Archival Declarations and Mopes, Packaged for Gift Giving

 

DONA DUMITRU SIMINICA: 'SOUNDS FROM A BYGONE AGE, VOL. 3' (Asphalt Tango).

A Romanian Gypsy singer, Siminica used a falsetto voice that went beyond the freakish or eerie: it's soulful, careful, big-bodied, with long, sweeping notes. He made these recordings - sad, slow love songs in the Roma language - in the 1960s, with a simple setup: accordion, string-bass and the cymbalom, a Hungarian instrument similar to the hammer dulcimer. You get used to the atmosphere of the music quickly, its stately tempo and wicked authority.

BEN RATLIFF