Eric Slabiak sees a great similarity between the history of European Jews and Gypsies, or Roma, as they prefer to be called.

“They are always (driven) out of their country, and they are never loved by the sedentary people,” he said.  “They’re always discriminated (against).”

Slabiak and brother Olivier, French Jews with Russian and Slavic heritage, perform klezmer, Gypsy and Balkan traditional music with their band Les Yeux Noirs, or “The Black Eyes.”

“In the music, you can find all the feelings of what is a life, when you live always to survive and not to live,” Slabiak said.

The similarity in the musical roots of the Jews and the Roma, he said recently before a performance in Chicago, has provided both cultures not only continuity but comfort.  In contrast to the tragic heritage, the music is joyful and celebratory.

“The music is maybe a flight from the depression because, for Gypsy people, it’s the only cultural object.  You just have music and lyrics from Gypsy history.

“And for Jews it’s not just the music (from the) culture, but maybe it was the only way to survive during the Holocaust and for a long time before.

“In some way, I think the music was there.  It’s not just suffering music.  It’s like a medicine.”

Although Les Yeux Noirs includes electric instruments, it showcases the brothers’ fiddling, acoustic guitars, accordion and the cimbalom, a Roma instrument akin to a hammered dulcimer.  And the group sticks mostly to traditional material.

“It’s definitely mixed,” said Slabiak.  “Are we playing Jewish music with Gypsy roots of Gypsy music with Jewish feeling? I don’t know.”

“We love all these kinds of music.  There is a unity of style in all this world of music, Gypsy and Jewish.  It’s the same family; they are musical sisters.”

For all their feelings of community, the brothers, both of whom won first prize at the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music, have has to make some adjustment in their performance style.  As in most traditional music, klezmer and Gypsy fiddling are not as tonally compact as classical violin.

“We learned to play clean because classical technique is very clean,” Slabiak said.  “The Gypsy Balkan music is to be very wild.”

“It is very possible to be wild and clean.  We were very straight, and we don’t need to be so straight.  We need to learn how to play cleanly but not to be more rich.  We just need to get out all the load of classical music.”

Slabiak makes no apology, though, for the band’s integration of pop and rock, suggesting that it would be dishonest for musicians of his generation to ignore their contemporary culture.

“We are concerned no to be considered just Jewish and Gypsy music,” he said firmly, “but rock pop, jazz, classical and other music.”