Note: all music heard on the video will be featured on the record. Get in touch if you want to learn more about it.

Stand Up, People: Gypsy Pop Songs from Tito's Yugoslavia, 1960-1980

In the 1960s and 1970s Tito's Yugoslavia saw a flowering of popular
Roma gypsy music. Reinvigorating their folk traditions with the
Indian, Turkish, British and American sounds that poured from their
radios, the Roma were given a platform and a voice which they had
never enjoyed before and have long since lost. Sometimes lively and
rhythmic, sometimes mournful, the Roma pop songs of the 1960s and
1970s were cosmopolitan, sophisticated and brilliantly executed, and
still sound amazingly fresh today.

However, despite their immense importance and popularity at the time,
the songs of this musical golden age are in now danger of being
forgotten.

For the past year we have been on a quest to recover this incredible
music, and now, with the help of Kickstarter, we hope to release a
beautifully designed compilation showcasing the scene's key tracks.
More than just a record, this will be a vital cultural document with
extensive liner notes, rare photographs and lovingly restored audio
fidelity.

But we need your support to make this project become a reality!

Without your participation, we won’t be able to pay the artists or
press the records. And that’s why we're offering you a range of
rewards, from plain CDs and beautifully produced vinyls to collectors’
edition screen-printed posters and free tickets to ‘Radio Romani’, our
exclusive Balkan club night.

This project comes out of extensive research in the Balkans last year,
where we collected rare vinyls and interviewed Roma musicians. Our
trip was partly funded by the European Union's "STEP Beyond" cultural
travel grant scheme, and led to our being commissioned by leading
Balkan literary journal "Sarajevske Sveske", to write an article about
our journey and what we learned. You can read the English version
here: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2012-05-08-knox-en.html .

If you want to learn more about the free entry to our exclusive night
mentioned in the rewards, please visit www.standuppeople.co.uk.

Get involved and help us recover this lost musical golden age!

Thanks,

Phil and Nat