Gypsy Radio

Historical source for behaviour adaptation to modern 7-tone music

Historical source for
behaviour adaptation
to modern 7-tone music

By Wendell W. Solomons
__________________________________________________

Do you recollect ABBA saying it this way?

Thank you for the music,
Thank you for the joy its bringing,
Thank you – for giving it to me.

Whom should we thank for our first musical instruments? From which geographic area did waves of sound first ring out? Stones and wood could make a sound but perhaps bells, xylophone slats and frets of metal provided for the distribution, modulation and standardisation of musical scales and music?

The metal first put to wide use by men was copper. Mixed with a little tin, it produced the more resilent substance bronze.

Regarding sources for copper, Gunakar Muley says:

“Presently the site Tal-i-Iblis near the Kerman range in south-east Iran is regarded as the earliest known centre of copper metallurgy. The smelting equipment discovered from this site is datable to circa 4500 BC. From here the knowledge is believed to have spread to the west and the east. Towards the east Mundigak in Afghanistan and some pre-Harappan sites from Baluchistan provide evidence of copper and bronze metallurgy.”
<www.vigyanprasar.com/dream/august99/AUGUSTArticle1.htm>

Among those first copper mines seem to have been mines in the Kheeveri mountains which fall within the borders of modern Afghanistan. Western European names for copper come probably from this region _1/ .

As for Eastern Europe, the commonest Slav name for copper is `med.’ That name leads us to the Median people (living in Persia,) once again in this region. The name of the fabled Magi appeared here and from them we derive the terms `magic’, `magistrate’ and `majesty’. The Hungarians believe they arrived from that homeland and they call themselves `Magyar’ to this day.

An encyclopaedia entry now:

“The Bronze Age occurred at different times in different parts of the world. In most areas, the development of bronze technology was preceded by an intermediary period when copper was used. This stage, sometimes called the Copper Age, did not occur in some areas, including ancient China and prehistoric Britain, where the transition was made directly from stone to bronze technology. In certain ancient cultures in Africa and elsewhere, stone was replaced directly by iron technology, and the Bronze Age was bypassed completely.” (Grotelier Encyclopedia)

Later, in the Biblical era of West Asia, Ur of the Chaldees, the traditional birthplace of Abram and Sara and a river port, imported the metal. The island of Bahrain (Dilmun) served as a transit point for the metal to the Euphrates river from whence the metal was moved westwards by overland caravan.

IMPACT OF METAL INSTRUMENTS AND TOOLS

The Bronze Age permitted the creation of more accurate measuring instruments. So the first sophisticated calendars for agricultural work appeared in areas incorporating the Indus Valley. The first metal tools (including metal plowshare) enhanced man’s agricultural productivity.

An increased food surplus could physically support the mental work of a larger population share of sages, healers, scribes, artisans, artists and musicians.

Much later in Rome, calendar makers still followed the count of fingers of the hands and had ten months ending in December. Then, Julius Caesar was advised to implant two months in the middle of the year and he named the months for himself and his chosen successor, Augustus. Still later, with the arrival of lenses and telescopes, planets Neptune and Pluto were discovered. With these changes, Napoleon Bonaparte is among those who attempted metrification now of the week, to ten days.

However, the seven heavenly bodies known before Caesar to Mesopotamian and Vedic astronomy continue to serve as the base for the seven-day week in our times. Even the names of days describe that (in many languages Saturday means Saturm’s day.)

Sabbath’ comes directly from the Semitic word `seba’a', which means seven’. Similar syllables occur in the Indo-European word stream. There is the Greek `septa’ for seven.

THE SET OF 7 HEAVENLY BODIES

If we go by early Greek, Chinese and Japanese civilisations, many early musical scales were pentatonic (5 “main notes;” still a feature of Gamelan music in Bali). In the pentatonic, the octave was divided by the simple means of counting the figures on one hand. Russian composer Borodin noticed it in folk song and used it in “Prince Igor” (it was represented in the modern production `Kismet’ by the song `Stranger in Paradise’.)

