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A Melody From Antiquity Goes With Gypsy to Grave

May 23, 1939
Detroit News Quilt History Project; Michigan State University Museum; Susan Salser
Detroit, Michigan, United States
An article about a Gypsy funeral.
A Melody From Antiquity Goes With Gypsy to Grave
Eighteen violinists, a clarinetist and three bass viol players marched down West End avenue in Detroit's Little Hungary Monday, playing a gypsy funeral dirge for their deceased friend, Peter Szilagyi, a bass viol player in the colony's gypsy cafes for more than 30 years. It was Szilagyi's dying wich.

By John C. Treen

It was not the prayers of the grieved faces of her children that made Mrs. Szilagyi weep. It was the chant of the Gypsy funeral dirge which floated through the topen window from the street below, the tribute of 23 fellow musicians with whom her husband, Peter, had played for more than 30 years.

The priest had given his last blessings, and the pall bearers came forward to take up Szilagyi's coffin, when, at a signal from their leader, John Brenkacs, the musicians struck the first sad tones of "Lehullot a Resso Nyaria Levele." (The leaves of the poplar tree have fallen).

"It was the nicest thing they could have done," said Mrs. Szilagyi, as she followed the casket into the street from the flat at 720 West End avenue. "He had hoped it would be this way."

Ancient March
The musicians, all artists in the cafes of the city's little Hungary, formed the vanguard of the unusual procession from the home to the First Hungarian Reformed Church two blocks away, playing a solemn march that once was unwritten and handed down from father to son in the Gypsy tribes of centuries ago.

There were 18 violins, a clarinet and three bass viols in the procession, all wailing as if with one voice. Even the viol players, bumping their cumbersome instruments along the pavement, did not falter on one note, as they played their tunes without music.

And Mrs. Szilagyi remembered another gracious thing these same black-haired players had done only a few months ago, when her husband had suffered a paralytic stroke and lost full use of his hands. His own bass viol had been stilled forever then, and the family was without funds.

Benefit Concert
These players, loath to see one of their own go on the relief rolls, sponsored a benefit concert in Verhovay Hall on West Jefferson avenue, and all Little Hungary turned out to hear it.

Szilagyi never became an object of charity.

His friends of 30 years, Brenkacs, Bela and Willie Horvat, Frank K. Nagy, Geza Sandray, Gene Kerekes and all the others known to the frequenters of the Gypsy cafes, saw to that.

And they saw, also, as his body was lowered into the grave at Woodmere Cemetray, that his beloved gypsy music went with him all the way.

Courtesy of The Detroit News Archives.

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