Little Money Street
In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, France — a city with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Here she found a jealously guarded culture, a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms; and she met MoÏse Espinas, the lead singer of the Gypsy band, Tekameli.
As her relationship with the Espinas family developed over the years, progressing from mutual bafflement to a deep-rooted friendship, Eberstadt found herself a part of the captivating Gypsy life–a life rich with tradition and culture, but slowly being consumed by the modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Eberstadt began knocking on doors in the Gypsy district of Perpignan, France, she thought she was going to write a book about a band: the renowned Gypsy rumba group Tekameli. The band's 1999 album Ida y Vuelta had made its members superstars in Europe. If she didn't land a meeting soon, Eberstadt feared, the group might abandon little Perpignan for "somewhere northern, rich, and cold" New York, Paris, London before she could ever find them. But when she finally befriended lead singer Moise Espinas, Eberstadt realized she'd worried over nothing Tekameli will never leave Perpignan, at least not for fame or money. Everything they love is bound to the city's most rundown district, St. Jacques. "I have never been anywhere, including New York's Bowery in the 1970s, where you see more black eyes," Eberstadt writes. As she became more familiar with Espinas's wife and friends, her project evolved into something more difficult to categorize. Like Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, Eberstadt's book reveals the values of an impoverished subculture by following the lives of a complex, loving family; it also includes enough Gypsy history to satisfy any flamenco or Gypsy rumba fan. A critically acclaimed novelist (The Furies, etc.), Eberstadt proves herself a master of nonfiction as well.