The earlier scale was tri-tonic (3 “main notes”) if we judge by fisherman/sailor hauling chants (take the `Volga Boatmen’ shanty sung by greats such as Paul Robeson) and the music of Native Americans and existent pre-Bronze Age tribesmen.

If the piano did not accomplish the task, two millennia later the world’s population is in the process of behavioural conditioning to the `major’ key of Western Europe. That comes about through the use in network media of the 7-tone scale of the electronic organ now factory-created by corporations such as YAMAHA in the Far East.

Instruments such as the violin and cello can produce half-tones and quarter tones between each of the seven tones, but the piano and Western fretted instruments are set to reproduce only five half tones. That gives a total of twelve that is – no more than the number of houses of the Zodiac used by early astronomers in making calendars.

This set scale seems to have percolated via traditional merchant settlements. In Cochin, India, alongside the Mattancherry synagogue (visible on the Net) still exists an ancient spice market that served rich trading houses in Genoa and Venice. After a day of taxing their wits, merchants would rejuvenate with entertainment and thence came aggregated commercial demand of the human faculties for music.

A variant based on the same number of tones and called the `minor’ key had become basic to the Eastern Slavs (it must be noted that in the late 19th and 20th Century composers such as Borodin, Mousourgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky contributed to a wave of the `minor’ key in Western Europe.)

Both the `minor’ and `major’ and scales of Western and Eastern Europe respectively seem to be gypsies, which took off from Asia somewhere adjacent to India.

So we seem to deal with the possibility that besides orienting with Bronze Age astronomy and mathematics, Europe seated itself on an Asian musical carpet.

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR EXTRAVAGANZA

The `Magical Mystery Tour’, an album title of the Beatles, could reflect this journey on a magic carpet.

The Beatles had began like Elvis Presley with boogie-woogie and be-bop adopted from Fats Waller and other performers in harmonic progressions such as `Hound Dog’. This was served up like hot potatoes in the late 1950s by music distributors. In short, using White American performers, music distributors sold Black American staples.

After a repackaging enterprise far across the breadth of the Atlantic in Liverpool, the Beatles turned their electric guitars and seemed to stumble into something else with manager Brian Epstein – into music academy.

Britain was historically known to be long on shop-keepers (even military man Napoleon has a quip) and on puns, immortalised by Shakespeare,

At the same time the country was known to be short on composers.

Howver, the electric guitars of the Beatles roamed into Slav music in academic archives. The English words in their song `Those Were the Days’ were set note for note to the Russian traditional ballad `Dorogoj dlinnoju’. Only the tempo was altered from the original 6-beat, the same as in the gypsy airs `Two Guitars’ and `Dark Eyes’ (the rhythm resembles the later `Blue Danube’ waltz, which Strauss made famous in Vienna.) Most Russian ballads are pitched
in minor key (in contrast to the episodic minor transition, say in, in time-honoured English favourites such as `Ash Grove’ or `Greensleeves’.)

From the `Swan Lake’ ballet, the haunting harmonic progression of Tchaikovsky’s main theme became for Les Beatles the main chorus in their song `All my loving.’

Then there was Rimsky-Korsakov’s famed `Song of the Guest from India’ in the opera `Sadko’. The song is based on a wafting between major and minor scales because the composer’s objective was to let India dialogue with Russian audiences (he intended a multicultural event.) In the repertoire of Les Beatles , a waltz rhythm was introduced and the problem of song title resolved by calling the melody `Norwegian Woods’. However, it remains a give away. In the mind of a musicologist still constrained in the 1960s by `Britannia Rule the Waves’, Norse would represent multiculturalism too.

So whether John Lennon and lads took their `Magical Mystery Tour’ together with consultant musicologists from OUTSIDE the erstwhile British Empire is a question for us to resolve.

