Music was always closely connected with the life of the Roma and represents one of the most important elements of their identity. It belonged together with blacksmithing, basket making and ironmongery to the trades that were appreciated not only by Romanies but also by Gadje – Non-Romanies. In the Hungarian lands the appellative Gypsy often constituted another term for a musician. Traditional Romani proverbs document it as well: Rom sas the ela lavutaris, so ča dživla pr’oda svetos (The Rom was and will be a musician as long as he lives in this world), Rom ul’il’a vonoha andro vast (The Rom was born with a violin bow in his hand) and others.
The Romani music in the territory of the Czech Republic (but also of Slovakia where most Roma came from) can be diversified into several original expressions. The folklore music of settled Slovak Roma and of nomadic Vlax Roma is fundamental. The former one employs music traditions of Hungarian Roma as Slovaks and Hungarians lived in one state for a long time. On the contrary, Vlax music is influenced by Romanian Transylvania where this part of Romani ethnic lead a nomadic life for a long time.
The settled Roma are a group that was always fairly open to the majority society and was not afraid of adopting its cultural specifics. By playing music, Romanies made their living and also gained a certain amount of social prestige. In the course of the last three centuries there were a number of excellent Romani first violinists, such as Ladislav Rácz (1867-1943) from the famous Rácz family of musicians from Lučenec, Slovak Jožko Piťo (1880-1886) and Jožka Kubík from Moravia (1907-1978). The first violinist Panna Cinková from Gemer (1711-1772) belongs to the most famous. Because of her exceptional personality she became a source of inspiration of a lot of studies, dramas, poems and novels.
Cinka Panna: virtuoso violinist, first violinist of the famous band. She was born in the territory of the present-day Slovakia in the village of Gemer near Rožňava, to a family of renowned Romani first violinists - her father and her brothers are said to be the authors of the songs Rákoczi Psalm, Rákozci Dumka etc. Many writers and composers, especially Hungarian ones adopted her as the character of their works (Mór Jókai, Zoltán Kodály, Endre Dosza etc.).
Janos Bihari: "The greatest violinist in Hungary in the first half of the nineteenth century...", his biographer Ervin Major wrote about Bihari. Bihari’s art of violin amazed even the composer Franz Liszt who said of him: "The tones sung by his magic violin flow on our enchanted ears like the tears..." Bihári played with his orchestra in Vienna at banquets of the Emperor and state celebrations. The account of his entire life is given by Balint Sarosi in the book Zigeunermusic published in Budapest in 1971.
The environment of town cafés was the most frequent place where Romani ensembles presented themselves before the non-Romani public. Ensembles of the settled Romani were composed of the same instruments as today‘s cimbalom bands.
The Vlax Roma came to the territory of Bohemia and Slovakia from the Wallachian Kingdom of that time, the present-day Romania. However, a nomadic way of life typical for them was strictly forbidden by law since 1958 and they began to be forced to settle down. These Roma were more reserved and closed towards the majority society. They protected their traditions and their folklore more vehemently as they did not earn their living by playing music; but music lived inside their community. Unlike the settled Roma who use musical instruments to accompany their singing, the Vlax Roma living in the territory of former Czechoslovakia use their bodies only. They accompany their musical performance by snapping their fingers, clapping their hands, stamping their feet and making throaty sounds and similar behaviour. Their performance makes an archaic and natural impression. Original authentic recordings were made and put out by Eva Davidová in 1974 who in cooperation with J. Gelnar also published a classification of Romani authentic folklore. In 2002 the Museum of Romani Culture released a CD album by Giľ Ďíl Giľor. The album brings out valuable archive field recordings from the period of  the 1950s to 1980s.

