Corina Sîrghi și Taraful Jean Americanu

Bucharest, the "Paris of the East". The cultural flowering of the inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930s. The 1960s, when the Ceausescu regime flirted with non-alignment and the West. The wild years of the post-Ceausescu era. The 1990s with their spirit of departure and the Mahala parties... All this is woven into the dance music celebrated by singer Corina Sirghi and accordionist Shaun Williams with their band.

Great emotional cinema between tango and traditional "Lăutari" sounds of Roma musicians. Shaun Williams is originally from Ohio, lives in Bucharest since 2016 and is so deeply integrated into the scene that his colleagues from the Lăutari scene honored him with the stage name Jean Americanu.

"Maybe it wouldn't hurt to keep them in our memory so that we have something to support us when we feel like we're losing ourselves," ethnomusicologist Speranta Radulescu says of this formation's emotionally diverse love songs.

A project sponsored by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation and in cooperation with the Pop Academy Mannheim, the Romanian Cultural Institute Berlin, Green Hours Jazz & Blues Club Bucharest, the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma Heidelberg.