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Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France
From the author of four novels comes this remarkable book, both impassioned and humorous, about the Gypsies of southwestern France—their habits, their haunts, and their haunting music.
In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, a city set on a series of bluffs overlooking the river Tet, with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Always fascinated with Gypsy music, Eberstadt became obsessed with the local “Gypsy rumba,” and with a Perpignan band called Tekameli, perhaps the greatest Gypsy band between Barcelona and Budapest. After eighteen futile months of trying to make contact, she was at last invited into the home of Tekameli’s lead singer, Moïse Espinas, and into the closed world of the Gypsies.
Here she found a jealously guarded culture—a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms—that nonetheless made room for her, “a privileged American in a Mediterranean underworld.” As her relationship with the Espinas family changed over the years from mutual bafflement to a deep-rooted friendship, Eberstadt found herself a part of Gypsy life, moving about in a large group whose core included Moïse, his wife, her sister, and their children—at cockfights, in storefront churches, at malls, in their homes, and at their rehearsals, discovering lives lived “between biblical laws and strip-mall consumerism”—and always accompanied by the intense and infectious beat of their heart-stopping music.
Little Money Street is a spellbinding story of the Gypsies and the little-known landscape in France they have called home for centuries, and of one woman’s extraordinary journey among them.
In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, a city set on a series of bluffs overlooking the river Tet, with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Always fascinated with Gypsy music, Eberstadt became obsessed with the local “Gypsy rumba,” and with a Perpignan band called Tekameli, perhaps the greatest Gypsy band between Barcelona and Budapest. After eighteen futile months of trying to make contact, she was at last invited into the home of Tekameli’s lead singer, Moïse Espinas, and into the closed world of the Gypsies.
Here she found a jealously guarded culture—a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms—that nonetheless made room for her, “a privileged American in a Mediterranean underworld.” As her relationship with the Espinas family changed over the years from mutual bafflement to a deep-rooted friendship, Eberstadt found herself a part of Gypsy life, moving about in a large group whose core included Moïse, his wife, her sister, and their children—at cockfights, in storefront churches, at malls, in their homes, and at their rehearsals, discovering lives lived “between biblical laws and strip-mall consumerism”—and always accompanied by the intense and infectious beat of their heart-stopping music.
Little Money Street is a spellbinding story of the Gypsies and the little-known landscape in France they have called home for centuries, and of one woman’s extraordinary journey among them.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 14, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 24, 2008
This is not really a book about Gitan music but about the life and customs of the Gypsies settled in downtown Perpignan, as told by an American with a lifelong attraction to this culture. The style is vivid and the author has not fallen into the trap of romanticizing the miserable life led by most sedentary Gypsies trapped in their closed society.
But the book overall left me with an uneasy feeling. First there are some gross exaggerations about my country, France, verging on caricature, as when French banlieues (ethnic suburbs) are described as "neighborhoods where drive-by shootings are a common occurrence". It reminded me of a lady I met when I was travelling on a Greyhound bus from New York to Philadelphia, who had spotted me as the only white on the bus and had come to sit down next to me with relief. She told me that to her, French suburbs were like "our American ghettoes back in the 50s and 60s". In France, it is a common belief that "at least our suburbs are much more peaceful than American ghettoes". Stereotypes are on both sides and this book is not exempt from them.
Second, the uneasy feeling came from the author's ambivalence and muddled views. She seems torn between a constant desire to appear sympathetic and open-minded, in a post-modern attitude of extreme multicultural tolerance, while keen to address the most questionable aspects of Gypsy culture : the humiliation and demeaning of women, wife beating as something males pride themselves on, young children who smoke, stay up all night and are encouraged not to go to school to remain illiterate …
And yet, for example, teachers courageously trying to fight this treatment of children, she interprets as "a staggering assumption of French superiority". The only time she mentions "the Declaration of the Rights of Man framed on the wall" is when she reflects on the gulf that separates this culture from mainstream France, implying racism on the French side. But it is a gulf repeatedly presented as desired by the Gypsies themselves. And one would have thought that after her dire description of the "handkerchief", she could have appealed more appropriately to the Declaration to denounce the obvious violation to human dignity. Why be so timid about it ? After all, the author herself admits that most Gypsy women are longing to escape from their straitjackets. What if the problem with French people was not so much their racism (which exists and must be fought) but the feebleness of their will to assert Republican universalist values ?
Let's give credit to the author for tackling such a difficult subject. It remains a fascinating testimony to read.
But the book overall left me with an uneasy feeling. First there are some gross exaggerations about my country, France, verging on caricature, as when French banlieues (ethnic suburbs) are described as "neighborhoods where drive-by shootings are a common occurrence". It reminded me of a lady I met when I was travelling on a Greyhound bus from New York to Philadelphia, who had spotted me as the only white on the bus and had come to sit down next to me with relief. She told me that to her, French suburbs were like "our American ghettoes back in the 50s and 60s". In France, it is a common belief that "at least our suburbs are much more peaceful than American ghettoes". Stereotypes are on both sides and this book is not exempt from them.
Second, the uneasy feeling came from the author's ambivalence and muddled views. She seems torn between a constant desire to appear sympathetic and open-minded, in a post-modern attitude of extreme multicultural tolerance, while keen to address the most questionable aspects of Gypsy culture : the humiliation and demeaning of women, wife beating as something males pride themselves on, young children who smoke, stay up all night and are encouraged not to go to school to remain illiterate …
And yet, for example, teachers courageously trying to fight this treatment of children, she interprets as "a staggering assumption of French superiority". The only time she mentions "the Declaration of the Rights of Man framed on the wall" is when she reflects on the gulf that separates this culture from mainstream France, implying racism on the French side. But it is a gulf repeatedly presented as desired by the Gypsies themselves. And one would have thought that after her dire description of the "handkerchief", she could have appealed more appropriately to the Declaration to denounce the obvious violation to human dignity. Why be so timid about it ? After all, the author herself admits that most Gypsy women are longing to escape from their straitjackets. What if the problem with French people was not so much their racism (which exists and must be fought) but the feebleness of their will to assert Republican universalist values ?
Let's give credit to the author for tackling such a difficult subject. It remains a fascinating testimony to read.
January 7, 2009
To begin, a passage that embodies everything that attracted me to and eventually repelled me from Little Money Street:
“The few classical remnants that have been unearthed attest to the area’s Mediterranean spirit of metissage, or mixity: a deposit of lead votive prayers addressed to the local nymphs, the Niskae, were found by the thermal springs of Arles-sur-Tech (and lost, in 1901). These prayers were composed in a mixture of Celtic, street Latin, and Iberian (a non-Indo-European language which has not yet been fully cracked).”
The good news is that there are about forty things up there that set off my neural fireworks: nymphs, uncrackable languages, Franco-Celts, and made-up words (mixity, my ass, but I applaud the effort). But tell me, does anyone out there know what a “lead votive prayer” even is? I actually would like to find out, but too bad, because the next sentences (or paragraphs, or chapters) do not follow, much less provide background to, what preceded. And call me old-fashioned, but if you blithely mention that something was lost in 1901, you had better tell me how. This happens repeatedly, Eberstadt depositing the flotsam and jetsam of her obviously capacious mind into innocent paragraphs like some sort of, I don’t know, noun terrorist. I have no personal or academic interest in Gypsy culture, but my complaint is that for even the less-than serious reader, there is too little here, too poorly explained. Nymphs/Celts/mixity inherently fascinate, but they’ve been reduced to cock teases. I feel awful, being down on something that is so clearly personal, but even books that are no more than cobbled-together anecdotes deserve more than the baffling degree of sloppiness displayed here -- any existing structure was not comprehensible to my mind, but maybe I was distracted by all the dangling prepositions. I finished Little Money Street, but the whole time I wanted to run into the pixellated arms of Wikipedia, and that is just sad.
“The few classical remnants that have been unearthed attest to the area’s Mediterranean spirit of metissage, or mixity: a deposit of lead votive prayers addressed to the local nymphs, the Niskae, were found by the thermal springs of Arles-sur-Tech (and lost, in 1901). These prayers were composed in a mixture of Celtic, street Latin, and Iberian (a non-Indo-European language which has not yet been fully cracked).”
The good news is that there are about forty things up there that set off my neural fireworks: nymphs, uncrackable languages, Franco-Celts, and made-up words (mixity, my ass, but I applaud the effort). But tell me, does anyone out there know what a “lead votive prayer” even is? I actually would like to find out, but too bad, because the next sentences (or paragraphs, or chapters) do not follow, much less provide background to, what preceded. And call me old-fashioned, but if you blithely mention that something was lost in 1901, you had better tell me how. This happens repeatedly, Eberstadt depositing the flotsam and jetsam of her obviously capacious mind into innocent paragraphs like some sort of, I don’t know, noun terrorist. I have no personal or academic interest in Gypsy culture, but my complaint is that for even the less-than serious reader, there is too little here, too poorly explained. Nymphs/Celts/mixity inherently fascinate, but they’ve been reduced to cock teases. I feel awful, being down on something that is so clearly personal, but even books that are no more than cobbled-together anecdotes deserve more than the baffling degree of sloppiness displayed here -- any existing structure was not comprehensible to my mind, but maybe I was distracted by all the dangling prepositions. I finished Little Money Street, but the whole time I wanted to run into the pixellated arms of Wikipedia, and that is just sad.
i-give-up
January 21, 2010Sorry, Fernanda. I don't want to ready your namsy pamsy "Look at me!" travelogue. I'd rather read the Twilight series. And that might be the most mean spirited thing I've ever written on this site.
