Philip Knox

is an Irish writer and literature scholar who lives and works and Oxford. His prose has been published in Isis Magazine, and his verse in The Shop. Together with Nathaniel Morris, he is working on a cultural project which will explore the significance of Roma popular music in Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Articles

‘O father, what have you done?’

Recovering the golden age of Yugoslavia's Roma music

Researching Yugoslav Roma music, Philip Knox and Nat Morris tour the Balkans in search of the real thing. They find it in Skopje, in the person of Esma Redzepova – the self-styled Queen of Gypsy music. From the ghetto to a Nobel prize nomination, Esma claims never to have produced “anything but Roma music of the utmost purity”.