Elvis-inspired teacher fights Roma prejudice with music and heart

Tudor Lakatos challenges Roma favoritism done Elvis Presley’s philharmonic legacy.

Sporting a rhinestone shirt, oversized sunglasses and a classical 1950s quiff, Lakatos captivates audiences crossed Romania with his distinctive renditions of songs similar Blue Suede Shoes.

Rather than being an impersonator, Lakatos harnesses Elvis’s cosmopolitan entreaty to dismantle stereotypes astir Roma radical and animate Roma youth.

“I ne'er wanted to get connected stage, I did not deliberation astir it,” Lakatos, 58, said aft a caller gig astatine a edifice successful the capital, Bucharest. “I lone wanted 1 happening – to marque friends with Romanians, to halt being called a Gypsy,” helium added, utilizing an often derided word for radical belonging to the Roma taste group.

The Roma, with South Asian origins, person endured centuries of persecution passim Eastern Europe and proceed to look poverty, unemployment and prejudice. In Romania, they correspond astir 7 percent of the population, with one-fifth reporting favoritism experiences successful the past year, according to European Union data.

Lakatos began his ngo successful the aboriginal 1980s arsenic an creation pupil during Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime. When anti-Roma sentiment was widespread, helium discovered that Elvis’s euphony created connections with taste Romanian students portion simultaneously symbolising absorption against authorities oppression.

Now, 40 years later, his assemblage has expanded. As a teacher for 25 years, Lakatos uses euphony to amusement his students they tin aspire beyond the constricted opportunities of their northwestern Romanian village.

“The adjective Gypsy is utilized everyplace arsenic a substitute for insult,” Lakatos said. “We older radical person gotten utilized to it, we tin swallow it, we grew up with it. I person said galore times, ‘Call america what you want, dinosaur and brontosaurus, but astatine slightest articulation hands with america to amended the adjacent generation.'”

Despite his teaching career, Lakatos continues performing passim Romania astatine assorted venues.

The eclectic premix of languages tin sometimes pb to surprises due to the fact that determination is not ever a literal translation for Elvis’s 1950s American English.

For example, “Don’t measurement connected my bluish suede shoes” does not marque consciousness to galore of the children helium teaches due to the fact that they are truthful poor, Lakatos said.

In his version, the lyric Elvis made celebrated becomes simply “Don’t measurement connected my bare feet.”

It is simply a connection that Elvis – calved successful a two-room location successful Tupelo, Mississippi, during the Great Depression – astir apt would person understood.