Andrej Giňa

Andrej Giňa (born 1936, Tolče­meš, today Šar­išské Sokolovce – died 2015, Roky­cany), was a lead­ing Roma activist, musi­cian, organ­is­er of cul­tur­al events, entre­pre­neur and author. He belonged to the first gen­er­a­tion of Roma writ­ers in the Czech Repub­lic. His father was a black­smith and musi­cian – the primáš (folk band leader). They moved to Bohemia when Andrej Giňa was ten years old, and after a short stay in Prague set­tled in Roky­cany. He was trained as a smelter, study­ing in the evening at teacher train­ing col­lege, but was unable to fin­ish his stud­ies because of mil­i­tary ser­vice. He belonged to the first gen­er­a­tion of Roma authors – at first he tried to write down in Czech the fairy tales he heard told by the elder Roma. From 1969 to 1973 he worked in the first Roma organ­i­sa­tion, the Union of Gyp­sies-Roma, which was when he began to write in the Roma lan­guage. He played gui­tar and bass in the Roky­cany cim­balom (dul­cimer) band and in the 1980s found­ed the group Ryt­mus 84, play­ing what was known as rom-pop. After 1989 he owned a fam­i­ly busi­ness, which sup­plied the raw mate­ri­als for the prepa­ra­tion of the tra­di­tion­al goja dish. He began to write jour­nal­ism for var­i­ous Roma peri­od­i­cals, express­ing his opin­ion him­self on the Roma minority’s sit­u­a­tion at that time. A selec­tion of his sto­ries was pub­lished in the anthol­o­gy of Roma prose writ­ing, Čalo voďi – Sytá duše (Deep Soul; Muse­um of Roma Cul­ture, 2007); in the col­lec­tion Bijav – Svat­ba (Wed­ding; Ape­iron, 1991) and in a selec­tion from the work Paťiv – Ještě víme, co je úcta (We still know what hon­our is; Triá­da, 2013). Giňa’s sto­ry ​“O staré Jožaně – Pal e phuri Jožaňa” (Old Jožaňa) was includ­ed posthu­mous­ly in the col­lec­tion Všude samá krása – 20. sto­letí v povíd­kách rom­ských autorů (Beau­ty all around – the 20^th cen­tu­ry in sto­ries by Roma authors, KHER, 2021).