May 27, 2022
What I liked about this book was learning about private gypsy culture - marriage, mores for women and men, and the music. As I was reading the book, I thought of the holocaust in which 250,000-500,000 gypsies were murdered, and that this fear of persecution lingers and would cause an insular society to be skeptical about outsiders. I also liked the history that Eberstadt inserted into the book.
What I did not like was Eberstadt's blindness to her own bigotry. She described various gypsies as "nut brown" [which nut? macadamia, walnut, pecan?] or caramel color. Really degrading. Yet, not once did she describe a caucasian as "peach color" or "color of a peeled apple." Whether or not she expected her "friends" to read the book, she certainly took a superior position in describing them.
The author clearly believes that her life is a better one because she takes her kids to museums. But can they play flamenco on guitar at age five?
What I came to feel was that Eberstadt saw these people through the lens of her own value system and they were found lacking. They were poor. She was not.
But poverty doesn't have to be defined in terms of money or sophistication. The Romanis are family conscious, supportive of each other, but not literate, not pushing standard rote education on their kids. The Romani attitude about life was not to "get ahead" to strive and achieve. And, why bother, because the common bigotry toward the Romani prevents them from getting the kind of jobs that Eberstadt respects.
At the end, my understanding of the Romani from this book reminded me of the American Indians - people who were free to roam, to create, to hunt, to dance and sing - who were told their culture was wrong and they needed to accept a new religion, cut their hair, stop speaking their own language and live confined on a reservation. Why can't they just be like us and go to school, get ahead, strive and achieve?
What I did not like was Eberstadt's blindness to her own bigotry. She described various gypsies as "nut brown" [which nut? macadamia, walnut, pecan?] or caramel color. Really degrading. Yet, not once did she describe a caucasian as "peach color" or "color of a peeled apple." Whether or not she expected her "friends" to read the book, she certainly took a superior position in describing them.
The author clearly believes that her life is a better one because she takes her kids to museums. But can they play flamenco on guitar at age five?
What I came to feel was that Eberstadt saw these people through the lens of her own value system and they were found lacking. They were poor. She was not.
But poverty doesn't have to be defined in terms of money or sophistication. The Romanis are family conscious, supportive of each other, but not literate, not pushing standard rote education on their kids. The Romani attitude about life was not to "get ahead" to strive and achieve. And, why bother, because the common bigotry toward the Romani prevents them from getting the kind of jobs that Eberstadt respects.
At the end, my understanding of the Romani from this book reminded me of the American Indians - people who were free to roam, to create, to hunt, to dance and sing - who were told their culture was wrong and they needed to accept a new religion, cut their hair, stop speaking their own language and live confined on a reservation. Why can't they just be like us and go to school, get ahead, strive and achieve?
February 10, 2011
This book is a mess of a non-fiction, a wannabe novel that stood up and declared itself to be true, therefore it didn't have to make sense.
The narrative can't decide what it wants to be. It switches between several stories. The first is a somewhat interesting tale of a privileged white woman who thinks "Gypsies" are magic. She tracks down the object of her obsession, and finds it lacking.
Meanwhile, factoids about geography, local history, and "Gypsy" music are vomited out with no regard for narrative flow, or how much or little background the reader might have in these subjects. I know next to nothing about the geography and people of southern France, for instance, and so long, romantic passages about how awesome they are just left me confused and waiting for illumination.
That makes it sound like I hated it, and I didn't. There were some cool moments, and some good music recommendations. An awful lot of the book, though, felt like a padded-out Readers Digest travelogue.
The strongest scene in the book is when the author has a going-away party, and mixes her "Gypsy" and mainstream French friends. One of her Romani friends performs some songs, and her French friends assume he's the hired entertainment, until he gets sick of people ignoring him and walks off. Later, there's a spontaneous jam session, and everyone has a grand old time.
Sadly, that scene comes toward the end of the book. The rest of the narrative is dry and unfeeling.
When I got to the end of this book, all I could think was that it was no wonder the St. Jacques "Gypsies" were so leery of the press at the beginning of this book. Supposedly, the author liked them. And yet, the book comes across as simultaneously romanticized to the point of fairy tale, yet disgusted and looking down her nose at these poor, exotic weird people. It's a mean feat, and I mean that in many senses of the word.
