After researching her book �Chats About Gypsy Music�, she concludes, �the musician from Clejani are the most Gypsy professional musicians I have ever seen. I mean they are more Gypsy than the others. But they want to remain this way -and maybe it is a good idea because I think by remaining the same increases the people from the occident�s intrigue and fascination towards them.�
�We have to first conquer the world before we are good enough for Romania,� grumbles �Caliu� outside the Bucharest theater just before
the start of Haidouk�s June concert and the first on Romanian soil in three years. Even though this internationally known band have produced top selling albums and won world music awards they are virtually unknown in their homeland. A Romanian has to travel outside his country to purchase one of their CD�s.
They started their return concert like expected with Caliu leading a hyperactive improvised dance aptly titled �The Return of The Magic Horses�.
It is a wild arabesque Gypsy song that sends Caliu�s violin trading barbs with accordionist Marius Manole�s accelerated fingers and the bird like flute of Gheorghe Falcaru.
In a frenzy Caliu�s bow rips into the strings. His body sways to the music and he laughs while looking out to the dancing crowd. His big smile against his dark Gypsy features illuminates the stage. Gypsy music has time and again been marked as not sound alone but an added combination of dance, gesture and pantomime.
To Caliu, who like the other members of the band is musically illiterate, Gypsy music is all about improvisation. �It�s about how well you can improve on an old line. I listen to a Hungarian or Russian tune and then play it in Gypsy style- and out flows your Gypsy spirit.�
Traditionally the Lautari played their music for weddings, baptisms, village feasts and other celebratory events -and it is was these events and the emotions surrounding them that created the Lautari genre; ballad, love song and dance tunes they call �geampara� Therefore it is also not surprising that even though they speak Romani, or Gypsy language, amongst themselves they sing in Romanian, the language of their paying clients.
The ballads are for the most part true stories often recording the remarkable events that happen in the village or region. Because the Gypsy culture has historically been an illiterate one these ballads along with Gypsy folklore have been their sole accounts of their long past beginning in Europe over a thousand years ago.
It is a tradition that is still carrying on today. For example �The song of The revolution� by Neculae Neacsu was composed only days after the �89 revolution which the people of Clejani watched on television.
The love songs are the most interesting. They are usually sung in groups with one answering another in a kind of conversation. They are sensuous, passionate tunes said to move all ages especially when 77 year old Dumitru �Cacurica� Baicu moans;
With absinth I wash my face
I wash my face to refresh myself
But more bitter I become
Its very bitter, bitter, bitter
Bitter is even my tongue
Bitter is all my life
Bitter bitter bitter
I am so melancholic
I feel bitter when I wake
Ever since you got married.