For circumstantial evidence in the matter we observe that extraordinary happenings had aroused the universal (that is also the meaning of `Catholic’) in Liverpool-born Irishman John Lennon. Catholic Ireland does not call itself England’s oldest colony without cause and we observe Lennon setting aside `Britannia Rule the Waves’ with an other-worldly universality which stretched to Transcendental Meditation in India.

For attire, Lennon had discarded the tie. He was now discarding his designer polyester/wool Kommisar attire and adopting the customary habit of commonfolk Asia, called in India or Pakistan the Salwar Khamiz (compare `chemise.’) He adopted Yoko Ono as mother for his child instead of camp-following blonde or brunette debutante, the choice of a hundred Western venue’s wealthy entertainers.

Viewing all the events in the prism of statistical probability, cause and effect become more explicable if something had really got under Lennon’s skin by his surmising more than the average about the laboratory of behaviour control.

This great Les Beatles musical extravaganza was soon to lead a huge number of pop groups to follow the revealed cosmopolitan lode. The trend also led Ravi Shankar’s sitar to world fame.

As events proceeded apace, music distributors began to fear a Pandora’s box effect of sponsoring through music, an unnecessary hyper-world consolidation. So by the 1990s, distributors put on blinkers and switched to bankrolling (i) lyrics that dumb down or debilitate. The same bankrolling was to follow for (ii) rhythm too.

Yet, it proved difficult to rub out the full effect of the Beatles. For the part of (iii) harmony their influence became ineffaceable in pop music. Of late TIME magazine (on July 1, 2002) complains that compact disk buyers are switching from the common coin of AOL-TIME-WARNER, EMI and the three other top music distributors to recordings sold thanks to the Internet, by small, outsider companies.

The Beatles extravaganza amused when it did not distract the anti-war protest rallies that plagued the Establishment in the 1960s. Such historical dovetailing of music and rallies waits repeating.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How could we round off a discussion of the subject of social behaviour adaptation in music and time?

We know that the West had absorbed monotheism, Judaism `fulfilled’ in Christ’s words in the New Testament. Its birthplace was in the city cultures of the East. “History Begins in Sumer” is the name of an illustrious book. Here, a change had taken place from tribal, nomadic life.

A changed behaviour and ethic had emerged in cities with organised housing (right down to the size of bricks), organised streets, organised water supply systems, organised weights and measures for ease of sales of goods stocks. This change was firmly established before 2000 BC in cities of the Indus Valley civilisation. This civilisation deserves our attention because archaeologists have learnt that the territory exceeds not only the extent of deservedly famous Sumer but of the river civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt taken together.

_____________________________________________________________

_1/ Gene Matlock tells us: “About 5,000 BC or earlier, a brilliant deified Phoenician Naga king and philosopher named Kuvera (also Kubera) learned how to smelt copper, gold, and other metals. These activities took place in the kingdom named after him, Khyber (“Kheeveri”), which consisted of a group of craggy mountains in what are now Southeastern Afghanistan and Northeastern Pakistan (i.e. the Khyber Pass). According to Hindu mythology, Kuvera and God Shiva lived in the totally barren, mineral-poor, goldless, frigid, lofty, bell-shaped or pyramidical peak of Kailasa in Western Tibet …’

“We derived our word `copper’ from Kuvera’s name. Eventually, the Nagas extended their influence over all of India. If you’ve intuited that Afghan Khyber (Kheever), Hebrew Heber (pronounced Kheever), Egyptian Khepri, Greek Khyphera, Cabeiri, Cypriotic Cip’ri (Kheep’ri) … ad infinitum, are somehow linked, you’ve intuited correctly.” Excerpted from <http://www.mondovista.com/baboquivari.html>

For mathematics and computing, it helps to travel onwards on our journey with Gene Matlock.

