Romanian Music site

[morgan]

I found this site while helping my daughter do the "culture" section of her school report on Romania, and figured the cafe community might be interested.

http://aris.ss.uci.edu/rgarfias/kiosk/romania.html

Mostly fiddle music, and some great tunes and great playing. I particularly like the stuff by Mihai Botofei and Efta Botoca. The "Music of Bihor" sounds like Irish music that got very lost.

[NYClassical]

Wow! that is great--thanks. I don't think i've ever heard Romanian music.

[John Craton]

There used to be a site where you could order any number of Romanian CD's - classical, folk, and popular. I bought several Paula Seling albums from them. I think it was Romanianet.com or something similar. They have shut down, but I wonder if anyone knows of other sources for Romanian recordings (in addition to the one Morgan referenced).

[zaelic]

Perhaps the page you were looking for was Passion Music in the UK : http://www.passiondiscs.co.uk/romanian01/romanian_page_01.htm

A lot of the offerings have musical samples, and the ethnofon series by Speranta Radulescu is the best for authentic village folk stuff. Not to much mandolin, although the cobza player on the Moldavian compilation is great.

For mandolin music, check out some of the Hungarian Gypsy bands who play and sing in Romani, like Kali Yag, Romano Drom, Szilvasi Gypsy band, Ando Drom or Ternipe. They should be on the site as well.

Not to much mandolin action happening in Romania, but the Tatar minority in Constantsa used to use them a lot - played straight forward adaptions of Greek rebetika songs, mostly. There exists an LP of this music on the old Electrecord lable, but it isn't exactly easy to find...

We had missonaries from are old chruch from Romainia. Good people. Dont know much about the music though. Ill check it out.