There’s a long tradition in contra dancing of a particular move called a gypsy. Many people now consider the term gypsy offensive, however, because of the history of discrimination against people of Romani descent, long referred to as gypsies. A group of contra dancers is debating whether to drop that term. We explain why they should. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Gypsy Dance Move”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Martha Wilde from San Diego.
Hi, Martha, how you doing?
Martha Wilde.
Two Marthas.
Two Wild Marthas.
Two Wild Marthas.
Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you, Martha?
Well, I have a question that has to do with a large controversy that’s happening in a group that I’m part of.
Oh, boy.
I do a lot of English country dance, contra dance, and I’ve done Morris dance.
And there’s a move, there’s a dance move that we’ve used for years, and it’s been used for hundreds of years, as far as we can tell.
And the move is called a gypsy, where you walk around the other person, you look at them and you walk around them.
And in Morris dancing, actually, they usually call it a half-gyp or a whole-gyp if you go all the way around.
I belong to a group, I call the dances some of the contra-dances, and we have a shared list on the Internet.
And one of the callers wrote in and said that he’d been approached after one of the dances by a new dancer that had come in and said how much they enjoyed the dancing and what a great group they had.
But they couldn’t believe they were using this terrible ethnic slur, gypsy, to refer to this dance move.
And so this caused this whole huge controversy in our group about whether we should completely drop this word because it’s an ethnic slur to the Romani.
And I have to say that the person who brought this up was not Roma.
It was somebody else who had heard it, I guess, somewhere.
And then this other group that says, but wait, we don’t even know the provenance of this term.
Maybe it comes from a different origin.
And someone looked into it and said that in Welsh, jip means to glance at someone, and it may have come from that originally, especially since Morris dancing is close, the Cotswolds are close to the Welsh border.
I don’t want to be culturally insensitive and be promoting a word that’s an ethnic slur.
But on the other hand, I also don’t want to get rid of, you know, over 100 years of using a term that may be completely innocent.
I thought I would ask the word mavens what their feeling was about this sort of difficult situation.
Oh, boy.
Wow.
And, Martha, are the two sides pretty evenly divided?
It seems about so.
There’s a very large contingent that is coming up with other words like gimbal and gyre and walk around to completely avoid the word.
But on the other hand, you have to explain it every time to the people who already know what the move is and have to train them to a new word.
And, of course, everybody’s using different words, so it’s for the ones that are changing over and are being totally PC.
And then there’s the other group that says, no, we’re not going to change.
So and there’s and there’s a lot of vitriol going on.
Yeah. And so for the people who who oppose it, would would etymology be key?
I mean, if you could definitively say that this word, gyp or gypsy, doesn’t come from or isn’t associated with that ethnic group, would that make a difference, you think?
I think it would for some. I think for some it wouldn’t.
For some they don’t want to say a word that might be misconstrued and misinterpreted by other people.
On the other hand, it’s not as if we have a huge Roma population.
I mean, I’ve been using this word for 30 or 40 years, and I’ve never had anyone say boo about it.
So I don’t think most people that we deal with have a negative connotation in their mind about it.
And for some people, I think that if it had a different etymology, they’d say, this is a different etymology, and therefore it is an innocent word, and it’s just two words that are similar to each other, too bad.
Right.
So, yeah.
I think I’d be one of those people.
Let’s clear some of this away as a distraction for a moment.
The gyp here does not come from Welsh.
There is a word meaning something like look or glance in Welsh, but it probably would be pronounced geep.
My Welsh is terrible, but this is what I’ve been told.
And we do have a strong etymological connection between gyp and gypsy going back to the Romani people.
So the Welsh thing is just somebody looking for an easy out, and it’s not a path to be taken.
It’s just a superficial similarity that should be ignored.
The other thing here is we have strong, in this industry, and you may know more about this than we do, there’s a strong understanding that this type of dancing could actually come from the Romani people.
Morris dance in particular has some substantial evidence that suggests it was borrowed into the British culture from the travelers.
This is all distractions here.
The real interesting thing here for us is what can you do to make the half of the people who are unhappy happy?
I don’t know, because if everyone changed the word and picked a word that was new, I think the half that wants to be PC would be happy.
But I don’t think the half that had to change all their dances and rewrite everything and watch their language constantly and not say the word they’re used to would be happy.
Yeah, it sounds like you’re in a difficult bind here because I don’t see an out.
Somebody’s going to go away unhappy here.
The thing is, it does come from, and my understanding is, and there are better authorities than me on the Internet, but all the evidence, the print evidence suggests that even though the dance moves themselves date back to the 1600s at least, the term itself is relatively new, dating from perhaps the early 1900s.