The narrative can't decide what it wants to be. It switches between several stories. The first is a somewhat interesting tale of a privileged white woman who thinks "Gypsies" are magic. She tracks down the object of her obsession, and finds it lacking.
Meanwhile, factoids about geography, local history, and "Gypsy" music are vomited out with no regard for narrative flow, or how much or little background the reader might have in these subjects. I know next to nothing about the geography and people of southern France, for instance, and so long, romantic passages about how awesome they are just left me confused and waiting for illumination.
That makes it sound like I hated it, and I didn't. There were some cool moments, and some good music recommendations. An awful lot of the book, though, felt like a padded-out Readers Digest travelogue.
The strongest scene in the book is when the author has a going-away party, and mixes her "Gypsy" and mainstream French friends. One of her Romani friends performs some songs, and her French friends assume he's the hired entertainment, until he gets sick of people ignoring him and walks off. Later, there's a spontaneous jam session, and everyone has a grand old time.
Sadly, that scene comes toward the end of the book. The rest of the narrative is dry and unfeeling.
When I got to the end of this book, all I could think was that it was no wonder the St. Jacques "Gypsies" were so leery of the press at the beginning of this book. Supposedly, the author liked them. And yet, the book comes across as simultaneously romanticized to the point of fairy tale, yet disgusted and looking down her nose at these poor, exotic weird people. It's a mean feat, and I mean that in many senses of the word.
December 11, 2015
Four stars because, although the writing is not great, it is a difficult subject and the book is packed with revelatory narrative. The author's ambiguity towards her subject is apparent, and I think just about anyone from the mainstream western world would share her mixed feelings. On the one hand, the Gypsy culture is fascinating, the people frustratingly endearing, the music poignantly beautiful and I too would dearly wish to interact with them in an intimate and non-judgmental way.
On the other hand, theirs is a culture that degrades women and does everything in its power to keep the children mired in everything that is wrong about their way of life by allowing smoking at a very young age, encouraging bratty behavior in boys, avoiding education, marrying them off at an age that is positively medieval, thieving and milking the welfare system. How can one NOT be critical? Unfortunately Ms. Eberstadt tries to balance her judgment of the negative aspects of Gypsy society by disparaging the attitudes of the French even when those attitudes are perfectly justified.
Coming back around to the subject in the subtitle, she confirms with much anecdotal verification what we already knew or suspected: that Gypsy music as an inseparable part of Gypsy culture. The stumbling blocks she encounters in trying to nail down the music and the music makers serve to shed light on the Gypsy soul and how music is not merely something to listen to or dance to, but is an intrinsic part of their heritage.
On the other hand, theirs is a culture that degrades women and does everything in its power to keep the children mired in everything that is wrong about their way of life by allowing smoking at a very young age, encouraging bratty behavior in boys, avoiding education, marrying them off at an age that is positively medieval, thieving and milking the welfare system. How can one NOT be critical? Unfortunately Ms. Eberstadt tries to balance her judgment of the negative aspects of Gypsy society by disparaging the attitudes of the French even when those attitudes are perfectly justified.
Coming back around to the subject in the subtitle, she confirms with much anecdotal verification what we already knew or suspected: that Gypsy music as an inseparable part of Gypsy culture. The stumbling blocks she encounters in trying to nail down the music and the music makers serve to shed light on the Gypsy soul and how music is not merely something to listen to or dance to, but is an intrinsic part of their heritage.
January 20, 2014
A friend of mine who lives near Perpignan and with whom I've spent day outings in Perpignan gave me this book without telling me whether or not she liked it. Even before starting to read, I was unimpressed with the jacket description that said this was "A portrait of the Gypsies of southwestern France" whereas it talks about the Gypsies of Perpignan which is in southeastern France, just a little north of where I live.
While reading the book I was alternatively interested and critical. It bothered me that the author seemed to be a groupie slumming her way through the Gypsy world of Perpignan, and it bothered me the culture she was describing -- one that I found fundamentally unattractive. And finally, it bothered me that she would explain the prejudiced attitudes of French people and then go right on and describe the gypsies she was talking about who did exactly what the prejudiced French were afraid of (or expecting).
But in the end, I found I liked the book a lot. It gives a very good description of Catalan gypsy society and culture in the southeast of France. And it has made it clear which part of Perpignan I should probably avoid on my next visit there. It has also given me a great reference for what CDs to buy in the near future.
