We arrived in Ostrava. I saw some Romani teenagers smoking on the street. It was Friday, technically, high school students should have been in school.
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“Hey, this is Smíchov, my dude, Smíchov bro, my dude
We’re in Žižkov, bro, but you know this is Smíchov
You thought, bro, that— greetings to Ostrava, bro”
Madar Dan (a self-proclaimed Romani hip-hop artist) collaborated with Dollar Prync on the song “Smíchov,” and I happened to come across it during my internship in the Yourope Project. I don’t want to define the Romani people here. Definitions are fixed, but people are living and dynamic. My colleagues and I found that many Romani youth frequently listen to hip-hop songs that are very violent, filled with curse words, and promote a luxurious lifestyle and gang culture.
I wanted to find an answer from the place name in the song title. What is Smíchov? I started searching online and learned that this is where many Romani people are gathered in Prague.
Smíchov is located on the west bank of the Vltava River in Prague. This neighborhood features architecture from the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as modern shopping centers. I’ve visited it many times, but I’ve never seen the Romani people.
Where Did the Romani Go?
I followed the lyrics and headed towards Ostrava.
Ostrava is home to one of the country’s largest Roma communities, with an estimated population of 25,000 to 40,000 Roma people—comprising around 3% to 10% of the city’s residents. These communities are primarily located in marginalized urban areas such as Lower Hrušov and the Přednádraží neighborhood.
And so I saw the scene from earlier: on a school day, teenagers who looked to be in their early teens sat on the curbside posts, smoking.
We visited VZÁJEMNÉ SOUŽITÍ, a Czech NGO in Ostrava that promotes human rights and social inclusion for Romani communities.
Romani children are now often placed in segregated, all-Romani classes or schools, excluding them from mainstream society. In such classes, they are only taught curricula designed for students with mild intellectual disabilities. Kumar NGO provides tutoring for Romani primary school students, scholarships for secondary school students, and support for youth in developing work habits, gaining qualifications, and accessing retraining opportunities. As a result, the proportion of supported children who go on to university has increased significantly.
“Many Romani children who come to our organization from “special schools” are actually very intelligent. If they had access to quality education, they could truly thrive.”
A girl tugged on my arm. She said I was her idol.
I asked why.
She said, “Because you have purple hair that’s different from everyone else’s.”
I smiled, and we took a photo together.
I saw them click on the Youtube hiphop playlist on their phones, play the song. I had never danced to Romani songs before, but one of the children warmly took my hand and invited me to join in. We started dancing like that. Our musicians had also brought plenty of songs for them. As the music played, the children ran around us in circles, and some gathered around our henna artist, asking for cool designs.
As our musicians played the final song—Jan Nedvěd – Stánky, I turned and saw the elderly organizer, singing along with children as young as three or four.
The lyrics were Romani. I saw the translation—and I suddenly felt like crying:
“At the cheap beauty stalls,
They stand and smile at time passing by,
A father with a cigarette and a girl with nowhere to go.
A few drinks, a bit of weed,
The day slips away like the evening news,
Not knowing how to live, how to resist, how to disobey.
…
And I realized how little we truly had to give them.
Just look at the world — their souls all lined with wrinkles. ”
Just like the lyrics said, I realized how little we could actually give them.
There is a concept in musicology called intertextuality, which might offer us some insight into Romani hip-hop music.
Intertextuality refers to the shaping of a text’s meaning by referencing or echoing other texts. Hip-hop is originally from the Black community’s response to oppression. Similarly, the violence found in Romani lyrics can also be seen as a form of resistance—a cry against a society that tries to silence them. In the work of Romani rapper Madar Dan, the fusion of hip-hop samples and rhythms with Romani lyrics shows how oppressed communities utilise music to assert their identities.
My classmate saw the letters “NY” printed on a little boy’s clothes. She asked him, “Have you ever been to New York?”
He said no, but he spoke English very well. He is a very smart kid. I guess he might have learned a lot of English from his hip-hop playlist.
Before leaving, I gave them a hug. That night, one of the girls who took a photo with me messaged to check if we got home safely.
There’s just one question that keeps lingering in my mind: why has their life turned out this way?
Two weeks later, I got an opportunity to Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic with a significant Romani population. There’s a well-known Roma museum in Brno. Therefore, I set off.
We first visited a Romani neighborhood called Bratislavská. Our guide, Petr Banda, an olašský Rom who grew up in Brno, told us that half of the housing is state-owned and the other half privately owned. The Roma rent homes here. However, both the state and private landlords are evicting them. They are not allowed to live in the city center and are pushed to very remote areas.
Then we entered the residential neighborhood in the truest sense of the word—not just observing the buildings from the outside. We pushed open the gate and walked through a corridor cluttered with garbage bins. In the housing block courtyard, two Romani children were playing on the concrete ground. In the room to the left, a group of Romani teenagers were dancing. Through the window grilles, I could see their joyful movements, and we applauded them enthusiastically.
There were two children who saw me holding a camera and excitedly invited me to take their photo. I did, and they posed with rebellious, cool expressions. Each of them wanted to be in the center of the frame.
Then the little girl pointed at my camera.
I couldn’t understand Romani or Czech, but the only word I could make out was “Prosím” (“please” in Czech). It seemed like the little girl wanted me to hand her the camera so she could take a photo of me. But I hesitated for a moment.
Would she run off with my camera? Would she break it?
In that instant, I began to blame myself. Had the media’s negative stereotypical portrayals influenced me? I shouldn’t think of them this way.
When I touched her hand, the softness and warmth I felt made me believe — they are good kids.
I handed her the camera. “Okay, let’s take a selfie.”
“Do you know any Roma people in Prague?” the guide Petr asked.
I was suddenly at a loss for words. Apart from our resident assistant, I couldn’t name anyone. But they are real, living people, with a precious culture of their own, and we shoule see them.
The final stop was the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno. All the doubts I had were answered there.
It begins in faraway India and tells the story of how the Romani people migrated to Europe, experiencing countless persecutions and hardships along the way.
The history of Romani exclusion began in the Middle Ages. Inside the museum, many medieval wooden boards were displayed, placed at the entrance of every town, engraved with images of executions, warning the Roma not to enter the city centers.
In the Early Modern Period, during the reign of Queen Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, Romani children were often forcibly taken from their families and placed with non-Romani families for “re-education.” At that time, laws were passed prohibiting the use of the Romani language. Their solution was based on the assumption that if the Romani people were “settled,” they would gradually adopt the lifestyle of the surrounding residents, thus losing or even abandoning their distinctive characteristics, customs, and language.
The museum tour guide, Patrícia Ďuranová, said, “To survive, Romani had no choice but to give up their culture.”
Then we entered a cold, grey exhibition hall that reminded me of a gas chamber. This room commemorated the Roma who perished in the Holocaust. More than ninety percent of Czech Roma died in concentration camps. Many Roma were forcibly relocated to Bohemia and Moravia.
We walked into the final exhibition hall, which was covered with biased newspaper propaganda.
I feel overwhelmed.
Why don’t we see them in Smíchov? Why do they crave uniqueness, act cool, act rebellious? Because they are unseen. Because they want to be seen.
After visiting the museum, I was shaking with cold. I went outside to try to catch my breath.
I wanted to push open the gate to that Romani neighbourhood again, take their hands, dance with them, take pictures together, and bask under the sunshine.