Lăutărească music

Lăutărească music (Romanian: muzică lăutărească, pronounced [ˈmuzikə lə.utərˈe̯askə]) is a musical tradition widespread in the historical regions of Romania (Wallachia, Moldova, and Transylvania. Its performers, known as lăutari, are professional musicians, typically of Romani origin, who play at weddings, christenings, funerals, and other social events. Lăutărească music encompasses a wide repertoire, combining traditional folk melodies with elements from urban, Turkish, and Western European musical traditions. Musicians play by ear, often using intricate ornamentation and improvisation. The primary instruments in traditional lăutărească music are the violin, nai, and cobza.
Romanian traditional music consists of two major branches: professional lăutărească music and traditional pastoral music.
Traditional pastoral music is characterized by instrumental pieces in a tempo rubato, primarily performed on wind instruments such as the tilincă, fluier, caval, and others. The vocal repertoire includes the doinas, bocets (funeral songs), and colinde. This tradition is primarily preserved by shepherds, but also by other peasants, for whom music is an integral part of their daily life and domestic culture. It is typically performed in a domestic setting or at small gatherings, rather than at festive events. The repertoire is usually limited to a few melodies. Instruments are typically handmade and may vary in design, while ensemble performances are very rare.
Lăutărească music is performed by professional musicians, known as lăutari, who are predominantly of Romani origin, although musicians from other ethnic groups are also present. Moldovan prince and scholar Dimitri Cantemir described wedding traditions in 18th-century Moldova, noting: “they invite musicians, who are scarcely ever not Gypsies”. Similar patterns were observed in Wallachia, though in Bucovina, Banat, Maramureș, and Transylvania, Romanian musicians played a more prominent role. According to Romanian ethnomusicologist Speranța Rădulescu [ro], approximately 80% of Romanian lăutari are of Romani origin.
Lăutari earn a living by playing at weddings, christenings, and funerals in both Romanian and Romani communities, playing a crucial role as intermediaries in ritual processes. They typically perform as part of musical ensembles known as tarafs and use more complex instruments compared to traditional pastoral musicians. Tarafs predominantly feature string instruments, including the violin, cobza, cimbalom, and double bass, along with wind instruments such as the nai and cimpoi. In the 20th century, the accordion also became a key instrument. In Moldova, brass bands (Romanian: fanfara) are also popular among lăutari, with notable examples such as Fanfara Zece Prăjini [ro].
There is no strict stylistic boundary between the two branches of Romanian traditional music. Lăutari, for example, often incorporate shepherd melodies into their repertoire. The officially promoted folk music, broadcast on television and radio, represents a formalized and adapted version of both traditions.
Professional lăutari have been known in Moldova and Wallachia since at least the 16th century. The name lăutar (archaic form: alăutar) derives from lăută (alăută; a lute-like instrument, an early form of the cobza), which originates from the Arabic: al-ʿūd (oud). The first documented mention of lăutari dates back to 1558, when the Voivode of Wallachia, Mircea Ciobanul, gifted the lăutar Ruste to Dinga, vornic of Moldova. From 1723, the first lăutari guilds began to appear in towns. The emergence of these guilds is likely connected to the enslavement of Romani people in the Romanian principalities, which lasted from the late 14th to the mid-19th century. Princes, boyars and monasteries owned Romani slaves, including blacksmiths, cooks, and musicians who performed at all celebrations. After the emancipation of Roma slaves, lăutari gradually replaced amateur peasant musicians, becoming the primary performers of music at social events in villages.
The early instruments used by lăutari included the violin (in its archaic form – kemençe or rebec), lăută (alăută), and drums. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the most common instruments among lăutari were the violin, nai, and cobza. In 1775, French writer Jean-Luis Carra, while in Iași, described Romani musicians playing music on the violin, cobza, and an eight-holed flute. British consul in Moldova and Wallachia, William Wilkinson, also noted in 1820 that the violin, nai, and cobza were the most typical instruments. By the late 19th century, the cobza was in part replaced by cimbalom, which, in turn, was partially substituted by the accordion in the 20th century. In Moldova, lăutari had ceased using the nai by the late 19th century, although it remained in use in Wallachia.
