Culture
They have an oral tradition and express their culture and history through music, poetry and dance. Initially it was considered that they are a branch of the Romani people, but recent studies of the Domari language suggest that they departed earlier from the Indian subcontinent, probably around the 6th century. The world wide used name for Gypsies to identify themselves was term “Rrom”, which in Romani language means a man. The words Rom, Dom and Lom was used to describe Romani people that split in 6th century. Several tribes moved forward into Western Europe and were called Rom, while the ones that remained in Persia and Turkey were called Dom.
Among the various Domari subgroups, the Ghawazi are the most famous for their dancing and music. The Ghawazi dancers have been associated with the development of the Egyptian raqs sharqi style which ultimately gave rise to Western schools of belly dance.
Read more about this topic: Dom People
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)