Music is a universal, direct, polycentric and dynamic vehicle for communication, knowledge, comprehension and of an understanding without frontiers of the peoples and persons. Its peculiar nature has endowed the Romani/Gypsy culture with one of its most characteristic identity traits. This identity is badly known, scarcely recognized, despite its cultural proximity and the influx it has exerted by way of the age-old coexistence of the Gypsies with the majority European societies, since the beginning of its Diaspora from Orient to Occident, dating back to the 11th century. A great part of the beautiful and unique musical Romano/Gypsy patrimony is still to be discovered, studied and spread, considering its value as a model of universal human greatness, inseparable from the European common legacy. Being a kingdom of sounds and of an intercultural communication knowing no frontiers, this creative field of expressive equality doesn’t differentiate the Gypsy culture from any other people in Europe. It is the fundamental and the vector of equitable human relationships.

The importance and significance of the cultural heritage formed by the music of every origin, period and latitude, inspired in things Gypsy –be it symphonic music, classic, modern or contemporary, popular or traditional- and that produced by the Sinti and Roma/Gypsies themselves –be it autochthonous, refunded, adopted or mixed-raced music- is evidenced by way of the research undertaken by this Project. The work is based on transnational and pluriannual cooperation, begun in May 2004 within the framework of the Cultura 2000 Program of the European Commission. Following a purpose of expansion, continuity and permanence, the multidisciplinary teams in Germany, France, Hungary and Rumania, and their associates -all of them being coordinated by Presencia Gitana from Spain, and sharing responsibility in the Project- develop an intense and wide spatio-temporal work, aiming to rescue, recover, catalogue, value, select, conserve, codify, archive, digitalize and divulgate musicological materials and hemerographic, iconographic, bibliographic, sociologic, discographic and filmographic documentation, presented under manifold forms and appearances, ranging from the score to the DVD.

This Project is dedicated to the memory of Lord Yehudi Menuhin.