The Bohemian Quartet performs at the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland on Saturday night.

One listen to The Bohemian Quartet and you know that Gypsy, or Roma, music, isn’t easy to play — it’s beautiful, fast and furious, often all within one song. But after talking with violinist and quartet leader Stan Renard, it becomes clear that it isn’t an easy musical tradition to learn about, for a lot of reasons.

When you hear the phrase “Gypsy music,” the first name you think of is probably Django Reinhardt, and while the quartet does some of his songs, Reinhardt practiced a hybrid of Roma music and between-the-wars hot jazz. The full-on Gypsy stuff is a lot harder to come by.

Renard grew up in the south of France, and says that “I grew up listening to this like other people grew up listening to jazz.” He traveled through Europe as a child and a teenager and lived with the Roma for a while, learning about the culture and collecting tunes.

That wasn’t easy. There were some recordings, but most were of low quality. There were also some manuscripts, but just of the melodies, without chords or other parts. “The difficult part,” Renard says, “was to transcribe everything back and re-arrange everything. I try to archive as much as I can.”

There were two strains of Roma music, Renard says, and one strain began to settle down, particularly in and around what is now Hungary. Their music has been transcribed by classical composers such as Liszt and Brahms, so that music has been kept alive. “The traveling bands, that’s what I’m interested in, because the tunes have so many more influences.”

The root of Roma music, Renard says, came from the Punjab region of India, but the traveling musicians would pick up the traditions of whatever region they were in — Hungary, Romania, Poland, Spain, Macedonia and more. “Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between what is Gypsy genre and what is traditional folk music” of the region in question. “They pick up a lot of the local music and twist it in their fashion.”

Renard says he knows of one book on Gypsy music, but says it’s a low-quality book of commercial tunes. The main problem is that there is no written Roma language, and there are about 50 spoken dialects. So there’s virtually no written music either. “Like lots of old blues guys in the U.S. will learn tunes by ear. A lot of this was father to son, a closed circle. And to get in that circle was difficult. … The masters are few. The face-to-face transfer of knowledge is almost gone.” He cites the European Gypsy group Taraf de Haidouk, whose leader died two years ago, which bodes ill for their continuance.

Success can be as threatening to the music, Renard says. He cites the violinist Roby Lakatos, who Renard says is becoming more popular, but at a cost: “He is becoming commercial — he does movie themes and tunes that are very popular. . . . Do they want commercial success or artistic success? . . . They go with what people like. But then they lose their old ways.”

“For someone who is apt to pick a recording and transcribe the melody, that’s one thing. But to transcribe the performance practice, that’s the difficult part.” That’s the problem writing tunes as well.

Renard, 26, came from France to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to study music, and then lived in California for a while. Eventually, he wanted to study business “to close the gap between musicians and their ability to organize things,” and thus went to Providence College. That’s where he formed the quartet, which now consists of Renard, guitarist Paul Kolesnikow, bassist John de Bossu and cellist Christine Harrington.

In recent years, Renard has augmented the show with a theatrical element — actor Steve Lynch infuses the show with narration, Gypsy folk tales and some works in the Roma traditional improvised poetry that Renard has transcribed and translated. “It’s not quite musical theater,” Renard says, “but there’s a story line that the music blends into. . . . It explains who the Roma are — very briefly; it’s not meant to be a lecture, but it does have an educational role. Because I discovered it was difficult to play this music in America, where it’s not well known. And I got lots of feedback from the audience wanting more information about this music.”

Fortunately, the young Renard says he’s already amassed quite a collection of the music, writes his own tunes and has plenty of raw material to keep the tradition alive: “I have more than I’ll ever go through.”

The Bohemian Quartet plays Saturday night at the Blackstone River Theatre, 549 Broad St., Cumberland, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12, $14 the day of the show. Call (401) 725-9272.

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rmassimo@projo.com