The Nomadic Life: Gypsy Caravan and "Gypsy Rain"

At the ripe old age of 50, I sometimes look back at the things I wish I had done.  I wish I had raised a child, for instance.  I wish I had done a semester abroad in college.  And sometimes I think about, in a wistful manner, a nomadic lifestyle.

I can imagine my younger self, sort of footloose, wandering through the United States like a modern Jack Kerouac, or Europe, or Asia or South America, hell maybe even Africa.  Or settling into a berth on a freighter and going from port of call to port of call.  I could see that young me stopping in interesting cities and working for a while, maybe living hand to mouth or on the edge, making just enough money to live and scrape together a small savings and then hit the road.  I could see that young me meeting interesting people, having interesting conversations, and maybe even having a torrid romance with a foreign girl or three until it fell apart and then I moved on to the next city or the next port, the next group of people or the next romance.

Of course, that never happened.  I was pretty conventional.  I went to college, graduated without any idea of what I wanted to do, joined a volunteer program but stayed in the United States (albeit I volunteered in the inner-city so I bucked convention there a little).  I then got a job, got married, got more education, and suddenly here I am, a middle aged, homeowning bureaucrat.  Becoming a nomad would radically destroy what I've built up, end my relationship with my wife and probably with most of my friends.  I can't do that, and yet...well, that's why we dream - we dream of those alternative realities, those other lives that we could have lived and didn't.  Those lives we romanticize even though they probably would have been as hard and full of pain as they would have been transformative.  Dreaming of a gypsy-like life is not the same as being an actual gypsy - and all one would have to do is ask a Sinti or Roma to learn that.

Which is why I must appreciate the siren-call that songs like Gypsy Rain by Gypsy Caravan while also resisting its charms.  When I listen to the song, I almost want to run away with the gypsies, lured by that percussion beat and that mournful, calling violin.  I want to join the campfires where the musicians sit around playing this music in the midst of the caravan while the women and men dance and I catch the eye of a young woman who seems to dance just for me, and I get up and join her and we dance far into the night together.  But that is that other, imaginary life, nothing more than a dream by one who took risks, but maybe not enough?

Gypsy Caravan is an American band formed in 1991 by Bruce Beaton and Jeff Rees in Portland, Oregon.  The band varies from four to 9 musicians, and sometimes fills in extra strings and percussion as needed. Their main focus is playing for the Gypsy Caravan Dance Company, and they play a variety of original music and tribal fusion for the company's productions. They also can be found playing in large musical productions and in smaller, more intimate venues. They have played WOMAD in Seattle in 2001 as well as hundreds of other festivals and gatherings. Gypsy Rain is from their 2008 album Migration.