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Music from Chioar and Codru -
Muzicã din Chioar si Codru

Musicians:
Calin Rat - vioara, gordon
Daniel Dan - vioara
Adrian Pasca - vioara
Catalin Ardelean - viola, gordon contrabass
Gheorghe Monea - strigaturi

'The music on this tape includes suites of dance tunes and lyrical songs, usually played at weddings, Sunday village dancing parties, at fairs and family parties. Dance tunes aggregating the most consistent segment of the Codru and Chioar repertory are grouped in suites. These begin majestically, with the Dantul mare (the 'Great Dance'), during which pairs form and step into the dance space; they go on a brisker pace Codrenescul ('in the Codru way'), Românescul ('in the Romanian Way), and end with Scuturatul (the 'Shaking Dance'), when the pairs turn and the men perform virtuoso dancing figure like the one that involves throwing a leg forward and up (preferably 'up to the roof of the barn') and turning the body in the air with support on the woman's arm. Though vigorously rustic, the dance tunes evince distinction and refinement reminiscent of the music at the cosmopolitan court of the onetime Hungarian court. For the last century or so, dance suite have been performed not by flutes and bagpipes but by small string bands made up of professional musicians (ceterasi).

The instrumentalists on this tape are the disciples of musician Dumitru Iederan, who is famous in his region and was in turn an apprentice musician with the Gypsy ceteras Isidor Serban (main role in the movie Gadgo dilo) from the village of Stana. The four young men - none is older than 26 - learned from Iederan not only to handle the fiddle but also to build the ensemble's accompaniment instruments: the contra (a bigger and taller viola with three strings on a short bridge, tuned in an unusual way) and the gordon (a sort of robust three-string cello). Both instruments are played with short and thick fiddlesticks made by the musicians, which make the strings vibrate powerfully. An ensemble from Codru sounds as forcefully and densely as a chamber orchestra.'

Courtesy of Costin Moilsil - Ethnophonie

GBP 4.96

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Music from Chioar and Codru -
Muzicã din Chioar si Codru