The Aromanian Question: Lessons of a Bloody History
Mastermind of the systematic persecution of the Aromanian population of Albania was himself the leader of the Communist Party of this country: the communist dictator, Enver Hoxha (1908-85). The bloody sharp sword of social-political system of communist dictatorship—the Secret Service of the Albanian Communist State (Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with the Branches of Internal ...
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Aromanian Traditional Music: An Introduction
Aromanian traditional music is just my music! When I was a kid, the first songs I heard from my parents, were exactly Aromanian traditional songs! When I grew up, the songs that filled the house, and her yard, were also precisely Aromanian traditional songs! When I die, I am sure I will be buried accompanied ...
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Connecticut Premiere of First Feature Film Ever Made in Aromanian
Connecticut Premiere of First Feature Film Ever Made in Aromanian The Society Farsarotul was proud to sponsor this event on June 7, 2014, at the Roger Ludlowe Middle School in Fairfield, CT. “I’m Not Famous, but I’m Aromanian” was created by Toma Enache, an actor and director from Romania who is of Aromanian descent. Click ...
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Preserving Aromanian (Vlach)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is a reflection of many journeys taken to dozens of Vlach villages in Thessaly, Epirus, and Macedonia. It is not concerned with Vlach origins or history, but solely with the preservation of an endangered two-thousand year old language. Nor does it attempt to discuss any political conflicts in which the Greek Vlachs have ...
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Romanian Parliament: Vlachs Are Romanians, Not Vlachs
In April 2005, the Aromanian Community in Romania (ACR) started the procedure for obtaining the status of a national minority for the Aromanians in Romania. After three years of administrative red tape, the ACR decided to file suit against the Romanian Government for cancelling parts of Government Resolution no. 589/2001 concerning the founding of the ...
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Community News
Just as we were going to press, we learned that Aromanian tennis prodigy Simona Halep, ranked number 19 in the world, who recently won the Open in New Haven and held on till the fourth round in the US Open, had been defeated by the Italian Flavia Pennetta. Halep is from Constantsa, Romania, and is ...
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The Recent History of the Aromanians in Romania
EDITOR’S NOTE: Of all the Newsletters we have published in our 24 years, this issue may very well be the most important, because it contains 3 remarkable contemporary documents that show the situation of the Balkan Vlachs today as THEY see it, not as self-styled Vlach leaders in the West see it… (see Editor’s Note) The request ...
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The Recent History of the Aromanians in Southeast Europe
The aim of this article is to draw an identification “map” of the Aromanians in Southeast Europe. In so doing, we have tried to take an anthropological approach by assuming the analyzed person’s perspective, to understand his or her options and motivations as much as possible. Irina Nicolau (1993) highlighted the difficulty in identifying the ...
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Vlach-speaking Vocal Music in the Western Balkans: An Introductory Note
Vlach speaking vocal music participates in the wider context of the musical tradition of the Pindus mountain range in Western Greece and generally in the musical context of Western Greece (Epirus, Western Macedonia, Western Thessaly, and mountainous Roumeli) and Southern Albania (Northern Epirus). What will be presented here is a brief note of the results of research ...
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From the Editor: The End of an Illusion
Of all the Newsletters we have published in our 24 years, this issue may very well be the most important, because it contains 3 remarkable contemporary documents that show the situation of the Balkan Vlachs today as THEY see it, not as self-styled Vlach leaders in the West see it. Several generations have grown ...
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Community News
We continue to receive interesting materials for our archives from our members. Recently Pete Costulas mailed us a letter that the Society Farsarotul sent out in December 1943 to all young men serving in the U.S. military during the war, which we reproduce here: “To our boys—wherever you may be: With pride we extend our ...
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Panhellenic Federation of Cultural Associations of Vlachs: Letter of Information to the Council of Europe
PANHELLENIC FEDERATION OF CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS OF VLACHS FOUNDED IN 1985 http://www.vlachs-popsv.gr/ e-mail: panhellenicfeder.vlachon@gmail.com Larisa 16 November 2009 Ref. No.:44 LETTER OF INFORMATION TO THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE To: The Council of Europe The Honourable Secretary-General Cc.: The Honourable President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Deputies of the ...
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Haunted by the “Enemy” Within: Brigandage, Vlachian / Albanian Greekness, Turkish “Contamination,” and Narratives of Greek Nationhood in the Dilessi / Marathon Affair (1870)
[Reprinted, with minor line editing changes, from the Journal of Modern Greek Studies 20, no. 1 (2002): 47-74, with permission of the author and the Johns Hopkins University Press. © 2002, 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press] Abstract This essay explores Greek and British observations on the phenomenon of brigandage in Greece following a major Anglo-Greek ...
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A Trek through Greece, Macedonia, and Albania
Bitola bus station in the rain is not the most romantic of spots, and only the most devoted of wives would have tolerated this halfway stop in our wet wild whirlwind Balkan tour. There was an hour to wait before the bus to Ohrid arrived. She had a book, and I settled down as so ...
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Community News
Efforts to preserve or at least record some of the world’s endangered languages continue to capture media attention. In a March 16, 2009 article entitled, “Preserving Languages Is About More Thank Words,” The Washington Post noted that the Irish language (also called Gaelic) was spoken by about 250,000 people when the country was founded in ...
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The Poetry of Traditional Languages
The Neapolitan linguist-historian Giambattista Vico said in 1744 in his New Science, “We find that the principle of [the] origins both of languages and of letters lies in the fact that the first gentile peoples, by a demonstrated necessity of nature, were poets who spoke in poetic characters.” This grand discovery enabled Vico to outline the ...
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Aspects of Language and Identity in the Greek Peninsula since the Eighteenth Century
My aim in this paper is to comment on certain texts written in Greek around the years 1800 and 2000 on the subject of the populations and languages that make up the cultural mosaic of the south Balkan peninsula. The introduction to a work by Asterios Koukoudis entitled Studies on the Vlachs, first published in ...
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Community News
We’ve heard of members of our community achieving distinction in the arts, such as Tony Award nominee David Pittu on the Broadway stage. We learned of some recent successes by a few others: Saviana Stanescu, a playwright who is on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, recently had her play, ...
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Update on the Vlachs: A Visit to Uma
It is twenty years since I published The Vlachs. When I did so Yugoslavia was still an entity, Albania a closed book, and the Iron Curtain still shrouded much of Eastern Europe. Vlach ha survived these difficult years quite well. There is oddly an increased interest in minority languages, and increased efforts to preserve them. Vlach ...
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Creating a Virtual Museum and Cultural Center: kythera-family.net
www.kythera-family.net Imagine if a huge museum and cultural centre for the Aromanians were to be built, with room for thousands of heritage documents from Vlachs living in the region and those of Vlach descent in the Diaspora. Where all things relating to the community — interviews, important historical documents, family names, vintage family photo collections, old maps, family ...
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