A Vanishing Tradition: Gypsy orchestras are getting hard to find

By Dork Zygotian

It has been said that all a Hungarian needs to get drunk are a glass of water and a Gypsy fiddler. Like many stereotypes of Hungary, it is one that dies hard. But one stereotype has been disappearing with alarming speed: the Gypsy violinist, strolling amongst the tables of fine restaurants laden with grand history. These musicians are fast becoming a thing of the past, victims of changing tastes, lost somewhere on Hungary's headlong charge on the road towards Europe.

Contrary to popular misinformation, Hungary is not the "home" of the Gypsies, but rather one crucible in which Gypsy culture developed and spread to many other lands. The Gypsies are Hungary's largest ethnic minority group. Historians and linguists trace their origin to north India, from which they fled in the eighth century due to war or famine. By the tenth century the Persian poet Firdusi records them as nomadic musicians, and by the 11th century they had reached Europe. In their own language they refer to themselves as Rom, and their language as Romanes. In Hungary there are two main groups - the so called Musician Gypsies, and the Vlach Gypsies, distinguished by dialect and traditional occupation.

Gypsy musical prowess has long been noted, and families of musicians tended to settle down in areas where the demand for their art was greatest. While preserving the percussive and vocal music of their own folklore, Gypsies adopted the instruments and repertoire of the non-Gypsy majority to make a living. In Hungary, this meant following fashions of the gentry. While Hungarian peasants sang and danced to the music of the bagpipe, flute, and hurdy-gurdy, Gypsy musicians were often hired by nobility and provided with the more fashionable violins, violas, and cellos - considered emblematic of western musical culture. To these instruments was added the cimbalom, an instrument with a long tradition in Asia. By the end of the 18th century, Gypsy orchestras were an established features of Hungarian entertainment.

As the urban areas of Hungary developed, so did Hungarian national consciousness and literature. One result was a form of composed popular song based on folk roots - the nota - which swept Hungary in the middle of the nineteenth century, and remains the backbone of the repertoire to this day. At the same time, the fast and rhythmic verbunk, (originally a recruiting dance) became an instrumental showpiece in the hands of virtuostic primas, or lead fiddlers, such as the famous Janos Bihari. The csardas, a peasant two-step far removed from the staid dances of the Hapsburg court, became a veritable dance craze, its popularity rivaling that of other ethnic dance crazes of the time - the waltz and the polka.

Large professional orchestras comprised of Gypsy musicians began to appear in the first half of the nineteenth century. History records the popularity of those led by the famed Czinka Panna, Ferenc Patikarus, Laci Racz, and the semi-mythical Czermak. Band members were often related, giving rise to family dynasties of Gypsy musicians which endure to this day, such as the Balogh, Berki and Lakatos families, many of whom have branched into jazz, winning international recognition.

The lot of the professional cafe bands held firmly during this century. Fifty years ago Budapest was the vacation center for the high society of Europe, and the presence of Gypsy fiddlers in cafes and restaurants was an essential ingredient.

Before WWII bands with vast repertoires of notas and csardas were a feature of the city's grand restaurants. The primas of the Margit Island Park orchestra, Imre Magyari, was treated like a king in high class Budapest society, while the famed Pista Danko was known for his repertoire of songs favored by Budapest's theater elite at the old Mikado Gardens. Turn of the century students from the university frequented the Champagne Flask, on Magyar street, to hear the ancient cimbalom player from Bihari's original band. Famous Gypsy orchestras were a major attraction at the Wampetics Gardens (now the Gundel) in the City Park, and even today older Budapest residents reminisce how young lovers would stroll in the park to listen to the music wafting out of this elegant restaurant. Of course, none of the better hotels would be without at least two orchestras.

As the gaiety of Budapest nightlife declined following the devastation of the Second World War, so to did the demand for musicians. Bands found it less lucrative playing to empty restaurants. The talented youth went to conservatories, often graduating into the Rajko Gypsy orchestra, a Party sponsored troupe featuring young Gypsy musicians. Even the gray gloom of communism could not entirely wipe out Budapest's need for Gypsy music to accompany wine. Many of the old songs had been banned, and poor indeed was the primas who did not have an encyclopedic command of outlaw repertoire.

Finding a good Gypsy band in a restaurant is getting harder today. The Kulacs, on Dohany utca, comes close to the original spirit of the classic restaurants, as does the Matyas Pince, host to the Lakatos family dynasty's orchestra. The Gellert Hotel preserves the real atmosphere of the grand old days when the band strikes up an after dinner tune. Many first time diners are surprised when the violinist approaches the table to play. If you don't want to have a violin in your soup course politely decline. An after dinner bottle of wine, however, is the classic time to call over the band. Why not ask for "your song?" Discretely slip the primas a five hundred forint note (western currencies gladly accepted) and make a request. Suggest the classic Monte Csardas, or the emotional Hullamzo Balaton Tetejen ("On the Waves of the Balaton") or the sentimental Csak Egy Kislany Van A Vilagon ("There's Only One Girl In the World"). Most band leaders have an inexhaustible repertoire.

The fashion of an evening of Gypsy violinists accompanying wine and nota, hardy enough to withstand two centuries of Hungary's turbulent history, has had a hard time maintaining itself among the young generation. Many younger Hungarians are more likely to dine on pizza and then slip out to discos. The Gypsy bands are no longer a ubiquitous part of the Hungarian cultural landscape. One has to hunt them out, preferably in countryside inns where tastes have not gone over to the cheesy sounds of the Casio organ and saxophone, or the all purpose cassette deck. The music is still out there, and now as ever, still worth the search.

Dork Zygotian is a Hungarian, an anthropologist and a damn fine fiddler.
© The Hungary Report, Nr. 2.05, July 22, 1996

Musician Profile: Nicolae Feraru, Gypsy / Roma Traditional Music

by Nicolae Feraru
http://nicolaeferaru.com/

            Sometimes when I talk to Americans or others about my music, it’s hard to know where to begin.  So let’s start from scratch.

            I am from Bucharest, the largest city in Romania, where I was born in 1950.  Like my father and his father before him, I am a Gypsy and a musician.  I play the cimbalom, a dulcimer in the Romanian tradition, called ţambal in Romanian.  But I need to explain more.

            For centuries, Gypsies in this part of Romania distinguish themselves from others by the occupations they follow.  Some are nomadic, but most live in villages and cities, traditionally in their own neighborhoods.  The many occupations they traditionally follow include those of coppersmith, flower seller, silversmith, spoon maker, and many others.  I am a lǎutar, a musician.

            My grandfather, Marin Feraru, played the clarinet and also the small cimbalom (ţambal mic).  He lived in Caracal, west of Bucharest.  Around 1930 he moved to the city of Galaţi, on the Black Sea.  My father, Ion Feraru, who played the ţambal mic and the cobza (a lute), settled at that time in Domneşti and later Chiajna, on the outskirts of Bucharest.  He married my mother, who came from a lǎutar family from Baneasǎ, where the airport is now.  Her father died in World War I, but members of her family played the violin and traveled long distances to play at weddings.  My father and mother raised a family of seven children, and I am the second youngest.

            In those years, my father played mostly in small taverns on the outskirts of Bucharest.  Weddings and funerals, of course, were the main events where lǎutari played.  Before Communism, village weddings lasted four or five days, sometimes involving two groups of musicians.  Work for musicians was relatively good.  However, once the land was collectivized, around 1962, peasants were obligated to work in the fields and animals were no longer private property.  They now had to work on the weekdays and had less meat to share, so weddings now lasted only two days, Saturday and Sunday.  Lǎutari were now less in demand. The wedding party now took place at the house of the godparents on Saturday, and the music began at 8 or 9 a.m. on Sunday at the bride’s family's house.  It carried over into Monday at the groom’s family’s house or at the house of anyone in the village.  However, lǎutari weddings take place on Tuesdays or Thursdays (so that they can be available on weekends) and flower-seller weddings on Mondays.

            In the late 1950s, my father played and sang in a tǎraf led by Costicǎ Cobzaru.  This group consisted of two violins, accordion, ţambal mic, and bass.  They performed cîntece batrîneşte (ballads, “old folks’ songs“), maybe as many as twenty, while the wedding party ate dinner.  Then dancing began, followed by more food and listening music, and then dancing again.  I remember lots of family dinners on Mondays where my father simply fell asleep—he had been up all night at the wedding and then had to go to work on Monday as a chimney sweep.  He told me again and again not to become a lǎutar.