In Europe, mathematical calculation was once difficult. With the count of fingers on the hands, Latin used symbols such as VIII. Multiplication and further computation were held up until the decimal system was completed with the use of zero. Webster’s modern dictionary confirms that the term ‘zero’ is related to ‘cipher’ and Arabic ‘tsifr’.

Webster’s year 1828 dictionary helps us with a further bridge.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CIPHER, noun

1. In arithmetic, an Arabian or Oriental character, of this form 0, which, standing by itself, expresses nothing, but increases or diminishes the value of other figures, according to its position. In whole numbers, when placed at the right hand of a figure, it increases its value ten fold …

2. A character in general.

3. An intertexture of letters, as the initials of a name, engraved on a seal, box, plate, coach or tomb; a device; an enigmatical character. Anciently, merchants and tradesmen, not being permitted to bear family arms, bore, in lieu of them, their cyphers, or initials of their names…

4. A secret or disguised manner of writing; certain characters arbitrarily invented and agreed on by two or more persons, to stand for letters or words…

CIPHER, verb intransitive. In popular language, to use figures, or to practice arithmetic

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In general, the Russian-speaker uses ‘tsifra’ for numbers somewhat in the manner of the contemporary term ‘cyber’ (e.g. ‘cyberspace’). Also, Russian ‘kibernetika’ is ‘cybernetics’ (in robotics.)

Records in cuneiform set in baked clay tablets tell us that Mesopotamia did not have a symbol for zero. Therefore the completion of our decimal notation seems to have been achieved thanks to the Khyber areas of the Indus Valley civilisation. At the end of the day Harvard’s attempt to construct its iron curtain around that civilisation with a funded 25-odd year research project turns out to be a waste of social resources. That had also been in the case of the 1947 to 2001 delay in the release into public domain of the Dead Sea Scrolls, government property kept under lock and key primarily in the Rockefeller Museum and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem .

Related Gypsy Radio Articles

Vagabond Travel Music

The art of music, combining sound and lyrics, has been used by rogues, muses, and many drifters around the world to describe their adventures.  For this reason, for most vagabonds, music plays an important role in their lives.  Using sounds and stories that can travel through time, is instrumental for weary drifters, the music created can be used to uplift even the loneliest trip.

For roaming vagabonds, great music can help the traveler’s long journey go by a bit quicker and enhance their adventure.  A good tempo will always add some momentum to the spirit and faith of a long journey.  There can be different types of music for different types of trips; a long sad journey can be uplifted by adding favourite music that fills the soul with positive notions.  The traveller will sometimes find themselves in tune with the beat of the music and even entranced in the stories told in the songs.  The more creative vagabond will sometimes discover a new song to write and even sing about their own adventures.

How to create a good travel music playlist Start off by looking at your own collection.  Sort through all the song titles and artists from your collection and find music written and played specific to destinations, travel, and tempo.  A few songs for example are “Going Mobile” by The Who, “Drive” by Blind Mellon, “Jet Airliner” by The Steve Miller Band… Take the list of songs and add them together in a play list.  This is done depending on your source of music collection.  If your using a computer this is easily done using a media player, if you have CDs or other old school technology, you will have to copy, burn, or record the specified songs onto its source . Once you have a playlist recorded, burned or copy, give it a cool name to label it.  Use a theme related to travelling, such as “Vagabond Vocals”, “Gypsy Guitars”, or simply “My Travel Tunes” A good player such as a MP3 player, cassette player, CD player, DVD player, record player, will need to be carried with you on your trek.  If you are walking or cycling, a portable player might be more convenient.  Most cars, trucks, and recreational vehicles will have a player in them.  The type of player is up to the specific vagabond…whether you are old school or up with technology that depends on the individual. Today a portable computer devise is ideal, it will not only play music, but also the modern vagabond can watch music videos and more.  The portable computer may require a set of speakers for better sound quality and loudness. The musical travellers can play their own music using the instrument of their preference or just use their wonderful voices.  The preferred instruments for travellers are, like the music players, the portable types such as harmonicas, spoons, guitars, trumpets, whatever pleases the musician at heart.