While reading the book I was alternatively interested and critical. It bothered me that the author seemed to be a groupie slumming her way through the Gypsy world of Perpignan, and it bothered me the culture she was describing -- one that I found fundamentally unattractive. And finally, it bothered me that she would explain the prejudiced attitudes of French people and then go right on and describe the gypsies she was talking about who did exactly what the prejudiced French were afraid of (or expecting).
But in the end, I found I liked the book a lot. It gives a very good description of Catalan gypsy society and culture in the southeast of France. And it has made it clear which part of Perpignan I should probably avoid on my next visit there. It has also given me a great reference for what CDs to buy in the near future.
August 15, 2011
I have been meaning to read this book for a long time so I am glad I finally got around to it. I have always been interested in gypsies and their culture and living in Spain I am around a lot of them. For that reason, I enjoyed the book, however I feel that the author didn't always stay true to her journalisitic integrity while describing certain aspcets of Mediterranean and gypsy life. For example, while describing the case of a woman known as Mere Noel (Mrs Santa Claus) who was arrested while trying to steal over €800 worth of Christmas gifts for her children the author called the person who turned Mere Noel into the police as deserving to "rot in hell." While my heart does go out to Mere Noel for wanting to provide nice gifts for her children at Christmas and I do think her treatment by the French justice system was harsh, shoplifting is a crime and describing the person who reports a crime in this way is not showing journalistic neutrality. All in all a good book and worth reading.
February 3, 2009
I know the intention of this book was to be more a kitchen table rather than a scientific study of a neighborhood and culture, but the entirety of it frustrated me. The tedious minutia of family relations who was whose father was as annoying as the Gitan preference to maintain la loi gitane.
“Fifty years ago the explanation for Gypsy illiteracy was nomadism, how could you go to school when you never spent more than a month in the same town. Now that the government policies all over Europe have made sure Gypsies are sedentary, and they find Gypsies still don’t want to go to school and there is a whole new set of explanations.”
However, after reading Little Money Street I will be purchasing some CD’s by both the Gypsy Kings and Tekameli, so for that fact alone I’ve added an extra star to my review.
“Fifty years ago the explanation for Gypsy illiteracy was nomadism, how could you go to school when you never spent more than a month in the same town. Now that the government policies all over Europe have made sure Gypsies are sedentary, and they find Gypsies still don’t want to go to school and there is a whole new set of explanations.”
However, after reading Little Money Street I will be purchasing some CD’s by both the Gypsy Kings and Tekameli, so for that fact alone I’ve added an extra star to my review.
April 21, 2009
This book is about the gypsy people living in Frace and their music. It was interesting enough; I've always been curious about gypsys.
But I felt the author showed a lack of respect for the people she used as her subject matter. It was also really annoying to read French passages in the book with no idea what they meant. These passages really should have been translated. It made the writing seem high-brow and detached from the real world. Let's face it not all of us are wealthy enough hop on over to France for a few years to write a novel about our hobbies!
But I felt the author showed a lack of respect for the people she used as her subject matter. It was also really annoying to read French passages in the book with no idea what they meant. These passages really should have been translated. It made the writing seem high-brow and detached from the real world. Let's face it not all of us are wealthy enough hop on over to France for a few years to write a novel about our hobbies!
May 27, 2007
I've long been intrigued by gypsies. This book gave me the beginnings of an understanding of contemporary Gypsy life, especially those in the south of France, and especially wrt family life. It also helped me to gain a better understanding of French culture, gypsy music, poverty, European attitudes, and education issues wrt the poor.
January 24, 2008
I read this over winter break, the writing is so-so but the stories about roma families are very interesting. The descriptions of gipsy culture are detailed and succesful at portraying a group of people who are in a difficult transition from old to new. My favorite part is when they go to a cockfight.
February 28, 2010
I could not get into this book at all. The author seemed to think that most of the readers of the book would have a good background in the history of gypsies, which I do not. I found myself very lost.
Read
August 13, 2007I couldn't renew it any more at the library, and it was hard to really get into it. although i definitely learned a little, and enjoyed what i did read.
September 17, 2007
Excellent and informative book about the Roma (Gypsies) and their music in Southwestern France.
Read
August 4, 2009Good reference on a hard-to-find topic; prefer more scholarly work, but I'm not complaining!
February 16, 2008
For those who are seriously interested.
July 25, 2008
things u never knew about gypsies
March 16, 2009
Well I wanted to read this book because a blog said it was "sublime" or some such thing. Well it wasn't, but it was quite interesting about a culture I know nothing about.
decided-not-to-read
January 28, 2011Maybe I'll read this sometime, but for now, it's just too depressing.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews