Django Generations received the 2022 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology from the Society for the Anthropology of Europe.

“Django Generations offers a profound analysis of how Manouche Romanies navigate French denials of race and racism through what Siv B. Lie calls ‘ambivalent essentialism’—the set of incompatible qualities ascribed by and to this ethnicized and racialized group whose most famous ancestor is the guitarist Django Reinhardt. Drawing on deep ethnographic and historical research, Lie brilliantly develops a semiotic framework that both explicates the development and negotiation of local identities in jazz manouche and their connection to much broader processes of managing marginalization and the exigencies of capitalism.”

 

— Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music, Harvard University

 

 

“A necessary addition for ethnomusicologists and scholars of Romani music, Django Generations is aptly named because it gives voice to groups of Romani musicians who are forging contemporary identities in modern contexts while acknowledging past histories and cultural roots.”

 

— Adriana Helbig, University of Pittsburgh

 

 

“In this book, Siv B. Lie explores the paradoxes of jazz manouche’s history and its relationship to the Manouche community without taking sides in the complex debates between musicians, institutions, and the industry. Django Generations is a work of considerable intellectual sophistication.”

 

— Andy Fry, King’s College London