World Library of Folk & Primitive Music: Romania [coll] – [Rounder Records]

Thurston Hunger   10/5/2006   CD, International

Original recordings date back to 1934-1957. They sound simply
remarkable, both in audio quality as well as the emotional
pull. This is music, not meant to sell a new automobile, or
to make your myspace page sexier, but music as *the* response
to life…a wedding, a death, a day at the working bee,
a morning tending sheep. It starts with a call to Spring
on powerful nine-foot-long horns(tulnic). There’s also hyper
percolating pre-disco dance with cimbalom flipping. There
are amazing suicide arias (#23), fevered flute soliloquies
(#17), bagpipe reels (#11), protean hiphop on flute (#12).
The latter two are excerpts, and if there is any complaint
it is that sadly some of these are not extended more than a
minute or two. People on here are singing their souls out
for perpetuity…check #28, a love song across centuries.
Or a tear-prodding lament for an 8-year old brother (#7).
Drone choruses (#5,#8), Latcho Drom violin creepy pulls,
middle eastern flair (#30), pumping chants (#2) and an
orchestra chasing a bird (#35). An amazing sample of joys
and sorrows, well-preserved. Sterling and stirring…
Taking a page from the fine liner notes :
“Our good fortune is that we can hear this!

-Thurston Hunger