Music CD details

Outlaws of Yore (II) -
Les "Haidouks" d'autrefois
(II)

Various Artists

(ETHCD004)

Musicians:
Ilie Iorga - voice (5,7)
Nicolae Neascu 'Culai' - voice (2,7), violin (2,7,8)
Ion Manole 'Saica' - voice (3,6), violn (1,3,4,6)
Dumitru Baicu 'Cacurica' - voice and small cymbalum (1,6)
Gheorghe Anghel 'Caliu' - violin (5)
Constantin Sandu 'Dinu' - small cymbalum (1-5, 7,8)
Gheorghe Manole - voice (3), accordion (3,4,6), double bass (5), hollers (4)
Marin Sandu 'Tagoe' - double bass (3,4,7,8), hollers (4)
Gheorghe Falcaru 'Fluierici' - double bass (2,6)
Florea Parvan - double bass (1)

Nicolae Neascu 'Culai'

The lãutari

'The lãutari of Clejani are perhaps the most inspired and fervent of all folk musicians in Romania. The exuberant, musical style of their native southern region has certainly stimulated them in this respect. We must also take into consideration the fact that the village is an old "music school" of Muntenia which trains its disciples by requiring their total implication in the art of their choice: sound, dance, gesture, pantomime. But it would be unfair to ignore their superb endowment. The traits they all have in common are imagination and impetuosity. Each musician, however, has his own distinct personality, inclinations, aptitudes, qualities and performances.

Nicolae Neacsu (nicknamed "Culai") is very bright, shrewd, sensitive, stylish, and a great comedian. His voice is rather feeble, slightly veiled by age and nicotine, but its marvelous inflections leave their mark in the most magnificent ballads to be heard at Clejani. On violin his instrumental improvisations are breathtaking. He is the embodiment of the most archaic musical style of the village. (See CD003 tracks 1,2,4 and CD004 tracks 2,7,8).

Dumitru Baicu, called "Cacuricã", settled in Clejani after marriage. An honest and shrewd, affectionate and bickering, sincere and hypocritical man, this fascinating character is a combination of all the good and bad qualities of the inhabitants of Clejani. He plays cymbalom, but is also a brilliant singer. His style and repertory, with their urban propensity, differ from the others'. He excels in love songs and is an unparalleled animator of peasant weddings. (See CD003 tracks 3,5,6 and CD004 tracks 1,6).

Ilie Iorga lives in a nearby village, Mârsa. He is older, therefore calm, tolerant and predictable. Despite that, he reveals surprising pathos in the love songs he sings in his still powerful, flexible, and refined voice, plentifully ornamented. He is a great "storyteller", whose repertory of "old songs" can only compare to Neacsu's. (See CD003  tracks 1,4 and CD004 tracks 5,7).

Ion Manole, known as "Saicã" or "Bosorogu", violin player and vocalist, the veteran of the group recorded on these discs, is a sprightly little oldster, straightforward and sociable. He is always ready to "take in mouth" the other vocalists. His voice has a high-pitched and clear timbre; it is shrill and penetrating, which is desirable in the love songs of the region of Vlasca, as these begin with long, sharp notes. His intonation is very accurate, whether he plays the violin or sings, although he is quite hard of hearing. (In Romania, old deaf musicians often save face guiding themselves by the sound of a single instrument, the only one left in the ensemble they can still perceive.) (See CD003 track 5 and CD004 tracks 1,3,4,6).

Gheorghe Anghel, nicknamed "Caliu", is a young man, slim and well-bred like an Indian prince, which does not prevent him from being at the same time quick-tempered and hard to get along with. An inspired improviser, he masters perfectly well the "classical" style and repertory of the village, but he decidedly prefers more modern music, such as "pan-Balkan" or "Gypsy", which now can be heard in almost all Romanian villages. As many musicians from his generation, he does not perform vocal music. Instead, he accompanies, with his violin, the vocalists in the taraf, and he does this with a lot of imagination and virtuosity. (See CD003 tracks 3,5,6 and CD004 tracks 5).

Gheorghe Fãlcaru, dubbed "Fluierici", is an original man, even in such a non-conformist village as Clejani. Son of a Gypsy bear leader of Moldavia, he was adopted by the village since he was a little child. He is nervous, emotionally unstable, both tender and violent. He plays especially the flute, which is quite unusual for a Gypsy. He masters his instrument to such a degree that he can produce almost any tonality, much to the amazement of peasant pipers who happen to listen. He loves to improvise on themes taken from Indian soaps. His double bass acts are very appreciated by his colleagues for their precision and dynamism. (See CD003 track 1 and CD004 tracks 2,6).'

GBP 9.97

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Outlaws of Yore (II) -
Les "Haidouks" d'autrefois (II)

Various Artists

(ETHCD004)

This symbol  indicates an mp3 sound clip for that track. Click on the symbol and wait for the clip to start. For more information click here. Tracks

1. Piatra-i Piatra de a Piatra - Love Song (6'46")

2. Cantarea Revolutiei - Epic Song. Dance Suite (11'56")

3. Cand Fuse la Patrusopt - Long Song (5'49")

4. Murguletul - Dance (2'30")

5. Cuculetul ca la Marsa - Love Song (5'41")

6. Pe-o Poteca Stramta - Love Song (3'04")

7. Lisandra de la Piatra - Epic Song (14'01")

8. Hora si Braul ca la Clejani - Dance Suite (7'14")

Duration (57'34")

Our mp3 samples are approximately 1 minute long and of low(ish) quality for a fast download (file size app 400 KB).

Courtesy of Speranta Radulescu

How come the lãutari of Clejani became famous under the ensemble name of Haiducii (Eng. outlaws)? Good luck and hazard played equally important roles. In 1986, Laurent Aubert, a Swiss ethnomusicologist, listened to their music in Bucharest and became enthusiastic: he put them on a record released in France (Musique des Tsiganes de Valachie: les lãutari de Clejani, Ocora, C 559036, Paris, 1988). Upon the release of the record, Aubert invited the musicians on a tour to Geneva and Paris. Their first exit to Europe gave these extremely vivacious and imaginative Gypsies the occasion to go through a series of miraculous adventures (funnily recounted by Speranþa Rãdulescu in her book Hopa, tropa, Europa / "Hop-and-Trot Around Europe", Bucharest, Peasant Museum, 1992).
The Paris record must have had some success, because in 1990 Stéphane Karo, a Belgian musician of indisputable artistic intuition, went to Clejani with a proposal for a tour in the West. A year later, in March 1991, the Peasant Museum in Bucharest recorded a major part of their repertory and organized a show which occasioned a happy revelation of the Clejani phenomenon to the intellectual elite of the capital city. Soon after, Stéphane Karo came back and, as we all know, made them the stars known under the name of Haidouks.
The music on this record (partially edited in Romania on a cassette in 1992) is slightly different from the music that used to be played in the Haidouks ensemble concerts. This is because naturally - perhaps inevitably - the producer of a record is bound to express his own personality in the selection criteria with which he operates. First of all, in this case he gave precedence to pieces originated in the more "archaic" and "rural" layer (characteristics that are obviously relative), i.e. ballads, love songs and improvised dance tunes. In addition, he opted for the musicians with the most unpolished timbres and vocal/instrumental styles, and the least swayed by modernization. Finally, he singled out interpretations of traditional, small-size tarafs. His approach is, in fact, slightly archaizing; nevertheless, he assumes it without any complex, since from his point of view it has two advantages: it opens the way to Clejani masterpieces, and valorizes the Gypsy lãutari who sing at Vlasca weddings just as they used to be, before their appearance - a thing hard to explain even by themselves - on the most famous stages of Europe.

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