When roving around, good tunes help the bad and irrelevant news from being heard..Turn on the Vagabonding Music and have a good trip!
The following link is a compilation of music found on YouTube that can help the vagabond with her travels.  Everyone has their own taste in music and there is a large variety of it to choose from.  This music has been chosen by theme related to travel and destination.

Music by Manuel Iman. Video edited by Malcolm Davey. I believe the dancer is Ricardo? Delgado. www.eversound.com http www.wopg.org
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Related Gypsy Music Articles

Gypset Style: Jet Set + Gypsy = Gypset

Yuppies, Yippies, Jet Setters, Bright Young Things, Generation X, Generation Y . . . and now the Gypset. Fusing the ease and carefree lifestyle of a gypsy with the sophistication of the jet set, the Gypsetters are artists, surfers, designers, and bon vivants who live and work around the globe, from Jose Ignacio, Uruguay and Ibiza, Spain, to Montauk, New York. Gypset Style explores the unconventional, wanderlust lives of these high-low cultural nomads and the bohemian enclaves they inhabit, as well as their counterculture forbears, such as the Victorian explorers, the Lost Generation, the Beatniks, and the hippies. And along the way, author Julia Chaplin looks back at quintessential gypsy boho moments in social history.

Rating: (out of 4 reviews)

List Price: $ 45.00

Price: $ 29.70

#200 GYPSY STYLE SHORT SLEEVE EMBROIDERED BLOUSE L

US $17.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-17-2012 5:50:53 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $17.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-17-2012 5:50:53 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

Gypsy Jazz Guitar – a One-man Genre

Gypsy jazz guitar is a genre based on the music of Django Reinhardt, a guitar player who overcame a severe disability to become a legend in jazz music. Most people have heard music by the Quintet du Hot Club de France or one of the gypsy jazz groups devoted to its style of music. Born in the 1930′s this group with Stephane Grapelli on violin, Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt and Roger Chaput on guitars and Louis Vola on bass, pioneered the concept of lead and rhythm guitar.

The group played popular jazz tunes of the time with Django and Grapelli alternating on the lead with the two other guitars playing rhythm and Vola playing walking bass figures. A drummer was never in the mix. They also wrote their own tunes, many of which have themselves become standards. Some of the group’s compositions include blue Drag, Minor Swing, Djangology, Django Rag, Django’s Blues, Django’s Tiger and Nuages.

The group’s violinist, Stephane Grapelli continued making music until his death in 1997 but the figure that has proved to be the inspiration of many gypsy jazz groups, Django Reinhardt only lived to be forty-three years old. Gypsy jazz has been behind the popularity of the Maccaferri and Selmer style guitars. The guitar that Django Reinhardt made famous was made by the Selmer company in Paris based on a revolutionary guitar design by Mario Maccaferri, one of the first generation of classical guitar players. Surprisingly, Maccaferri was never familiar with Django Reinhardt’s music.

As with all music associated with the tag “gypsy” the music is usually passed on directly from one musician to another. The Quintet Du Hot Club came out of an environment where playing music was simply a part of life. Each musician was both student and teacher. And there were not too many note readers among them. In fact Stephane Grapelli, a classically trained musician used breaks in the groups playing schedule to tutor Django in music. So every guitar player wanting to learn to play gypsy jazz is faced with learning the music of Django Reinhardt, as played by Django Reinhardt.

One element that made Django’s music unique was the fact that, due to an injury in a fire, Django played the guitar using only the first and second fingers of his left hand. This limited the range of notes available to him as he worked his way up and down the fretboard was severely limited. As a result of his injury, barre chords are not found in gypsy jazz guitar music. A close look at Django’s music will tell you he had little use for sevenths in his music.

