Camargue, part II - Gypsies & Music

It is interesting and enriching to travel with others. Everyone has their own needs and desires, interests and passions. I was the instigator of our trip to the Camargue but there are aspects that I discovered and enjoyed through the eyes of my husband and our friends.

The old church of Ste Marie de la Mer is the resting place for much revered relics attributed to Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Jacob, dating back to the time after the ascension of Jesus when close members of His entourage sailed away, crossing the Mediterranean and coming ashore here.  The well in the church is noted for its water's healing powers and part of the yearly ritual of the Parade of Statues takes them back down into the ocean from whence they came.

There are several stories connected to the dark faced Saint Sarah, (Sara-la-Kali), Patron Saint of Gypsies. I choose to believe the legend that holds Saint Sarah to be the local Christianized manifestation of the Indian Goddess "Kali". I learned that Gypsies or Roma are descended from musicians who were sent from India as a gift from one Royal Court to another. They have always been nomadic and colorful. Today the Romany language is still very much alive and serves to communicate when Gypsies gather from many diverse countries. I like the parallel with the older Catholics who have Latin as a common tongue.

Guitar music, singing and dancing are spontaneous and everywhere. Crowds surge and merge and the servers in the cafes find time to clap the flamenco rhythms between customers. There is not a free corner anywhere. 

On the evening after the Parade of Saints we managed to get a terrace table in the "Felibre" restaurant, across the square from the Church of Ste Marie. The clientele was a mixture of locals, tourists and Gypsies. There were many guitars and a song would begin and be answered back and forth with solo moments of prideful finger work hailed by appreciative applause and many "Ole! Ole!" encouragements.

There was a large group at one table inside the restaurant. In the center was a very old man in a snappy white suit. His shoulder-length hair was as white as his clothes and startling against his hazel-nut skin. The guitar players were taking turns to kneel at his feet and play. I fully expected the guitars to begin smoking any minute from the friction of their fingers.

Again I learned something new. This man was Manitas de Plata, (Little Hands of Silver), now in his nineties, a French Gypsy born in a rolling caravan, who has played Carnegie Hall and achieved International acclaim. For him the respect of his fellow people was as important as his many successful albums and he was there with them to share in tradition. 

 

 

Camargue - Living a Dream- part I. Nature

Visiting the Camargue Region of Southern France was a dream of mine for a long time. I had heard and read about the wetlands on the edge of the Mediterranean where white horses, black bulls and pink flamingos lived freely in natural surroundings. The marshy delta, created by the great Rhone river spreading out and dividing in the flatlands before spilling into the sea, had been saved and protected from development. 85,000 hectares of National Park.

As if that were not enough, I learned that there was also a historic link to Gypsy Culture with a yearly festival in honor of Sara, Patron Saint of Gypsies and Sainte Marie, the namesake of the town Ste Marie de la Mer.

In May of 2007, with my French husband and a couple of American friends, I made it to Camargue, timing our trip to coincide with the Pilgrimage of Gypsies from all over Europe.

The hotel I had chosen, outside of town, was made up of thatched-roofed, white-walled round huts, built in the tradition of the herdsmen, or Guardians of Camargue, scattered around a flat property, interspersed with waterways and clumps of reeds. I had asked for the accommodations furthest from the rest, on the edge of a briny, inland lagoon, where there were perpetual movements of feeding flocks of Flamingos and other water fowl. There is something mythical about the presence of a wedge of hundreds of white swans in the early dawn light; first the noise and then the sight of them flying in to land, en masse, preening, feeding, conversing; a whiteness of swans. The contrasting fat black moor-hens, or coots, adding their toc, toc, toc percussion to the sound-track of the rising day, as they called to their punctuation-point chicks to hurry up.

The horses of the Camargue are sturdy descendants of Spanish Barbary Stock. They are taller than I had expected. Born black they turn white as they mature into adulthood. In May there were many white mares with black foals at heel.

I did participate in the cliche of riding a white horse through the ponds and lagoons, which foamed around our horses knees as we gently eased through large groupings of flamingos. I don't regret a minute of it.

My blissful moment was experienced at a greater rate of speed than would normally be desired as our guide had told me that my steed enjoyed lying down and rolling in the water any chance he got, so forward motion was very much on my mind. Giddy-up Silver!