Romanistan
The authors of Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling present: Romanistan! Do you love rebels? Do you want to live in a place where outcasts shine their brightest? Welcome to Romanistan! We're your friendly neighborhood Gypsies, celebrating Romani identity and outcast culture, and practicing good diplomatic relations with other marginalized communities.
We love the rebels who are living their truth, even if it clashes with tradition. We also love tradition and honoring our roots. This podcast is for everyone who loves and supports Roma & related groups, and anyone who feels like a misfit and wants to uplift others to create a beautiful community.
We feature pioneers in culture, fashion, art, literature, music, activism, cuisine, and everything good. We adore the intersections of gender, sexuality, spirituality, ability, and identity. We cover all topics, from the difficult to the glorious. Let's sit crooked and talk straight.
Hosted by Paulina Stevens and Jezmina Von Thiele. We reclaim the slur Gypsy, but if you aren’t Romani, we prefer you don't use it. xoxo.
P.S. The Romani people are a diasporic ethnic group originally from northwest India, circa the 10th century. Now, Roma live all over the globe, and due to centuries of oppression, slavery, genocide, and other atrocities, Roma are still fighting for basic human rights. We seek to raise awareness of who Roma are, and highlight Romani resilience, creativity, & culture.
Romanistan
Welcome to Romanistan Festival NOLA recap teaser
Welcome to our teaser for our first live show recording, and a recap! We hosted our first Welcome to Romanistan Festival in New Orleans, featuring six events that brought together incredible queer and trans Romani performers from across the country. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CAME! The festival showcased Romani culture through academic panels, live performances, fortune telling, ancestral rituals, and traditional cuisine. It also celebrated the release of our first book, Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling!
• Kicked off with "Romani Tropes and Contributions in Pop Culture" panel at the Hotel Monteleone as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival
• Hosted "Tales from Romanistan" live show featuring Millie Raccoon (fiddle/vocals), Moon Bear (drag), Serena Hellfire (burlesque), and Ylva/Bimbo Yaga (ritual performance)-- soon to be released!
• Conducted "Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling" pop-up at the Mystic Resource Center
• Led "Stewarding Traditions" with Lilith Dorsey, featuring a literary panel and blessing ritual with a community fire
• Taught our "Tarot and Ancestor Communication" workshop! You can take more workshops online and/or in person here!
• Concluded with "Bibi's Kitchen" featuring traditional Romani cooking, music, and tea leaf reading as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival
Special thanks to our sponsors: Weiser Books, Emerald Comics Distro, Cottage Magic, and especially to Bimbo Yaga (Ylva) who was instrumental in making the festival happen. AND THANK YOU TO DONORS AND ATTENDEES! Photos from the events are available on our Instagram @romanistanpodcast
Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.
You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook @romanistanpodcast, and on Twitter @romanistanpod. To support us, Join our Patreon for extra content or donate to Ko-fi.com/romanistan, and please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us so much.
Follow Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele & Paulina @romaniholistic.
You can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. Visit romanistanpodcast.com for events, educational resources, merch, and more. Please support our book tour fundraiser if you can.
Email us at romanistanpodcast@gmail.com for inquiries.
Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens
Conceived of by Paulina Stevens
Edited by Viktor Pachas
With Music by Viktor Pachas
And Artwork by Elijah Vardo
I don't know if we should do a regular welcome to.
Speaker 2:Ramonistan.
Speaker 1:I don't think we need to. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, we're talk show hosts.
Speaker 1:now everyone we are here with just a quick little chat and or trailer about our first Welcome to Ramana Sun Festival and how it went. Now that we're back, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2:Paulina and I literally love New Orleans. Every time I visit somewhere I'm like I want to move there. But like New Orleans, I do want to move there.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love it so much and I love everyone and everyone there yes, everyone. Well, it was really special because not only is it a beautiful city and we had a great time, but we got to meet all these amazing queer trans Romani performers who we never met in person before. We hung out with Millie Raccoon and Moon Bear. I mean, we already knew Ilva. We have to say so many thank yous to Ilva who, honestly, we could not have done the festival without her, y'all gotta follow and support Bimbo Yaga on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Just throw money at her feet. She's an incredible producer and I just feel like we just didn't say it enough in our recording, and so I had to pop in and be like, by the way, please worship Bimbo Yaga monetarily, platonically, with all the love you have. We couldn't have done it without her. You hadn't met Ilva in person before, had you?