If you want to listen to some contemporary gypsy jazz guitar, American groups devoted to the genre are Pearl Django and the John Jorgenson Quintet but Europe is still the place where there is most interest in this music, with groups like Hot Club of Hungary and Hot Club of France. If you want to learn to play gypsy jazz guitar, the ability to read tab would be a minimum requirement because there are many examples of Django’s music available as guitar tab.

Related Gypsy Style Articles

The Gypsy Vanner Horse – A Flash Of Magic By Many Names

The Gypsy Vanner Horse® is a registered trademark and brand name given to the Gypsy Cob for the promotion of the horse by the Gypsy Vanner Horse Society. It is a very flashy and colorful horse with full mane, full tail and lots of feather that has been described as a “people-sized drafter”. It is a horse that has the heavy boning and the broad, compact body of a draft horse, but on a smaller scale than the larger draft breeds in its ancestry.

They are also known as Gypsy Horses, Coloured Horses or Irish Tinkers. In the United States, it is known as a Gypsy Cob or Gypsy Vanner; and in its homelands of England and Ireland, it is known simply as a “cob” or “proper cob”. However, the Gypsy Vanner differs from both the Cob and the Tinker in that it is much more selectively bred, and generally a higher quality of horse. A related type is the Drum Horse, which is not a Vanner, but which is generally a cross between a Gypsy Cob and either a Shire or a Clydesdale. All registries for this breed, whether they call the breed a Vanner, Cob, or just Gypsy Horse, have the same visual standards, but the wording will vary.

The Gypsy Vanner was bred by the gypsy travelers of Ireland and Great Britain who had the desire to create the perfect caravan horse for pulling their colorful covered vardos that carried the families and their belongings in a fancy fashion. In fact, the word “Vanner” in the English Chambers dictionary is defined as “a horse suitable to pull a caravan.” “It’s a proper Vanner” is a common Gypsy comment when seeing an admired horse. They designed the breed to be half black and half white; and they wanted them to have a “WOW” factor so that families could have competitions on whose stallion was the finest. While most Gypsies no longer live in vardos, they still keep and breed the Vanner as a symbol of status and a source of pride among the Romany Gypsies.

Since the Gypsies have kept little to no written records over the last century, the determining the breeds used to create the Vanner had to come from verbal discussions with many of the older Gypsy men throughout Europe. In theory, the Gypsies developed the Vanner from a combination of British, Welsh and Irish breeds including the Clydesdale, Shire, Friesian, Dales pony, Highland Pony and the Fells Pony, all which have the wonderfully docile and kind personality of the traditional cold-blooded draft horse. But the ancestry may include other breeds, even non-drafts. The Romany Grai, another Gypsy-bred horse which has a lighter frame, is reputed to have Fells Pony ancestors. The Fells Pony is smaller and less heavily built than the Dales Pony, which it is closely related to. But it is the extent of other breeds in the pedigree that separates the Gypsy Horse from other lighter Gypsy-bred horses, such as the Romany Grai and the horses the Gypsies call “trotters”.

The Gypsy Vanner Horse Society (GVHS) is the registry studbook for the breed and is the first in the world for the Gypsy Horse. It was originally founded by Dennis and Cindy Thompson in 1996, but is now run by a Board of Directors. The GVHS remains quality based, culturally sensitive and socially responsible to one of the least understood societies, the Romany Gypsy. The breed standards were approved in detail by a Gypsy who has maintained the same genetics for over 56 years. He has raised several of the most famous sires and dams of the breed and was instrumental in choosing the name Gypsy Vanner Horse® for his breed. His name is Fred Walker, “King of the Coloured Horses.” The registry is currently open to any horse that meets the seven points of conformation as described on the GVHS website. The Gypsy Horse is rapidly gaining recognition as a breed. In 2004, it was accepted by the United States Dressage Foundation All Breeds Program.

These horses can now be found in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Germany, France and a few other countries. There are approximately 9,000-10,000 Gypsy Horses in the United Kingdom, but only around 20% of those are the selectively bred Gypsy Vanner; and of the 1700 Gypsy Horses in the United States, only about 950 of those are Gypsy Vanners.

