Shutka Roma Rap: A Gypsy Wedding Band Hip Hop Hybrid

On first glance, Shutka is just another impoverished Balkan community full of jerry-built concrete houses, stray dogs and potholed streets covered in trash. Indeed, the city’s name in Macedonia literally means “Little Garbage.”

But look again, and you’ll see a community of remarkable resource and character: Shutka is the world’s largest Roma settlement and proud of its status as the “city of Gypsies.” They have a Roma Mayor, two TV stations that broadcast in Romani and schools that teach in the language as well. And amongst Shutka’s 45,000-strong population it seems like there are more working musicians per capita than anywhere else on earth.

Shutka exists on the outskirts of Macedonia’s capital city, Skopje, and shares Skopje’s hot, dusty ambience. Only Shutka tends to get hotter and dustier. My previous visit was in August 2003 when I was researching my book Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With Gypsy Musicians and witnessing the remarkable wedding bands that play in Shutka across the summer.

While in the West a wedding band tends to be regarded as a kitsch covers outfit, in the Balkans – especially amongst the Roma – a wedding band is an extremely competitive (and well-earning) profession. Which means the finest bands consist of gifted musicians that keep the wedding guests dancing for hours. Roma weddings are celebrated on the street, so Shutka’s main roads get rammed with bands who plug their PA’s into portable generators while wedding guests dance the hora (a group dance where everyone joins hands to form a huge moving circle).

This time around, it’s autumn. The temperature’s chilly, and no one is dancing in the street. I’m here to track down Shutka Roma Rap, a potent hip hop / wedding band hybrid that draws on both Eastern and Western sounds. A decade ago I had never heard of any rappers in Shutka. But the rise of Shutka Roma Rap doesn’t surprise me: The Roma have always retooled popular music forms. Shutka Roma Rap spit their rhymes in Romani, a language derived from the Hindi these youths’ ancestors spoke when they fled the wars tearing western India apart some 1,000 years ago and began the “lungo drom” – “the long journey” – that now sees the Roma living across East and West Europe, North and South America and beyond.

Shutka was assembled in a hurry after Skopje’s centre got flattened in a massive 1963 earthquake. Today Shutka’s both a marginalized mahala (Gypsy settlement) and the world’s largest such municipality. Some of the houses, built by those who have earned Western currency, are fabulous examples of Gypsy baroque, the names of the occupants engraved in marble or glass, wide staircases and big balconies. Then there are functional bungalows – solid and comfortable – and narrow, cramped houses, abode’s barely wider than a railway carriage. Finally, there are shanty settlements where refugees from Kosovo and other regions huddle together.

Nonetheless, the grotesque third world poverty found in Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian mahalas is not readily seen in Shutka. Largely this is due to former President Tito’s vision of Yugoslavia as an inclusive nation of disparate nationalities: the Roma were encouraged to get an education and welcomed (to a degree) into society. Of the former Yugoslav nations, Macedonia is the most progressive. Yet the Roma remain the poorest members of this poor nation. And Shutka, beyond its turbo-mansions, is a poor community. There’s no empty space here, barely room for youths to kick a football. The town’s central market offers the only open ground for people to gather. It’s divided between a covered area offering fruit, vegetables, meat, toys, clothing (Turkish copies of designer brands and football shirts), shoes, pirate CDs/DVDs and a narrow open area where anyone can sell anything: old shoes, broken electronic gear. Even used clothing and underwear.

As is custom across the Indian subcontinent, rubbish is thrown onto the street, plastic bags creating raggedy blue and pink wastelands. Hens peck at the trash in the street and men walk alongside their untethered animals. (Surly goats’ ransack food scraps before being ordered on.) Horse and cart remain in use to transport building materials. Herds of geese are proudly kept and some of the elders still bet on geese fights. Internet cafés are popular, as many can’t afford broadband. Here kids play games while adults chat on Skype.

