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Music for String Ensembles: The Folk Musicians of Clejani -
Lãutarii din Clejani

Musicians:
Ilie Iorga - voice
Dumitru Baicu 'Cacurica' - voice, small cymbalum
Nicolae Neascu 'Culai' - voice, violin
Constantin Sandu 'Dinu' - voice, small cymbalum
Marin Sandu - accordion, voice, double bass
Gheorghe Anghel 'Caliu' - violin
Gheorghe Falcaru 'Fluierici' - recorder
Florea Parvan - double bass

Epic songs, love songs and long songs, the Haidouks have them all, and have been playing them for centuries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Music for String Ensembles: The Folk Musicians of Clejani -
Lãutarii din Clejani