4.5 • 7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
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0:00.0 | Once upon a time on a stormy night in Spain a gypsy queen was born. Her name was Carmen. |
0:08.0 | Her parents were Romani or gypsies, as outsiders called them, and weren't strangers to fighting for their very existence. |
0:18.0 | The Romani were travelers who worked as musicians and fortune tellers and in other jobs that allowed them to move from place to place the seasons changed. |
0:27.0 | But they were often viewed with suspicion by those leading more settled lives. |
0:32.0 | People blamed them for thefts, disease, and crop failures, |
0:36.2 | and they were persecuted and mistreated. |
0:39.2 | Like many Romany people, Carmen's parents |
0:41.8 | were wandering artists. When Carmen was born they were |
0:45.7 | living in the Romany quarter of Barcelona a neighborhood called Somorrostra. Her |
0:51.5 | mother was a dancer and her father, known as Erchino, played the guitar. |
0:57.0 | One evening while Carmen's parents put on a show at a Barcelona theater, |
1:05.0 | their four-year-old daughter slept soundly in their dressing room. |
1:09.0 | Nobody knows what disturbed Carmen. |
1:12.0 | Maybe it was a knock at the door or the roar of the audience |
1:15.0 | or the crescendo of the music. |
1:18.0 | But the child awakened, climbed out of her cot, |
1:22.0 | and wandered onto the stage. |
1:25.0 | At first the audience didn't notice Carmen there, |
1:29.0 | but then she began to dance. |
1:31.0 | The tiny girl kicked her legs with the energy of a bucking bronco, |
1:35.8 | stamping her feet and copying her mother's movements exactly. |
1:40.1 | Carmen would grow up to become a master of flamengo, a force of nature who performed all over the world. I'm Tanya Babbage and this is Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. |
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