Holy Brotherhood Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church

Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church is a musical ethnography of a religious community. After the end of socialism, different ethnic groups in Hungary harbored antagonism toward one another. In one Pentecostal church in Pecs, Hungary, however, both Hungarians and Roma (Gypsies) worshipped and made music together. Three musical repertoires coexisted, each with a separate historical background and complex social meanings: Romani religious song; nineteenth-century gospel hymns originally from the United States; and contemporary Christian pop from the United States. Church members accommodated cultural and musical differences by developing several distinct performance styles.

Barbara Rose Lange is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Moores School of Music of the University of Houston.