ROMICA PUCEANU & THE GORE BROTHERS
SOUNDS FROM A BYGONE AGE VOL 2 (CD Asphalt Tango ATR 1006)

Volume One in this new series, by Ion Petre Stoican, was a real revelation. This second disc has also been restored to excellent sound quality and contains some fine work by the queen of the gypsies ("the Billie Holiday of the East") & her band comprising Victor Gore on accordion and Aurel Gore on violin. (Their name was Ionescu and their father was a famous gypsy musician also; they adopted his first name on his death.) The music of the gypsies (or Lautari) was largely underground until 1964 when they began to settle on the edges of towns in Romania and spontaneous groups called Tarafs would assemble to entertain in cafes. A typical taraf consists of a singer, violin, double bass, cymbalom, accordion and cobza. (The latter a near-forgotten lute, with a backward curving fretboard and strings in the upside-down order [à la Hendrix], played by plucking them with a quill.) Though they never got rich, the Gore brothers were the supreme exponents of gypsy music in Bucharest and recorded frequently for the Electrecord folklore archive. They also played exclusive restaurants with Victor singing until they heard Romica Puceanu, who had started out in 1940 age 14 as a professional singer. She was quite polished with a vast repertoire and could also improvise which suited the brothers perfectly. They recalled her humour: she would show up at a recording session with her teapot, which was filled with cognac. Once the recording engineer noticed she was holding the song lyrics upside down, and she replied "Would I be singing with these guys if I could read?" Traditional gypsy music from that era tends to be lush and overly self-indulgent, the weeping-in-your-drink type, but these recordings are quite understated, almost minimalist, so you have to pay attention to hear the plink of the cymbalom and the little ripples of the accordion. But the space surrounds the vocal instead of swamping it in schmaltz. Costel Vasilescu also contributes trumpet to five numbers on this compilation. The music was eclipsed by Balkan pop in the 70s but these reissues should help bring it to a wider audience.