How did the Gypsy musical tradition grow into an emblem of the Hungarian national style? In the age of nineteenth-century European nation-building, when national communities were imagined along the lines of ethnic myths and a common historical consciousness, how could a community that was living on the fringes of society become central to the national image? This article seeks to explore the interplay between collective identity, musical culture and the plasticity of national stereotypes. What circumstances and social positions shaped the romanticized image of the Roma people in Hungary? How were the feelings of belonging of the Roma people navigated in public discourse in the period of European nation-building? How did they define themselves, and how did they figure in the imagined community called the nation? How were practices of community building and belonging experienced through material culture with symbolic national value (such as garments or musical instruments)?

My aim is twofold: on the one hand, to throw light on the ways in which Gypsy music shaped national identity, and on the other, to examine the ways in which the Gypsy musical tradition has been framed in both positive and negative terms according to ideas of the national self-image. National styles have been shaped by the interaction between local and transnational exchanges, and the relationship between the imagined and imagining communities did not result in a fixed identity. Instead, it changed over time and was defined by a dynamic process of both inclusion and exclusion.