"Little Money Street": Streets alive with sounds of Gypsy music

"Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France"
by Fernanda Eberstadt
Knopf, 242 pp., $24.95

Novelist Fernanda Eberstadt ("The Furies," "Isaac and his Devils") found herself, unexpectedly, living in the south of France. Not that South of France — the one with the unforgettable afternoon light and the heartbreaking wildflowers and the starry, starry nights. No, not that one, the other one: the one with the scouring wind that shrieks down out of the Pyrenees, and the grim French housing projects, and the bloody cockfights and the immigrant families living on welfare.

In her compelling nonfiction debut, "Little Money Street," Eberstadt worms her way inside the world of the Gypsies of Perpignan, a French city at the southeastern tip of the region known as Languedoc-Roussillon, "a ridiculously beautiful place, when it isn't downright ugly."

The area is a strange melting pot: North Africa is only a ferry ride away, and the closest big city is Barcelona. The official second language of the region is Catalan, a Gallo-Iberian language that bridges the gap between French and Spanish. The Gypsies of Perpignan speak a language they call Gitan, itself a hybrid of Catalan and Romany.

"Once you cross from the sunny godless prosperous towns of the Languedoc into Roussillon, you realize that you are no longer in mainland France. Although where exactly you are is a more puzzling question."

Eberstadt, an outsider among other outsiders, at first finds herself shut out of the hermetically sealed world of the Gypsies, who live, for the most part, in a neighborhood called St. Jacques, the most rundown section of Perpignan.

Her growing fascination with Gypsy music, a potent Pentecostalist-flavored blend of rumba and flamenco, provides her with a key to this locked realm.

With luck and tenacity she tracks down Moise Espinas, the lead singer of a group called Tekameli, legendary in the Gypsy world — and beyond — for what Eberstadt describes as their "unearthly" sound.

Moise becomes Eberstadt's entry point to Gypsy culture, irresistibly alive yet fraught with cruelties and contradictions. Through him she meets his wife, siblings, children and an interconnected web of family and friends.

The Gypsies ultimately accept Eberstadt; they find her naive and "touchingly simple," she thinks. She chronicles the ugliness she finds — the health problems, the social compartmentalization, the way Gypsy women are trapped in their lives — along with the oddly endearing unworldliness of their culture, which revolves above all else around family.

"Little Money Street" is a fascinating journey into this secret nation, rich with detours and through a hidden corner of the world.