“Back in the day, hedgehogs were considered one of the greatest delicacies”

Tyrnavos, Greece, 2025

In this interview for the Roma Soul Food project, Samanta Baranja reflects on the deep connection between Roma food, family, memory and identity. She recalls a childhood kitchen filled with simple, homemade and traditional dishes such as nokelen, parado humer, dumplings and cabbage pasta, as well as festive meals that brought family members together around Christmas and Easter. While her everyday diet has changed over time toward healthier and more balanced habits, she still sees traditional Roma food as an important link to her home community, especially through Sunday lunches with relatives. The interview also highlights the need to preserve Roma recipes and food knowledge, so that the flavours, customs and stories connected to them can be passed on to future generations.

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Original language: Greek/Romani

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“The Roma have what others don’t, they have soul.”

Bački Monoštor, Serbia, 2025

The speaker is a musician, violin player, and one of the most important actors and entrepreneurs in preserving the Roma tradition of his town. It speaks of a simpler life in the past and the staple foods that were always prepared, like soup and homemade flatbread. It also mentions the traditional Gypsy stove used for cooking (ciganska peć), as well as cheese and poppy seed pastries. For most of his examples, he made contemporary replicas or collected and kept them in the Roma ethno house and restaurant he built. The speaker also dealt with controversial topics of terminology such as “Roma” or “Gypsy”, as well as the meaning of “Roma soul” in music and culture.

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Original language: Serbian/Romani

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“We ate whatever was available.And we were truly grateful for everything”.

Bački Monoštor, Serbia, 2025

From her childhood, she remembers that children were not as picky with food as they are today. She recalls that her grandmother used ash, placing it in a cloth and tying it around a child’s throat to treat a sore throat. For the same purpose, a sherbet drink was made from melted sugar. She also remembers that pork lard was rubbed onto the chest to relieve pain and then covered with newspaper. The traditional diet includes preparing winter stores (zimnica) and sweet jams, as well as sauerkraut and ajvar. As a preserved piece of tradition, she remembers a ‘Gypsy oven’ (ciganska peć) made of mud, straw, sand, gravel, and ceramic tiles, built on a foundation called ‘kolj.’ In this oven, they bake a lard-based dough similar to burek, bread, as well as meat dishes and cheese pies. The cheese pie is also made in a version with added poppy seeds. During the interview, she shared many recipes for dough prepared with pork lard.

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Original language: Serbian/Romani

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“We lived in poverty and didn’t have much.”

Bački Monoštor, Serbia, 2025

The speaker is a professional chef, expert in fish meals, and has a restaurant on the banks of the Danube arms. He reminisces about his childhood and poverty, as well as traditional recipes. He explains migrations of his and other families from Croatia and Hungary, as well as later to Western Europe. Among the dishes, he mentions beans (pasulj) and fish paprikash, even sharing his recipe for the latter. He also speaks about the festivities that accompanied this food. Proudly he mentions his father, who was one of the actors in the cult movie I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Skupljači perja) by Aleksandar Petrović, by whom he got his name.

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Original language: Slovene/Romani

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“Food brings people together.”

Murska Sobota, Slovenia, 2025

In this interview for the Roma Soul Food project, Sonja Horvat reflects on childhood food in the Pušča settlement as healthier, mostly homemade and closely connected to the family garden, fresh milk, white coffee, žganci, proja and seasonal vegetables preserved for winter. She remembers Sundays and holidays as special moments of family gathering, with beef soup, fried chicken, roasted meats and dishes such as bujta repa and posolanka, while also recalling how shared ovens once brought neighbours together. Sonja highlights traditional Roma dishes that remain important today, especially pogača, which she describes as “our bread” and continues to pass on to younger generations. The interview also connects food with health, care and community, from chicken soup and prežganka for illness to the wider idea that food, holidays and health form “one big package.”

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Original language: Slovene/Romani

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The webinar provides a practical introduction to planning, conducting and recording oral history interviews. It explains how to define the purpose of an interview, research the topic and interviewee, prepare clear and open-ended questions, organise an introductory meeting and select a quiet, suitable recording location. Participants are encouraged to keep questions simple, avoid leading questions and allow narrators sufficient space to tell their stories in their own words.

Particular attention is given to ethics and informed consent, especially when working with marginalised communities, vulnerable participants or experiences connected with historical trauma. The webinar explains how consent forms should be presented in clear and accessible language and how interviewees should be informed about anonymity, attribution, withdrawal, storage, publication and future use of their testimonies.
The webinar also introduces the technical and directorial aspects of recording interviews, including equipment preparation, audio and video testing, camera positioning, lighting and framing. Together with the accompanying Oral History Guide, it offers an accessible resource for anyone wishing to document and preserve personal and community memory responsibly and to make stories that are rarely represented in official archives available to wider audiences.

The post Webinar on Oral History: Recording and Preserving Community Memory appeared first on RomaSoulFood.

The event will be dedicated to the presentation of the key results of the project, the promotion of the music album ROMASOUL and the exploration of Roma musical and culinary heritage as a living, contemporary and creative cultural practice.

Through presentations, discussions, culinary workshops, tasting, musical performances and listening to the album, we will discover the connections between Roma music, oral tradition, cuisine, cultural memory and contemporary artistic creation.

When: July 20, from 10:00 a.m.
Where: Rog Center, Trubarjeva cesta 72, 1000 Ljubljana
Admission: free
Registration: epeka@epeka.si

Since part of the program will take place in the Culinary Laboratory, the number of places for the culinary workshop may be limited. We recommend pre-registration.

Event program

The event will also include the opening of the EU  Corner and the Digital Archive Corner, where project materials, excerpts of interviews, field material, information about partners, the ROMASOUL music album and other project results will be presented.

We look forward to meeting you at the Rog Centre.

The post Public event: Roma music, cuisine and contemporary cultural heritage in Ljubljana appeared first on RomaSoulFood.

The album “Roma Soul Food” emerged from the international project of the same name. It presents contemporary Roma culture as an exceptionally dynamic phenomenon, creating a balance between respect for tradition and the breaking of boundaries that have historically been imposed upon it. At the heart of the project are Roma music and gastronomy, which the “Roma Soul Food” concept creatively connects with the aim of preserving Roma culture in digital form — highlighting its diversity and its potential as an important part of Europe’s rich cultural heritage.

The music segment of the “Roma Soul Food” project brought together performers who reflect the full diversity of Roma culture: artists of different genres, generations, genders and backgrounds, from Belgrade and Zaječar to Niš. Each of them brings their own perspective on what Roma music can be today. Together, they do not merely perform tradition — they question it, redefine it and lead it in new directions.

The “Roma Soul Food” album features Pretty Loud, Džipsii and Ivan Kurtić, with Tihomir Radić Toshi as producer. The album was recorded at the Helem Nejse studio in Sarajevo, with music editing by musicologists Maja Vasiljević and Biljana Leković. The result is a bold fusion of cultural heritage and contemporary musical expression.

The album offers a rich diversity of genres and a fusion of traditional and contemporary sounds — from elements of flamenco, trap and hip-hop to more traditional musical expressions.

“Roma Soul Food” is also a conceptual release of sorts, capturing the dynamics of everyday Roma life. Half of the album is performed in the Romani language, presenting its unique sound, character and musicality.

What makes this release even more authentic are the opening and closing tracks, created from field audio recordings woven together from the voices of members of Roma communities from Padinska Skela, Obrenovac and Bački Monoštor.

Songs

1. Intro

2. Džipsii – ,,Nokelen”

3. Pretty Loud – ,,BG Mahala” 

4. Ivan Kurtić – ,,Romani tradicija”

5. Pretty Loud – ,,Roma Swag”

6. Ivan Kurtić – ,, Kokalencar o fusuji”

7. Džipsii – ,,Blizina”

8. Outro

The post The album “Roma Soul Food” has been released — an emotion to be heard and savoured appeared first on RomaSoulFood.

“I make two or three different dishes each day, one for us and one for the kids”

Sofades, 2025.

This interview features Evangelia Polyzou, who was born in Larissa, grew up in Sofades, and later settled in Tyrnavos after her marriage. She reflects on her childhood with a sense of gratitude, noting that she was “lucky” to have a mother who always ensured she had a simple but nourishing breakfast, such as bread with marmalade or a cup of milk. Now a mother herself, Evangelia admits she often prepares whatever her children request for breakfast and lunch, something she recognizes with some concern as a contrast to her own upbringing. It is from the cases that although she is in her late 30s, she had catering services during her marriage, something not so common for her age in the Roma communities, but more common for the younger generations. During the conversation, she warmly shared her favourite dish, pastitsio, describing the full recipe and the memories connected to it. Her narrative offers a glimpse into the evolving food habits and family routines across generations within her community.

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Original language: Grecce/Romani

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“Back then my mother used to cook outside the house using a gas cylinder”

Tyrnavos, 2025.

Mr. Pagkalos Paraskevas, 22, was born in Farsala, raised in Thrace until the age of eight, and later settled in Nea Zoi, Sofades. He recalls that during his early childhood, cooking was mainly done on a gas stove, with breakfast typically consisting of toast or chicken soup. After moving to Nea Zoi, the family began using an electric kitchen. His favorite dishes are lamb and beef, which he prefers for Christmas and Easter, in contrast to older generations who traditionally consumed pork or turkey. In the kitchen, he enjoys grilling above all. While he participated in the interview, he experienced some stage fright, which limited his openness at times. 

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Original language: Grecce/Romani

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