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Separated by six countries, three continents, and a thousand years of cultural development, the separate bands of musicians who make up Gypsy Caravan find they all speak a similar musical language. When they jam together, they recognize traces of their own music—of melody and of rhythm in each other. Yet their music belongs to no single country or famous composer, let alone any recognized classical tradition. The performers seldom meet, and their music rarely if ever fills the world's concert halls. As the article on this unique meeting of diverse musicians explains, they recognize similarities because of a distant, common heritage: they are ethnic Gypsies—or, more properly, Roma.

Diversity marked the Roma from the beginning. This diverse people originated in northern India where, prior to the eleventh century, they were organized into armies by the Indian rulers as a means to resist the eastward...