Speaker 2:No, it was. Yeah, definitely meeting everyone in person felt so nice and we did so many fun events and everybody helped. How are you feeling?
Speaker 1:I feel so good. Oh, and we got to meet Serena Hellfire, the May West of the French Quarter, which I think is such a great title For reals. No, I feel amazing. It was such a whirlwind because we did listeners. I mean, I know we were promoting it for a while, but we did six events in a weekend, which is crazy. Like we don't do it small, but I mean we started off with the romani tropes and contributions in pop culture at this beautiful hotel. What was it? The haunted hotel monteleone. It was gorgeous and I mean I think we both were like, oh wow, we're like doing a big part of our book tour right now.
Speaker 2:It felt very real yeah, and also like whatever we were doing, I feel like it made us realize where we are also in our activism work, being able to just educate so many people about whatever it is that we're doing.
Speaker 1:You know, I hope it worked yeah, it was amazing to have that platform because, although we did technically put on the festival ourselves with the help of sponsors Wiser Books, emerald Comics, distro Cottage, magic and us and Bimbo Yaga Ilva Although we did that, this particular panel was part of the Tennessee Williams Festival and it was really it felt very official to collaborate with them and we had a big audience and, yeah, it was this really lovely opportunity to share with people and Victor played music during part of it too, and I really like that. We were just bringing our, our vibe to everything, even though we were technically doing like an academic literary panel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 1:It it was crazy, but it felt super cool yeah, and I mean then that night we did tales from romanistan. It was our first live show and that was just incredible. It was like a whirlwind. I like I. It was both incredibly engaging and emotional and also I feel like I blacked out on stage I was so nervous.
Speaker 2:I'm honestly afraid for you all to hear this live episode.
Speaker 1:So Victor's editing the live episode. This is also part of why we wanted to share. We are going to release the live episode. It just takes a little extra work to edit, but Victor says it sounds really good. Like we did, well, I think. But yeah. Yeah, that was really special because that's when we got to perform with Millie Raccoon, who's this incredible um fiddle player and vocalist. Moon Bear did beautiful and powerful drag and Sarina is a burlesque performer and Ilva performed a cord cutting ritual. That was really fun to open the show and you and I read our poetry at the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not going to talk about that anymore. No, you did amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we hosted the show and we got to do like little interviews with each person. We just asked one question and it was just a very fun format. It was like a variety show slash interview. And then we did um secrets of romani, fortune telling pop-up, where we read at um the mystic resource center, which if y'all are in new orleans and you haven't seen it, it's the cottage magics, um new place I guess I didn't know what to call it, but it's a much bigger store out in the suburbs in Metairie and it was so fun. And that night we did stewarding traditions then and we got to meet Lilith Dorsey, who's such a badass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we were able to do rituals together like ancestral rituals and it just felt like a really crazy experience. There was a lot of energy flowing that night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we started off. Yeah, because we had our chat about ancestral tradition and what it means to carry that on, and we just turned it into this ritual. We had a fire outside and we did a blessing for everyone there and it was just really cool because we all brought our own style to it. And then we rounded out the weekend with a tarot and ancestor communication class, which we have taught before and I'm sure we'll teach again. And, um, I'm actually teaching. I'm not sure exactly when this is coming out, but I am teaching tarot and ancestor communication through deadwix, which is going to be online, but I also teach it sporadically on my own as well, so keep an eye out for that. And then we finished with BB's kitchen and everyone did so much more cooking and cleaning than we ever imagined, but it was an incredible event.
Speaker 2:We wanted to die. No, I'm just kidding. It was so fun and the food was amazing. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Ilva and Moon Bear hosted that, or Bimbo Yaga and Moon Bear, and they did the majority of the cooking, although Victor, our editor and podcast musician, and your partner Arianne, helped Ilva cook and rap sarma and all these wonderful things and then we got our cool pictures and two, which you guys should check those out on our instagram where you can see how all of this rolled out yes, arianne took amazing photos, and so if you haven't seen those on our instagram, please do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just a really wonderful time, and millie and victor both played. People got to experience Romani cuisine and storytelling, and then we led them through tea leaf reading. So damn, we're just so excited to share this little moment that the Tales from Amranistan with you, and so stay tuned for it. We've been a little slow on production because it was a lot, but we're getting back into the swing of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we are overwhelmed some days. Some days we are Some days we are overwhelmed. Okay, everyone, we love you all and we hope you enjoy it soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for being here. Bye.