, in East-Austria. The Majority live in the State of Burgenland, in the City of Oberwart and in villages next to the District of Oberwart. The Burgenland-Roma speak the Vlax Romani language.
Hungarian metal is the heavy metal music scene of Hungary. One of the most popular and well-known band is Attila Csihar's Tormentor. Other bands include Sear Bliss, Thy Catafalque, Ektomorf, FreshFabrik, Blind Myself, The Idoru and Subscribe.
The Cegléd water jug is a container for water named after the city of Cegléd, Hungary. It is also used as a musical instrument in folk music, in particular, in Romani music of Hungary.
There is a significant Roma population in Mexico, most being the descendants of past migrants. According to data collected by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in 2000, they numbered 15,850, however, the total number is likely larger. In Mexico, they are commonly known as gitanos or rom.
