Search - Various Artists :: Taraf: Romanian Gypsy Music

Village musicians from the Romanian counties of Ialomata, Giugiu, and Teleorman interpret Gypsy and local music accompanied by violin, accordion, dulcimer (cymbalum), cobza, and double bass. "Old songs" (doine), epic poems of yore that are freely open to interpretation, "new songs" (which may be a mere 150 years old), and wedding rituals are mingled together as in real life, which is written loud and clear over these rough-hewn performances. Love, Life, and Death are the subjects of these nine examples, ranging from the stanza-length hora (just over a minute) to the extended and quite ribald wedding songs (up to 20 minutes long) that run the gamut of emotional experience. The difference between pure Gypsy music and local repertoire is blurred to all except aficionados and musicologists, and in the face of these life-affirming living legacies of song and dance, quite redundant. --Derek Rath