            But I liked to play his ţambal mic and by the time I was eleven I was playing it in wedding processions with him.  We had little money and I would have to wear my mother's shoes on those occasions.  At that time (the early 1960s) the cimbalom had been somewhat in decline.  Apart from Ciuciu, in Bucharest there were only a few players, like Nicolae Vişan and Nicolae Bob Stǎnescu.  But Toni Iordache, then in his teens, was starting to play at weddings, and after hearing his playing at one, I idolized him.  My father arranged for me to get lessons on the big cimbalom with Toni’s teacher, Miticǎ Marinescu-Ciuciu.

            Ciuciu was from a family of cimbalom players, born in 1913 in the village of Ileana, outside Bucharest.  He played the concert (Hungarian) cimbalom, not the small “Romanian” instrument that my father and I played.  Before World War II, he had played with the famous violinist Grigoraş Dinicu and others.  He played regularly with all the traditional orchestra leaders of the day, like Ionel Budişteanu, Nicu Stǎnescu, Nicuşor and Victor Predescu, as well as singers like Maria Tǎnase and Maria Lǎtareţu.  He could read music and toured as far as Japan and Canada.  He was generous and soon took a fatherly interest in me.  My father bought a large cimbalom and, because the tuning was different from the small one I had played on up to that time, I had to start from scratch.  Mainly he taught by ear, although I also learned to read music as well as the elements of theory and harmony from him.  He would play part of a tune, then I would copy him, and he would continue with more of it, until I had it down.  But, after a couple of months of lessons for which my father paid, Ciuciu made me part of the family.  I lived at his house much of the time, went with him to concerts and weddings where he played, and I absorbed everything I could at those places.  During my school years, I also played in the orchestra at the local “house of culture” and played the harmonica in school.

            In the Communist system, if you were going to make a living with music, you had to be tested every four or five years and, based on your training, you were placed in one of three (later five) categories, corresponding to how Romanians thought of musicians: muzician, muzicant, and lǎutar.  The highest rank was muzician.  If you knew theory, could sight read something the jury placed before you, and could play a variety of music, they might award you this rank.  The lowest rank might be given to someone who was a traditional musician, unable to read music, and knowledgeable only in the traditions of his village.  Each rank determined your pay and where you could play.  I received the top rank and became a “free professional,” meaning that I could seek work in restaurants or anywhere else that might want to hire me and also could tour abroad.

            In 1969, I auditioned for a spot as a musician at the Teatrul “Ion Vasilescu” in Bucharest.  This was my first professional job.  Then I went into the Army for a year and a half and was part of an ensemble.  Sometimes I played for official receptions with Toni Iordache (who at the time played in an ensemble sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior) during this period.

            After I got out of the Army, I played with the panflutist Radu Simion in his ensemble at the Carul cu Bere restaurant for about a year.  In 1972, I married Lelia Scarlat, the daughter of a lǎutar from Urziceni.  That year I went on tour to the United States and Canada, playing before Romanian communities, as part of an ensemble accompanying the famous singer Gica Petrescu.  In 1973, I played for four months at a restaurant on the Île d’Orleans near Montreal, with Tudor Dobre and a Hungarian violinist, Lajos Molnar.  Those were great opportunities and I was tempted to leave Romania for the West then, but I returned.

Publicity photograph (about 1973)

            I played at the Carul cu Bere with the violinist Nicu Pǎtraşcu, and then had a job in 1974 for about a year with a song-and-dance ensemble, “Doina Ilfovului.”  I then began an association with Radu Simion that lasted until I left Romania.  We played regularly at various Bucharest restaurants, including the Crama Domneasca, the Hora, the Hunedoara, and the Olimp.  Gheorghe Zamfir had created a craze for the panpipes in Western Europe, especially Switzerland, France, and Holland, and Radu’s group traveled to those countries several times in the late ’70s and early ’80s.  In Holland, we played for the royal family and we stayed there long enough for me to give lessons to several students.  In Bern, Switzerland, we played at a United Nations-sponsored concert that featured the Bolshoi Ballet.  We earned very good money, and I was able to buy a Hungarian-made Bohak cimbalom in Switzerland, something that was virtually impossible to get in Romania.

