Get on board for a wild road trip with the best soundtrack ever -- Cerys Matthews Garth takes us on a journey through Roma greats, through history, through cinematic representation, and into the mahalas themselves. The writing is vivid. It vividly conjures regions, and I can imagine myself there, back in basic Romanian accommodations made cheerful with bright painted walls and heated by wood fires, or bumping along in the back of a Macedonian minibus. This isn't just a story of people, but also of place... [ this] isn't just a book about music: it's a history of a people and their culture, and how they live, the struggle. -- Jennie Blythe * Substack: World Stories, Told My Way * A minor classic of twenty-first-century travel literature - passionate, perceptive, and alert - but it is Cartwright's insight into the music and interest in the people who make it that really charges the writing... the book is sensitive to the history of a besieged people and hears the thread of sadness in the most joyous music. -- Matthew Lyons, The Broken Compass A classic book by my favourite expert on Balkan music; a must for the shelves of any music buff -- Joe Boyd The best book yet written about the Gypsies. Tough, entertaining, informative and refreshingly free of the bullshit outsiders often bring to the subject. A real achievement -- Professor Ian Hancock
