Slavic Muslim Gorani Woman from Kosovo, Participates in a Traditional Dance During Festivities
"Who are the Gorani? The specialists agree that they’re Slavic people, Islamized during the Ottoman Empire’s rule, but their origin is still debated, even inside the community. They share with the Serbs a language proximity, and a religion — Islam — with the Albanians, but they stay at the margin of both cultures.
In Kosovo, they’re left out: people still remember the war in 1999, where some Goranis have been forcefully enrolled by the Serbs. As they don’t speak Albanian, they can’t pursue superior studies. The luckiest manage to make it to the “European Eldorado”. For the vast majority, it’s years of struggles, unemployment and exclusion. But even though they leave, the Goranis of the diaspora are firmly attached to their land. They wouldn’t miss for anything the Djurdjevdan, a Roma celebration in all Balkans in May: ancestral rhymes are being sung and the traditional clothes worn. It’s also the occasion for the youth from different villages to meet and marry in summer — for, as the saying goes, “You’re born, you marry and you die in Gora”
- Photographed by Juliette Robert. Text by David Breger & Delphine Bauer @Youpress.