Shutka’s had occasional brushes with international fame: in 1981 Boney M’s Bobby Farrell married Jasmina, a Roma model. The wedding was held in the open area of Shutka normally occupied by the market and, across Yugoslavia, it was A Major Event. Emir Kusturica won international fame with his 1989 film Time of the Gypsies, much of which was filmed here. The 2005 “documentary” feature The Shutka Book Of Records also did well at film festivals, yet it purposely made the locals look like village idiots, comic oafs. Mention it and Shutka’s residents hiss. The locals are so pissed about this film, there now exists an atmosphere of suspicion towards gadje (non-Roma) with cameras that I never experienced a decade ago. The Roma are, contrary to public image, a gentle people, but they resent being exploited by filmmakers and photographers.

That said, Shutka Roma Rap’s rappers – like rappers everywhere – love to be photographed and filmed. Rap is now a global vernacular. Shutka’s rap scene was first chronicled on the compilation Shutka My Hometown in 2010. It’s a pretty good album, with the CD’s booklet offering English language translations of the rhymes. But Shutka Roma Rap’s 2013 debut album Me Sijum Underground (I Am Underground) is more fully realized.

Shutka Roma Rap consist of six wedding musicians and six rappers. Whereas the rappers – who range from 17 to 30 – learned their craft through rhyming over computer loops, here they’re backed by a very tight band who know how to boss a groove while colouring the sound with clarinet and saxophone. Mendo Selman, a 45-year old wedding musician and Shutka Roma Rap’s musical director, explains that he began hiring a rapper to perform with his brass band because “the young people like it.” One rapper lead to another and Mendo quickly realized Shutka was full of aspiring rappers.

He mentioned this to Slovenian entrepreneur Peter Barbaric (who has previously managed noted Macedonian Roma artists Ferus Mustafov and Dzansever), who then began shaping Shutka Roma Rap into a formidable unit featuring a selection of Shutka’s finest rappers. Barbaric arranged for Me Sijum Underground to be released on Hungary’s Fono label, and got the band booked to play big festivals in Denmark and Hungary.

“In the beginning it was difficult rapping with live musicians,” says Mali, a jovial young man and the only rapper to speak fluent English, “but we practice and practice. Before we just used to rap in clubs in Skopje or at parties, but with Shutka Roma Rap we can see it’s professional, that Peter has big ideas, so it’s good to be working with musicians. And their sound is our sound. The Shutka sound.”

Yet when I ask them about the most famous Balkan Gypsy musicians – Šaban Bajramović, Boban Marković – I draw a blank. “I don’t listen to traditional music,” says Ali Bajram, who also describes himself as “an R&B singer.” Just as black youths in Mississippi tend to be ignorant of legendary local blues musicians, so it seems these young Roma are only tuned to a contemporary electronic soundtrack. So what do they rap about? The answers vary rapper-to-rapper. Politics. Girls. Poverty. Allah. Being a star. Being Roma, and all the struggles that it entails.

I then asked them about their favourite rappers, and found that very few US rappers mean anything to them. Tupac? Cypress Hill? Nada. Even Eminem and Jay-Z only get a cursory nod. I’m surprised, but shouldn’t have been – rap’s osmosis means it can be conducted and consumed in native tongues without any attention paid to US superstars. That said, they are open to collaborations and their tune “Reprazent” finds them trading rhymes with Macedonian rappers Puka Kozmetika.

Despite their relative ignorance of the region’s rich musical history, the rappers are certainly appreciative of how distinctive Shutka’s Roma musicians are. “When we go in another country we rap in Romani,” says Mali, “so, sure, they don’t understand us. But language is not important. What’s important is music. Music knows no barriers. And Roma music is brand new. There’s no other music like it. So Shutka Roma Rap give Roma music a new, modern sound.”

Why, I asked, is Shutka so special to them? It’s home, they say. The place where Rom can be free. It’s a ghetto – there’s lots of struggle and suffering – but that’s what we Roma have always known. While the musicians in Shutka Roma Rap are all in their 30s and 40s and make a living from playing weddings, the rappers in the group are largely living on dreams. Some work on building sites, while others are unemployed. (Macedonian has 55% unemployment, and in Shutka it’s likely even higher than that.) They know it’s not going to be easy, that success is a slippery path, but having seen the big bands play the big European festivals, they are even more hungry for success than ever.