“Vive Sainte Sara!” comes the bellowed reply from the crowd that’s gathered alongside me in the sun-beaten square in the French coastal town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Call and response, music and rhythm are everywhere here at the Pèlerinage Gitan, a riotous pilgrimage that draws Romani communities from across Europe each May. I round a corner into another square to find flamenco guitarists and singers entwined in a gleeful duel. Each musical phrase is marked with handclaps and cries of “Olé!” from surrounding revellers.
Saintes-Maries is at the heart of the Camargue, the delta of the Rhône — astrange land of swampy marshes wedged between Montpellier and Marseille along France’s southern coast. For the most part, it remains blissfully undeveloped. Inhabited by vibrant flamingos and cowboys riding primeval, ghostwhite Camargue horses, these humid wetlands have the feel of an interzone; a place apart. There can be no more fitting introduction to the region than the Pèlerinage Gitan, which is a festival like no other — ahomecoming for a people defined by their statelessness.
As I wander the streets, I can smell the paprika of Hungarian goulash and the saffron of olla gitana (Andalucian Romani stew), bubbling in great cauldrons, jostling for olfactory dominance with shakshuka, paella and baked apples. Fragments of conversations in French, Spanish and Dutch reach my ears. The sound of flamenco dissolves into strains of Balkan brass, the ornamented cadences of Eastern European klezmer and the jaunty jig of Parisian gypsy jazz — astyle of music pioneered by the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, a regular attendee of the Pèlerinage until his death in the early 1950s. I stop at a stall to take a face-scrunching shot of tuica, a Romanian plum brandy that’s imbibed with great gusto throughout this week-long event.
I push my way through the crowds to the town’s honey-hued, Romanesque Church of the Saintes Maries de la Mer, where I’ve been granted an audience with
