Bye Bye Romania

 

We did very little reading on this journey. So, on our last day, lets catch up  with this article about Romany Gypsy musicians in Romania - they recommend this is a 7 min read:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/intelligent-travel/2014/03/04/great-read-roma-rhapsody/

Keep you learning hat on, and do get your instrument as I'm about to teach you one more Romanian traditional folk dance, which will be the last traditional item on our Romania discovery Journey: Promoroaca

Remember, to learn more Romanian pieces, there is a nice selection of Balkan sheet music available at 

www.magicmusicstore.org

If you are really interested in more details, then I may share the lecture I provided for a Turkish Culture organisation a little while ago:

One other type of music, in which you need to touch base with for a more comprehensive Romanian music exploration is Manele - loved by some, hated by others, but present at most modern weddings.

Lets start with the old manele, with the most famous Romany manele singers: Adrian Minune:

On my real Romanian travel in 2012, I travelled with a young girl in her old Trabbie up and down the country, listening loudly to Adrian, and it was fun...

Here some more modern manele, from a wedding - sounds/noises which you will hear every summer weekend from each corner in Bucharest, where a wedding is takes place:

And now lets conclude with a total corruption of everyone's taste, with this cheesy sample of manele:

Lets leave Romania in party-style. May I invite you to dance along to another of my all-time-favourite performance songs: Tutti Frutti, made famous by the Tony Gatlif movie Gadjo Dilo. Here performed with my band Tatcho Drom in Hartney Whitney:

Happy Dancing, Bye Bye Romania, and lets see where tomorrow's cyber travel will take us to...

Clejani and other favourite Romany songs

High time to go back to Central Romania. Today I will take you to Clejani, a small village outside Bucharest, and more precisely, to the Romany quarters. I remember when many years ago I visited this village to learn some more music from the Taraf De Haidouks fiddle player Caliu. You met this band a few days ago already.

The directions how to get to Clejani were something like the following: ‘Walk through the fields until you come to a brook, cross over and walk through more fields to the right…'

Anyway, A farmer found me walking round lost, and brought me to a road, where I was invited to jump on a Romany horse Carriage, who brought me to Caliu’s house…

Lets listen to Caliu, improvising around Romanian folk dances, whilst enjoying a little village tour of Clejani:

I think this is a good spot to contribute some of my own music to that journey: Kibori is a weel-known Gypsy song from Romanian regions, and one of my long-term-favourite performance pieces. Here we performed it with my group Tatcho Drom in the Chipping Norton Theatre:

In general I avoid those polished folk orchestra performances, but this following one I love, it’s really cute and driving: 

Lets indulge into another trade, which makes Romany in Romania special: Already in Harry Potter we heard of the Romanian witches. Here some insight into their magic and craft:

From witches to weddings, which actually will be the natural outcome of some couples brought together by love-potions brewed by the witches: Here a Romanian wedding song which touches my heart. It is not what one would expect to hear at a Romanian wedding. I’m glad I found this version with all those lovely images: 

Lets conclude today with some related learning for yourselves. I was taught this wedding dance by Caliu, who you heard above. However, my learning was not as smoothly presented as here in my tutorial:

Moldova, Bucovina and Banat - after a little learning session for yourself

As announced yesterday, today, before we go on a regional exploration, we shall start with a learning activity. So do get your instruments out, and here we go. This is a tutorial to Hora Nunzi, a wedding dance from Central Romania, one I learned from Taraf De Haidouks fiddle player Caliu: 

Time to take off on our regional trip Moldova, North-East Romania. Their traditional music fascinated me from the moment I heard it, it has the right mixture of heart-warming, quirky, intricate and driving, I love it..

It's in old music, where we find the least Western European touches, however, this following piece also hasn't too many Ottoman touches, mostly probably on the tonality, which very much includes micro tones:

We can’t actually leave Moldova, before visiting the Fanfare Ciacorlia. Before becoming world-famous, they started of in the small Romanian village Zece Prăjini. Here from one of their first publications:

We still have some more travelling in today, so lets stay North, and just move a tiny bit the the west, and we arrive in Bucovina. And if you were not aware of it yet, then it is now Monday, wherever and whenever you are, and you are about to go to the Market, as the following piece ‘I’d go on Monday to the Market’ implies:

For the last piece today we hop over Transylvania, to reach another 'B', from Bucovina to Banat. In this traditional dance you really can hear the vicinity to Transylvania:

To conclude the day, and to resolve some dizziness you may have from all the cyber-hopping, here a little map for your orientation: