After skirting around the capital on my last post, we are now heading straight into Bucharest and see what the city has to offer in terms of music. I visited Bucharest for a couple of days back in 2014, here are a couple of photos from that trip:
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| View to the parliament building |
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| The old town |
One of my first encounters with the Gypsy music of Romania was the 1997 movie Gadjo Dilo (Crazy Stranger in the Romani language). It's the story of a young, naïve and floppy-haired Frenchman, Stéphane, who travels to Romania looking for a Roma singer called Nora Luca, to whom his father used to listen to all the time before his death. Armed with a tape recorder he ends up as a guest in a Gypsy village, not speaking any of the language and being viewed with suspicion by its inhabitants. It then turns out that a young woman in the village called Sabina, played by actress, painter and musician Rona Hartner, speaks French, and after some initial hostility a love affair ensues. The film deals with the continued prejudice against the Roma community, but also features a lot of Gypsy music performed by village musicians and enthusiastically supported by Rona Hartner. If you haven't seen the movie I highly recommend it for an insight into Gypsy life and for the music. Here is a scene from the movie of the song Tutti Frutti, the soundtrack has also been issued as a CD:
Rona Hartner was born in Bucharest in 1979, but sadly died recently after a battle with lung and brain cancer. Apart from her acting and painting career she also recorded a lot of music, specialising in Gypsy music. She lived the last couple of decades of her life in France. Here is a live version of a song from her 2013 album Gypsy Therapy with DJ Tagada called Nationalité Vagabonde, a sentiment I can identify with:
RIP Rona Hartner.
The Shukar Collective are an Ursari Roma band that fuses traditional Gypsy music with electronica. They produce sounds by tapping spoons and other domestic objects combined with an analogue synthesizer. Here is a song from their 2005 album Urban Gypsy called Bar Boot:
The Mahala Rai Banda is a Roma brass band founded in 2004 in Bucharest by violinist and composer Aurel Ionita, who is related to several members of Taraf de Haidouks. They blend traditional wedding music with Balkan Beats. It makes for great party music. Here is a song from their 2019 album Ghetto Blasters called Ding Deng Dong. The album won the Songlines 2009 Best Album Award:
Bucharest band Balkan Taksim combine Balkan Psych with Subterranean bass and low-fi synth electronica, blending old with new and analog with digital. Here's a song called Anadolka from their 2021 EP Žali Zare:
That wraps up our tour of Romania, next stop is Bulgaria. In the meantime you can follow my virtual musical travels on my Tripline map.