Since they were created for pulling wagons, they excel at being driven, but they are also being used in dressage, Western riding, hunt seat, low jumping, and have even been used on occasion for cutting cattle. Since the rider is relatively close to the ground mounting is easier, so pleasure riding by children is common. Thus, while not a high performance horse with respect to speed or agility, he makes a very stable all-around mount well suited to most equestrian sports.

The Gypsy Vanner, or Gypsy Cobb horse as it is sometimes referred to, has a build that is powerful and compact with a short neck. The horse should have a short back and a very well rounded hindquarter with a crease down the center of the hindquarter that is called “Apple Butt.” It is the short neck and back that give the animal the power to pull the vardos. The breed is known for an abundance of hair and feather, and should also have a very wide, thick tail that is not set too high, and that may eventually drag on the ground. The hair is straight and silky, with some wave or curl being acceptable, but not kinky. Double manes are common, but not required. The profuse abundance of mane, tail and feather give this animal a magical, mystical look, true to the Gypsy heritage and traditions.

The Gypsy Vanner Horse® is not a color breed, it is a breed based on conformation and body type. All colors, markings and patterns found in the genome of the horse are acceptable, including two variations of pinto coloring and lemon. The more white a horse has, the more fancy and valuable the horse is. According to the British Gypsy heritage of the breed, the names of the four color categories and patterns are a bit different from those of most horses and are less restrictive in their descriptions.

The most common color patterns are Piebald and Skewbald. Piebald is a black and white horse, while Skewbald covers three possible combinations of red and white; brown and white; and also tri-color, such as a bay or buckskin with white. “Odd Coloured” is the term used for any other color not defined by Piebald or Skewbald and a Blagdon is a solid colored horse with white splashed up from underneath.

The Gypsy Vanner ranges anywhere from 12.2 to 16 hands with the average around 14.3 hands; but there is no height limit at either end of the spectrum and all sizes are equally acceptable and judged the same in shows. At one time there were three height classifications that you may still run across. A Mini Gypsy is under 14 hands; 14 hands to 15.2 hands is the Classic Gypsy; and any horse over 15.2 hands was referred to as a Grand Gypsy. But in 2006 the Gypsy Vanner Horse Society changed this classification, so all sizes are now just called Gypsy Vanner. They usually weigh between 1,100 to 1,700 pounds.

Because the Gypsy Horse lived and worked closely with the entire Gypsy family, their lifestyle could not tolerate animals that may endanger lives or property, therefore any ill-tempered horse was removed immediately. The result of culling for disposition has led to the Gypsy Horse being extremely gentle and one of the most docile horses in the world. Gypsy children are often found crawling over and around the Gypsy Vanners. In addition, with the nomadic nature of the Gypsy peoples, their horses had to be adaptable to varying climates, terrains and living conditions so it is extremely sound and easy to maintain.

With the extravagant feathering and bold coloring typical of the breed, the appearance of the Gypsy Vanner Horse® evokes joy in all who see this incredibly gentle and intelligent animal.

More Gypsy Articles

Crystal Ball Gypsy – Small/Medium – Dress Size 4-8

• This gypsy costume includes coin trimmed peasant dress with ruffle skirt, puff sleeves & headscarf.
• This adult female costume is fun and easy to wear.
• Perfect for any Halloween costume party or occasion.
• This sexy adult female costume is simply seductive.
• Gold gypsy costume shoes sold separately.

Includes: Dress and headscarf. Does not include shoes.

Price: $ 46.46

New Fashion Bohemian Black Crinkle Long Skirt Cotton Gypsy Designer Skirt

US $29.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-17-2012 3:01:47 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

US $29.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-17-2012 3:01:59 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list

More Gypsy Products

Rusty Marx Style BBQ – Now that’s some gooood cooking