And so that’s really interesting.
Another interesting thing about it is we do see gyp and gypsy used interchangeably in early documents showing these dance moves, which, again, this allows us to ignore the Welsh connection.
The third thing is, do you feel that this term gypsy is pejorative?
Well, it turns out the Romani do.
They don’t use this term for themselves.
And actually, most of the places in English where gyps or gypsies use are negative or pejorative or insulting or intentionally meant to describe something that is bad or terrible.
Yeah, it’s interesting.
The American Heritage Dictionary describes it as often offensive.
Often, yeah.
Often.
I had never realized that it had a really negative context.
There are place names in North America, in Canada, the United States, mountains or features of geography which have very pejorative, such as the N-word, as part of their names.
So it’ll be inward peak or inward river or what have you, right?
Yeah.
Or squall.
Or squall.
Squall is another one.
Almost universally, people understand that these terms need to be changed or simply not used.
Even though they’re just referring to a mountain.
Even though they’re not meant to directly insult a people.
Even though they’re not meant to hurt feelings, right?
We know.
At least all well-educated, forward-thinking, kind of considerate, sensitive human beings think this, right?
And when we look in Gypsy and Gypsy and this dancing, I think I see a strong comparison there.
I think even though it’s difficult to change the name, you should.
And I know that you can’t change it in all the dancing all across the United States and the English-speaking world.
I know you can’t.
But at least among your peer group, you might come up with something.
Even if it’s just a shortening like G or jazz, I don’t know, just something relatively similar, but it’s clearly not that word.
I don’t know what it is.
I think I’m on the same page as Grant here, Martha.
I mean, it’s a really tough one.
You know, the more you read about the history of the Romani people and the oppression and prejudice and maltreatment, are you giving up that much if you give up that word?
What about the hundreds of years of dance before?
What did they call it then?
Maybe you can go back to the earlier term, and that would satisfy some people who want to know that it’s not strictly out of sensitivity that you’re doing.
It’s a reach back to the roots because, as you probably know, this is a revived tradition anyway.
It’s not, you know, it’s brought back from ancient manuals and a lot of stuff was amended and added in the 1970s.
And kind of even fabricated just to make it look authentically historic when it’s not necessarily so.
Yeah.
Well, Martha, it sounds like this is going to go on for a while. Maybe you can take our thoughts back to the group and see what they think.
Oh, definitely, definitely. And I think you’ve persuaded me. I wanted your moral compass on this.
Okay. Martha, let us know how this goes, okay?
Okay, I will. Thank you, Martha. And we do want to know. It was great talking with you. Keep us updated, all right?
Thank you so much.
Okay, thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye.
Okay, bye-bye.
You know, we know that you listening have an opinion on this, and bring us your best information. Tell us what you think. Should they drop the term? Can you think of suggestions they can use instead of gyp or gypsy? Do you think that it’s offensive or no?
877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.
I would like to address the huge number of inaccuracies in this cast. I have done pretty extensive research on this subject, as it is something of great importance to me. To sum, Martha Wild called in about a beginner dancer who visited a contra dance and complained about our use of the word gypsy to describe a dance move, without any knowledge of the contra culture, history or anything. Since then, this has exploded into an absolute frenzy in the contra community that has divided what has always been a welcoming and warm community.
First – maybe it comes from a different origin. I stated this. It is known for a fact that gypsy, along with several other moves in contra, were borrowed from Morris dancing. We do not know a lot about the origins of Morris dancing because nothing was written down, it was an oral tradition. We are fairly certain that the origins were either from the Moors or from the celts. There are strong relations to pagan ritual dances, especially surrounding such events as May Day and such. So, I looked into both languages. First, Moors. Moors are arabic. Arabic was easy, I have about a dozen Arabic students in my class. So I asked them. They do have words that sound like both gyp and gypsy. Gypsy means gypsum, highly unlikely. Gyp means pocket. Again, not overly likely to describe this move. So, then I turned to celtic. Celtic origins are hard to track, so I looked at modern languages and found gyp in Welsh, meaning gaze or glance. THIS IS WHAT THE MOVE IS (despite what people may tell you, it IS NOT WALKING AROUND YOUR PARTNER, it is looking at them). So, yes, it is true that the g in Welsh would be a hard g, not a soft g as we use it now. However, the first time that gypsy was written down in a contra dance or a Morris dance was in Cecil Sharp’s book in 1909. He wrote down words that the dancers of that time were using. Were you around in 1909? I know I wasn’t. So, we don’t really know how they pronounced it in 1909 do we? Maybe they pronounced it with a hard g. I am not “reaching”. I am making the point that this word most likely originated from a Morris word, which seems to be celtic in origin (not Romani – more on that later). Cecil Sharp diagrams, describes and uses both gyp and gypsy (interchangeably) in a dance that he calls “Hey Boys, Up We Go”. Ironically, he changed the name of the dance. This dance originated in the 1400s and was called Cuckolds All Awry. It was written down in the 1600s by Playford, but Playford did not use words in his book, so we have no idea what words were used to describe the move at that time. Is it possible the name was applied to the move later? Sure. But the dance pre-dates the arrival of the Romani in England.