            I made a couple of solo records for the Electrecord label (in 1975 and 1984) and appeared on others.  The company, of course, produced the records, but some of the crazier aspects of Communist-era record production need to be told.  We first we would go into the studio and record around twenty pieces.  Then a committee, which would likely consist of Tiberiu Alexandru (Romania’s leading ethnomusicologist), a director of a radio station, a party bureaucrat, and a representative of the composers' union, would audition the tape and decide what would make the final cut.  I suppose they would base their decisions partly on what they thought sounded the best, but some of their decisions were grounded in political ideology.  When it came to muzica lǎutareasca (Gypsy music), they became critical.  For example, the committee rejected the recording we made of Nici nu ninge, apparently because in its traditional style, using the triple rhythm, it sounded too “Gypsy.”  So we recorded it again, this time changing it to a free-rhythm doina, and it satisfied the committee.

            In the 1980s things got worse and worse in Romania, both politically and economically.  Personally I never had problems getting food, since I worked at restaurants and had enough money anyway.  But politics were getting out of control.  It was bad enough that every orchestra had to provide a program list to an inspector, to show that they would only play appropriate music (meaning that muzica lǎutareasca especially had to be very limited).  After all, if the inspector happened to hear you play something he didn't like, you could buy him off with a bottle of wine.  What was worse was the presence of miniature microphones placed in ashtrays on the tables.  And forget about talking to foreigners.  Add to this the need to stop nightlife at nine o’clock, in order to save electricity, and you had a very grim place.

            One of the most bizarre indignities I had to suffer was when I was edited out of a television performance.  The official policy was never to identify the traditional music we played as “Gypsy” music, even though all cimbalom players in Romania were Gypsies.  My features are such that I can't be mistaken for anything else, so the television editors taped an actor playing a cimbalom.  They kept the sound, but spliced in the actor when they wanted to show me.

On tour in Detroit (1988)

          So, when an opportunity presented itself in 1988 to go on a tour to the United States and Canada, I made plans to leave for good.  Things had been getting worse for several years, without hope of ever improving, and opportunities to tour were becoming scarce.  Under the name “Rapsodia Carpaţilor,” Ion Lǎceanu, a singer and player of the fluer, caval, bagpipes, and fish scale, hired me and four other musicians.  We were to accompany dance ensemble and singers.  I paid the expensive transportation fee on my cimbalom and we flew to Detroit, which was to be our base for the North American tour.

            After playing for Romanian communities all over the United States and Canada, we returned to Detroit.  But when it was time to fly back, I stayed, along with one other musician and nearly all the dancers!  Nobody mentioned the topic while we were together, although Lǎceanu said later that he suspected all along that I didn't plan to return.  In fact, in Romania I told only my mother-in-law of my plans.  If my children were to know, they would pose a big risk that word would get out.  We just couldn't talk freely in those days.

            The Romanian immigrants and Romanian-Americans that we met made the transition to a new life easier.  In fact, many had left by swimming across the Danube and now were in comfortable circumstances, employed in industrial jobs.  They were sympathetic and helpful.  I applied for political asylum, learned to drive a car, and started to learn English all at the same time.  I got an apartment in Detroit and got a job working for Bill Webster making dulcimers.

Accompanying Benone Sinulescu, Detroit (1989)

          I met Pavel Cebzan, a great clarinetist from Timişoara who had toured with Zamfir and, after coming to the U.S. to tour with singer Nicoletǎ Voica, also stayed in Detroit and applied for asylum.  For the next year I played with them regularly at Descent of the Holy Ghost church in Warren, Michigan, to large crowds of enthusiastic immigrant Romanians.  I also played at the old Hungarian Village Restaurant.  Those were exciting years, as we witnessed big political changes.  I was fortunate to have taken part at some events that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier.  For example, in 1991 I played as part of a tour which featured a performance of an ensemble from the independent republic of Moldova, “Lǎutarii,” led by Nicolae Botgros, and in Chicago I played with them with former King Michael in the audience.

            But my wife and five children were still in Bucharest.  I moved to Chicago in 1993 and in addition to playing for various affairs, got a job in a factory.  I brought over my wife Lelia and sons Laurenţiu, Jan, and Bogdan, in 1994.  My daughters Janina and Fǎnica had to stay behind.  I continued to play for various affairs, mostly in the Romanian community, but also many others.

            I play solo, in the virtuosic Romanian style popularized by the late Toni Iordache, as well as accompaniment on the cimbalom.  I specialize in a Romanian repertoire, including Gypsy music (muzica lǎutareasca), regional styles, as well as café concert and international pieces.  I learned all this music from the people I described above.  Let me know if you would like me to be a part of your celebration.