From the Old Port, le Vieux Port, to a web of narrow streets – the districts of Noailles and Belsunce – with its markets full of beautiful fresh fruits, vegetables and spices from all over the world; this is the pulsating intercultural heart of France.

With its street markets full of colours and fragrances of both sides of the Mediterranean course, Marseille is crowned with European Capital of Culture for 2013.

“I have never seen such a mix of different people with diverse backgrounds, all living side-by-side, creating a wonderful synergy so unique to Marseille,” says Mohammed Abdullah from Morocco, who initially came here as a student.

In such a cosmopolitan environment, exclusion still exists.

During the last summer, an administrative order specifically sought expulsion of the Roma (i.e. the gypsy) population from the French territory. The legend has that that the community had left the north of Indian subcontinent around the 14th century passing through Turkey, Eastern Europe, even moving to Egypt and then adapting Maghreb.

Most of the Roma people in France have been French citizens for two or three centuries, and just a few of them migrated mostly from Romania and Bulgaria to reach in France only recently. There are about 2,000 ‘migrant Roma’ in Marseille and 13,000 in entire France.

“Gypsies are often subject to prejudice or indifference, when in fact they have so much to offer. Fanfare Vagabontu is a good example of it, showing, through music, their roots, their culture and their extraordinary joy of life,” Roberto Carlos, a hair dresser by profession from Italy.

The Roma are certainly one of the most discriminated ethnic minorities in Europe, racism against whom is ‘legitimate’ and often backed by political and governmental authorities.

Here in Marseille, Aurelien, a Frenchman, and the Fanfare Vagabontu, a Gypsy band of eight musicians, two from the Roma community in Marseille and six from Moldavia, are spreading knowledge about the Gypsy culture in the south of France and in Europe.

While Marseille has been and still is strongly marked by migration, remaining a gateway Mediterranean port into Europe, the sole explanation for stigmatisation of Roma people can be nothing but ignorance.

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