Gypsy was first used in the late 1500s/1600s in England to refer to the Romani people because they thought they were Egyptian, the word originates from the latin word for Egyptian. But Morris dancing and contra dancing in England is from at least the 1400s, which predates the Romani. So these dances DID NOT come from Romani traditions. Morris is likely celtic. English country dancing was a very common dance in England and contra evolved from that as a type of dance that more common folk could do.
The Romani do in fact use the word gypsy to refer to themselves – A LOT. The representative of the Romani Society that was contacted about this (who is in fact not Romani) has written a book wherein she uses the word gypsy more than 90 times in just the first few pages. Romani refer to themselves as gypsies all the time. Some proudly claim to be gypsies. Gypsy jazz was invented by a Romani. There is an Association of Gypsies. There is as much of a split among the Romani about the use of the word gypsy as there now is in contra dancing!
You mention that the American Heritage dictionary refers to the word as “often offensive”. You conveniently leave out the other three definitions of the word: A member of various traditionally itinerant groups unrelated to the Romani. One who follows an itinerant or otherwise unconventional career or way of life, especially – a part time or temporary member of college faculty and a member of a chorus line in a theater production. In complete, inaccurate information.
Words change over time, in different cultures and in different contexts. Gypsy no longer refers to just Romani people. It refers to any migratory person.
You ask what about the hundreds of years before. Well, unfortunately all that is lost to time. Very little is written about contra because it was a common folk dance and most people did not write. Playford made an attempt to record the dances in the 1600s, but he uses a tremendous amount of shorthand and does not use the name of moves. Cecil Sharp and his colleagues attempted to revive country dancing in the early 1900s and did very extensive searches in England and the Appalachias to find groups that still did the dances. He recorded the dances with the words he used, and he recorded gypsy. Of course we don’t know when the word originated, but we do know that one particular group of Appalachians had remained very isolated and were very English in nature, and so the word originated before they came to America.
The move does not in fact mean to walk around your partner. There are related moves, such as gypsy star and gypsy chase where you do not walk around your partner at all. The move is looking at your partner – gazing at your partner. Do I have solid evidence that it came from a celtic origin? No, that is not possible since it was never written down. Do I feel that is pretty strong compelling evidence, yes I do.
I do find it disturbing that it seems almost transparent that you were rapidly trying to do research on this subject while you were talking and as a result missed a lot of information.
Actually, my comments are based on very extensive research, not assumptions. I started researching this when it first came to the contra dance discussion in October. I have references. I have a lot of information. AND I know for a fact that people who move around a lot are in fact called gypsies, or refer to themselves as gypsies, because I LIVED THAT LIFE. I had no home as a child. We moved constantly. We were gypsies. I always considered myself a gypsy. So, imagine my surprise when two weeks ago I learned that not only have I lived a gypsy life, I do in fact have gypsy blood. When I learned that, I did even more research. Where did these people come from? What was their migratory path? Why did they leave India? And even more – where did they come from before that? I traced their origins back to the STONE AGE! Guess what? Romani are more closely related to Europeans than they are to the rest of India. Don’t tell me I don’t know how to do research. I have a freaking PhD. All I do is research. And they are wrong, very wrong, on many of the comments that they made.
And Gypsy Jazz does not just honor Django – he invented it.
Sunday’s NYT has an article describing the Catalan gypsies of France. the negative connotations usually ascribed to the Roma do not seem to be applicable to this group. It is apparently well established that the two groups are unrelated. Does this affect the benign (?) use in dance or other non-derogatory applications of the word? Do the Roma have the high ground because of their prevalence?
I’ve grown up with “woah”, but now that I know the correct form I’ll change it. That’s the boat that most people are in, just misinformed. Not stupid, not “arrogantly-ignorant”, not a part of a “dumbed-down” world, they just didn’t know that one spelling was wrong, and the other right. It’s just an issue of a misspelling of a word being (tragically) introduced into the mainstream, nothing to get your panties into a twist.