Neither the settled Romanies nor the Vlax Roma distinguish its repertoire of songs according to various occasions. In practice it means they do not know wedding songs, lullabies and other songs. Their songs are mainly connected to two situations – songs for listening to and those for dancing. Songs for listening to are usually slow with no rigid metre while those for dancing are quick and rhythmical. Slow songs of the settled Romani people are called halgató, the Vlax Roma call them sometimes loki d’ili or mesal’aki d’ili.  Both types of songs are mainly in minor keys. In the detailed booklet accompanying the LP record Romane giľa – Authentic Gypsy Folklore Antology (1974), Jaromír Gelnar and Eva Davidová sort out the music production of the settled Roma in two basic groups – old songs (phurikane gil’) and new songs (neve gil’), while the former group is further divided into slow and quick songs. Slow songs are then diversified into sad songs (narrating about poverty, starvation and difficulties of life of the old times, they have both epic and lyric character), songs reflecting life (describe certain life situations and stories), songs of family cycles (connected with events and periods of human life) and love songs. We can also hear a special poetics of the text in the Romani music tradition of lyric songs. The colourfulness of texts (gold mother, golden Gold, black heart, red shirt etc.) is typical for this kind of songs as colours are believed to have magic powers. The text is more important in songs for dancing sung by the settled Roma while the Vlax Romanies view these songs as accompanying the dance only (czardas and its Vlax counterpart csapás).

The presence of these old traditional songs is very strong within the Romany community. The contemporary Romani musicians sometimes take them up directly interpreting songs in the traditional way playing traditional instruments, and at other times they are partially inspired by them and connect them with new music trends. To name a few of the interpreters of old traditional songs (phurikane gil’a) who continue in the rich tradition of cimbalom ensembles, there are cimbalom band of Adrej Giňa from Rokycany, Karol Giňa from Rokycany or the Perumos with their leader Jan Rusenko and singer Margita Reisnerová, cimbalom band of Eugen (now Milan) Horváth, cimbalom band of Ivan Gašpar Hrisko, cimbalom band Gil’ori led by Gejza Kotlar, first violinist from Větřní near Český Krumlov, spouses Jan and Magda Slepčík and others. The young generation is represented for example by Prague‘s Álom led by Vojtěch Lavička.   
New songs (neve gil’a) have been made in the last twenty years. These are new texts using original tunes, or new melodies with traditional texts or completely new songs. In this type of music, especially as far as young ensembles are concerned, we can observe music influences of Anglo-American culture. New music production is thus augmented with elements of jazz, blues, soul and pop. The new music style is often called Rom-pop. Its founders in our country are brothers Gondolán and Jozef Fečo and his band Roma Štar. One of the most characteristic features of this style is the use of the choir part, especially in trios and the harmonization based on jazz chords. Guitar – acoustic, semi-acoustic o electric and keyboard are dominant musical instruments played in the new song production. Players of this kind of Romani music use predominately the backlight accompaniment. The contemporary representatives of  neve gil’a freely based on traditional Romani folklore are namely Věra Bílá and the band Kale, Ida Kelarová and Romano rat, Točkolotoč ensemble, but also a versatile musician Jozef Fečo and Olga Fečová. These authors contribute to the origination of a new type of Romani songs with new melodic, harmonic, rhythmical and sound qualities.
Thanks to their musical talent, the Roma have significantly influenced several music styles. For example, Jean Baptiste Reinhard “Django“ was an outstanding figure in the field of jazz:
Jean Baptiste Reinhardt “Django“: French Rom - Manouche living in Germany is considered to be a founder of Romani jazz and one of the first prominent jazz guitarists of the twentieth century. In his youth he travelled with his parents in the caravan through Belgium, Italy, Algeria and France. He learned to play the guitar on his own. He could not read music and only learned to sign when he had to give autographs and sign contracts. Even though at the age of 18 he was injured in the fire of his caravan and he was unable to move the ring finger and little finger of his left hand, he relearned to play the guitar virtuously with his own technique. He toured with his quintet the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Scandinavia and England.
(ROMANI CRAFTS AND WAYS OF MAKING LIVING: translated in the volume Černo-bílý život – Black And White Life ).