Artist.......: Ion Petre Stoican
Album........: Sounds From A Bygone Age Vol.1
Label........: Asphalt Tango records
Genre........: Folklore
Catnr........: CD-ATR 0805
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: Jan-09-2007
str.date.....: Jan-10-2006
quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Hora Lui Sile 03:34
02. Hora De La Constanta 02:39
03. Mosule, Te-as Intreba 04:36
04. Hora De La Oltenita 02:37
05. Ia-Ti Mireasa, Ziua Buna 08:33
06. Hora Lui Mihalea 02:32
07. Chiar Daca Dau De Necaz 02:46
08. Melodia Lui Sile 02:15
09. Hora Lautareasca 03:11
10. Briu Din Oltenita 01:46
11. Hora De Joc de La Oltenita 01:40
12. Hora 02:41
13. Sirba De Joc Din Constanta 02:36
14. Hora De La Luceni 01:30
15. Sirba 02:09
Runtime 45:05 min
Size 67,7 MB
Release Notes:
This story took place before 1965, explains Costel
Vasilescu, who played trumpet on Stoican's album.
One day Stoican noticed a man who seemed to him to
be behaving suspiciously. This stranger turned out
to be a spy working for a foreign secret service
agency. Stoican grabbed him and took him to the
nearest police station. The secret police then
asked what he would like as a reward. Should we
give you a house? I don't need a house, Stoican
replied,I want to make a record.
In this bizarre stroke of luck, Stoican gathered
the most important Gypsy musicians from the
Bucharest Lautari sceneùa difficult task for an
interloperùto create, even for a moment, an all
star band with the tzimbal god Toni Iordache,
accordion dervish Ionica Minune, and Costel
Vasilescu on the trumpet, creating one of the most
egalitarian records of the time.
Most of the pieces played came from Stoican's rural
birthplace Oltenita and Constanta, the larger port
town where he had settled because of the difficulty
of getting work in the capital. The claims to jobs
in music in Bucharest have been bitterly defended
for hundreds of years by the Lautari musicians,
explains Henry Ernst, director of Asphalt-Tango
Records. ôEven today there is almost no chance for
an outsider to enter the business. For hundreds of
years, the Lautari have been highly sought after
musicians and entertainers for weddings and other
events throughout the Balkans, and at one time were
known for their magic tricks and bear taming.
The LP of Stoican was the first record I bought in
Romania in 1986, recalls Ernst. During all my
endless travels in Romania, a tape of the record
was my accompanist. Until my appearance, the master
of this LP was at the state-run Electrecord label
stored in their basement.
Recovered from the archives and preserved in the
original analog sound recorded in the 1970s, the
repertoire is primarily made up of fast rhythmic
dances such as the circle-dance Hora, the high
speed couples dances Sirba and Briu, and the
traditional Geamparale, which no wedding could do
without.
Usually records in Romania are made by an important
soloist or singer which has a backing orchestra,
explains Ernst. The only important person is the
soloist in order to show his technical expertise;
the soloist is in the center of the record. On this
record all members of the band are important, the
aura of the record is relaxed, yet ambitious. I can
hear that Stoican knew very well that he had only
this one chance in his life to make this record.
Stoican wanted to play with the most adventurous
musicians in Romania, as the record was to be his
breakthrough. He wasn't a virtuoso violinist of the
stature of Aurel Gore, but he was ambitious. He
came to me and asked me if I could help him to
realize his vision, trumpeter Costel Vasilescu
reports. Vasilescu, who is a great diplomat and
judge of human nature, at first said he would see
what can be done. He accompanied Stoican to the
number one tzimbal player in Romania, Toni
Iordache, who held court in the Boulevard
restaurant and waited for engagements while
drinking Turkish coffee. Iordache couldn't say yes
straight away, because he was an international
star, and Stoican in his eyes was a second-class
musician from the country, Vasilescu explains. But
Vasilescu didn't let up, promised rehearsals, and
at the end of the day Toni finally agreed, because
Stoican had this permission from on high, and who
could refuse that... and on top of that Electrecord
had to do what Stoican wanted. This had never
happened before! And so a Lautari orchestra met in
Tomis Studio at Electrecord, which unfortunately
never came together again to record.
Our names were not mentioned, but Stoican still
managed to get our photo on the album, recalls
Vasilescu, whose bright trumpet tone made him a
legend throughout Romania and who was the first to
establish the trumpet in Lautari music by using a
mute to not overpower the other players. The names
of the musicians are rarely found on the records
released during the Ceausescu period. Vasilescu is
not even mentioned on recordings made by Romania's
famous Gypsy Queens Gabi Lunca or Romica
Puceanuùwho regularly called him into the studio at
that time. The term People's Orchestra is used to
describe the musicians on Ion Petre Stoican's only
LP released in 1977. Vasilescu lives in a town
house that was luckily not torn down in the
demolition fever of the 1980s. The heavy furniture,
dark silk, and crystal chandeliers in the living
room are less a status symbol than a sign of the
times when he played at four weddings a week.
Stoican cultivated the traditional style he
inherited from his father. And he sang falsetto,
which was en vogue in Bucharest at the time, and
which the singer Dona Dumitru Siminica had made so
famous that he appeared in a Bregovic soundtrack at
the beginning of the nineties. Toni Iordache, who
is not in the center of the group photograph for
nothing, arranged most of the tracks and plays
Lautari music with the attitude and freedom of a
jazz musician. Iordache is the only musician
besides Stoican to be mentioned by name on the
album: his condition for turning up to the
recordings.
Fourteen musicians made Stoican's studio band far
bigger than a normal taraf, which normally played
at a wedding with five or six musicians. When
recording, the violinist kept in touch with the
spirit of the time, which in the seventies and
eighties only promoted People's Orchestras pushing
the rougher but more authentic sound of the tarafs
out to the suburbs. However for Ion Petre Stoican
his first and last LP established him in the
bitterly defended Bucharest wedding market. The man
from the province had fulfilled his dream and
played until the end of the eighties at innumerable
weddings. Costel Vasilescu regrets, I sadly could
not say goodbye to Stoican, because he died shortly
after the revolution while we were playing a few
concerts in Vienna. But all of our collaborations
from then are on this CD and they live on.Adapted
from Grit Friedrich