Romanistan

21/07/2025

Listen to our latest episode with musician, composer, writer, and professor Santino Spinelli who performed for the pope… TWICE. Listen to The Alexian Group wherever you get music. You can listen to this episode of Romanistan on our website or wherever podcasts are found!

20/07/2025

What a treat to speak with Alexian Santino Spinelli, musician, composer, writer, poet and university professor. The first Italian Roma to be appointed Commendatore of the Italian Republic for artistic and cultural merits. Spinelli with the Alexian Group holds numerous concerts in Italy and abroad. With his son Gennaro Spinelli, he is the first Roma to have played at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples with the soloists of the Scala, the San Carlo and the G. Rossini Symphony Orchestra of Pesaro. He has played worldwide for Pope Benedict XVI and several times for Pope Francis. Founder and president of the cultural association Thèm Romanò, he is an ambassador of Romani culture in the world. His poem Auschwitz is on the Roma Memorial in Berlin inaugurated with Chancellor Angela Merkel. He currently teaches Romani Language and Culture at La Sapienza University in Rome.

Listen to the Alexian Group wherever you get music.

Romani crushes this episode are Raјko Đurić, Marcel Courthaid, Ian Hancock, Esme Redzepova, Roby Lakatos, and Marian Serban.

Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast. If you love us, let us know by rating us five stars and writing a sweet review wherever you listen to podcasts! It helps us tremendously!

17/07/2025

What happens when the people whose existence was attempted to be erased write the future?

“Roma feminism” is not a buzzword.
It’s not a trending hashtag.
Nor is it a checkbox in someone else’s diversity agenda.

▪️It’s a reminder that feminism from the margins looks very different from feminism at the center. It doesn’t always speak the same language. It doesn’t always look polished.

▪️But it’s real, it is urgent & it comes from lived experience.
It’s shaped by survival, by exclusion, by the need to create space when none existed.

📰That’s what the interview with Giuvlipen in Transilvania magazine (Issue 3 / 2025) reveals so clearly.

👆🏽 You can read it fully in the link in our description. 👆🏽

15/07/2025

👉 “Be proud of your roots.” Exclusive Romea.cz interview with Ina Majko, the first Roma woman in the Albanian government

More information in the article: https://1url.cz/-majko-romea

Ina Majko was appointed Deputy Minister of Health and Social Protection of Albania at the beginning of July – the very first Roma woman to hold such a high-level government position in the country’s history. Her appointment is regarded as a significant milestone not only for Albanian society but also for the entire Romani community. “Be proud of your roots, because they bear witness to courage and ingenuity,” she tells Romani readers via Romea.cz in an exclusive interview.

08/07/2025

07/07/2025

30/06/2025

🔮Everyone wants the future, but it’s ours.🔮

➡️ In 2018, our co-founder Mihaela Drăgan developed the concept of Roma Futurism, a visionary framework that reimagines Roma identity beyond historical trauma and into speculative futures, science fiction, and radical timelines. It was first articulated in her manifesto published in , where she described Roma Futurism as a space for artistic freedom, cultural resistance, and radical imagination.

And since then, something beautiful has happened.
We’ve seen this idea resonate far beyond us.
Artists, curators, researchers, institutions, it’s sparked imagination in so many places we never expected.

And that’s something we’re proud of because it’s speaking to people. It’s opening up space for rethinking how Roma futures can look, sound, and feel.

✨ For us, Roma Futurism will always be an anchor. A home base we return to when things feel too narrow, too predictable, too stuck in the past.

❤️‍🔥And as it continues to grow and evolve in other spaces, we hope it carries its origin story with it.
Not as a claim. But as a way of honoring the roots and the Roma women who planted them.

📓We’ve curated an archive of every public mention and publication that maps the trajectory of Roma Futurism. Link in bio.

25/06/2025

So funny— it’s a dream come true to get a shoutout from Stephen Colbert on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert! I’m such a big fan, and John Cena is so charming too. I love doing library workshops for kids, teens, and adults. Libraries are awesome. Please support them! Thank you, Colbert Late Show!Fortune Telling for Teens— tarot, palmistry, & tea leaf reading at the G.A.R. Memorial Library (West Newbury, Massachusetts) this July 1, 8, & 15 from 4:30-6 pm! It will be a really fun way to learn about Romani culture and learn to connect with your intuition through a number of different techniques.