Lara Adcock: Tell us about your background and how you ended up where you are now.
Sarah Bedak: I love music and really enjoy singing and performing, and that’s the basis of everything. My cultural background is Romani Gypsy, and my family were musicians in Hungary, and because of wars and things like that, my dad came to Australia by himself. So, he was really disconnected from his people, his family. But there was a real yearning to somehow connect with his background, and my background, because we look different to everyone around us, but kind of look similar to some people, but we’re not really them. We didn’t really fit in anywhere, so I guess all of those things. And then just the love of the music, like just art, this visceral kind of reaction to the first time I heard Romani music. That was the sound of me, somehow. So that just sparked off an incredibly busy life, of celebrating that and trying to connect with that more, to connect with more people who are of my culture, to celebrate, and make it more visible.
LA: This upcoming festival, Ushtipe, is the first event of the Romani Arts & Culture Collective. Could you give us a little bit of background to how that came about?
SB: It’s something I’ve always wanted to, kind of, get together and always thought it was like brain surgery, but it’s not! Having a collective is not an easy thing, but it is possible. International Romani Day is a big day on the calendar and it just seemed logical that we would host an event in celebration of that. Instead of it just being a general Romani organisation, we wanted to have it as a focus on arts and culture and to really do stuff: teach people stuff, and create things, and collaborate.
LA: International Romani Day commemorates the first international meeting of the World Romani Congress. What’s the significance of this day to you?
SB: It’s not anything we celebrated in our family, or anything like that. It’s from 1971, but it is kind of modern, I suppose. The significance of it is that there’s an opportunity to get together. It’s an opportunity to celebrate, and to be seen. It’s a day that you can acknowledge and this year, I’ve just been more and more blown away. With Yul Brynner — he initiated the first International Romani Congress — and I reckon he funded it. I don’t have evidence, but I think that he just used his influence and power in Hollywood beautifully, to pull together a nation of people into one thing. And he really was an A-grade Hollywood actor that was dark, that had an accent that was like all those stereotypes of Hollywood now, but majorly so back then. So, just this year I’m going “Wow, that’s his legacy,” and it’s contributed so much. So yeah, shout out to Yul.
LA: The name of the festival, Ushtipe, means ‘to rise up, to be seen’ — what drove you to call it that?
SB: In Romani culture there’s a massive, massive history of persecution that exists today. It’s the last bastion of sanctified racism, really, in lots of countries. Even now, people say off the cuff things about “Gypsies”. There was a Netflix movie called Gypsy that had nothing to do with Gypsies, that lots of people kind of rallied around and went “Nup, c’mon Netflix, you can’t do that.” There’s a lot of stereotypes, there’s a lot of misinformation. So, we’re trying to say “This is actually who we are.”
Because of that, the long history of persecution, and what’s happening today, it really meant that you didn’t say that you were Gypsy. My dad would say, “Don’t ever tell anyone you’re Gypsy. Say that you’re Jewish,” which is funny, because, you know, you’re not gonna get away being Hungarian, okay? Because you’re not blonde and white. It’s all fucked up. I guess it’s my rebellion against my dad. But it’s not. Because he was very proud, Gypsies are very proud people — Romani, I’m going to use that word interchangeably — Gypsy and Romani. We actually refer to ourselves as Gypsies within our own culture. It’s the Romani word for Romani people, (not all Romani people call themselves Gypsy, and a lot do). But to rise up, and to stand up is an important thing, to claim your heritage, to be really proud, to show non-Romani people how proud you are. Because we know that we’re proud.
LA: What are you most looking forward to about the upcoming festival?
SB: I think the vibe of it is going to be really beautiful. There’s going to be five caravans, we’ve got a big fire pit, musicians are coming from Brisbane and New Zealand to come and play. It’s so beautiful and people are really coming out. Romani people are coming out to come together, which is not a whole lot of them, it’s not en masse like you find in Europe, but it’s happening and it’s a start. I feel quite emotional about that, it’s quite amazing. And Mili Jovanovic, she’s like a grandmother Romani chef, she’s gonna be cooking over open fire. We did some taste testing of things last night, and oh my God, it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be good.
LA: There’s not very much education about the Romani community in Australia, I learnt that they have been here since the First Fleet. What are some of the responses you’ve gotten from the broader Australian community, when these kinds of things are discussed?
SB: It’s lack of knowledge really, lack of information, lack of education. So that’s another thing I feel kind of tasked with. That need to educate people more. I want to educate people more, ‘cause I love it. It’s mainly — which makes it easy for us — not overt racism; there might be some things that are said that aren’t really ‘kosher’, for lack of a better word. But it’s more a lack of knowledge, it’s more a lack of education, and, ignorance, and, that’s easy to kind of rectify. It’s really easy to educate people, and inspire people, with our culture.
LA: I can speak from my own personal experience, that I was not given any education about Romani people in Australia, to the point I heard the word Romani, and I was like “That’s an interesting term for Romanians.”
SB: Yes, exactly, yeah, you are not alone, that’s what we get. People are like “Romani, what’s that?” so I have to go “Romani Gypsy” because then people go “Oh, is that a thing, what do you mean you’ve got a language?” It’s like that. There is need for education. We’re filling a gap in the market.
LA: What are some of your goals for the collective? What are some things that you’d like to achieve?
SB: I have really big ideas about things in general but I’d love to grow it. I’d love to have more and more people come and be involved, Romani or non-Romani, just to teach the language, to explore art together. To explore how to get our story across in different mediums and to collaborate with each other. I’d love to get musicians out from other countries here as well, host events, and do stuff online, digital stuff, exhibitions, you name it.
We’re investigating some things in Sydney, where Romani people were of influence in wider society. To highlight our amazingness, really, and go against the stereotype of begging or stealing. There are some parts of Sydney where Romani people really built it up. So we’re investigating that. I want to maybe apply for a research grant, ‘cause it’s quite in-depth, what we’re finding. So, yes, that kind of thing, I didn’t give anything away, which is great!