At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, lăutărească music mainly consisted of rural peasant music. During the Phanariot rule, the lăutari frequently traveled to the Ottoman Empire, where they performed and brought back new repertoire. Tiberiu Alexandru [ro] notes that around 1800, the best violinists in Constantinople were Romanian Gypsies. By the mid-19th century, the lăutari's repertoire had expanded significantly, incorporating popular urban songs as well as Greek and Turkish melodies. Some folk songs performed by the lăutari took on Oriental characteristics. From the mid-19th century, with the spread of Western music, European dance melodies and fragments of Western classical music began to appear in their repertoire. Although the lăutari traditionally played by ear, in the 20th century some of them became proficient in music notation.
The Romanian poet, composer, and folklorist Anton Pann, using Byzantine musical notation, recorded a series of secular songs in his book Selected Poems or Secular Chants (1831, 1837), which included lăutărească songs. In 1834, the military bandmaster François Rouschitzki published a collection in Iași titled Oriental Music: 42 Moldavian, Wallachian, Greek, and Turkish Songs and Dances. The collection primarily contained Romanian folk melodies, including lăutărească music, transcribed for piano. Between 1852 and 1854, Polish composer Karol Mikuli, at the recommendation of Romanian writer Vasile Alecsandri, became acquainted with the music of the Bucovinian lăutar Nicolae Picu [ro], leading to the publication of four volumes of piano transcriptions of lăutărească music. Since there were no precise methods for recording folk music in the 19th century, non-tempered melodies were adapted to the classical scale, and irregular, flexible rhythms were adjusted to the even metrorhythm of academic music.
In the first half of the 20th century, Romanian traditional music, including lăutărească music, was recorded by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1908-1917, on phonograph cylinders) and Romanian-Swiss composer and ethnomusicologist Constantin Brăiloiu (1928-1943, on phonograph cylinders and gramophone records). Bartók also transcribed lăutari songs for his study of Romanian folk music from Bihor County. Speranța Rădulescu, known as the "mother of the lăutari," has been recording and studying lăutărească music since the mid-1970s.
Several of Béla Bartók’s works reflect the influence of lăutărească music, including "Romanian Folk Dances" and "Rhapsody No. 1." Romanian-French composer George Enescu also incorporated several lăutărească melodies in his "Romanian Rhapsody No. 1" (1901), including "Mugur, mugur, mugurel" (published by Anton Pann in 1837) and "Ciocârlia" by Angheluș Dinicu [ro].
The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who lived in Chișinău for several years, frequently attended evenings with lăutari musicians. Vladimir Gorchakov wrote: "Pushkin was captivated by the well-known Moldovan song 'Tiu iubeski pitimasura', yet he listened with even greater attention to another song – 'Ardemá – Fríde – má', with which, even then, he had already intertwined us through his marvelous imitation, transforming it into the well-known song in his poem The Gypsies – namely: 'Burn me, cut me…'" In a letter to Pyotr Vyazemsky, Pushkin wrote: "I rejoice, however, in the fate of my song 'Cut me.' This is a very close translation; I am sending you the wild melody of the original. Show it to Vielgorsky – it seems to me the motif is extraordinarily felicitous. Give it to Polevoy along with the song." The sheet music for the "wild melody" was published in 1825 in the Moscow Telegraph [ru].
In his commentary on his translation of Eugene Onegin, Vladimir Nabokov traced the journey of the Moldovan lăutărească song "Arde-mă și frige-mă", from its adaptation in Prosper Mérimée's translation of The Gypsies to the aria of Carmen in Bizet’s opera (French: Coupe-moi, brûle-moi, je ne dirai rien…). Nabokov also noted that Pushkin’s so-called Moldovan song "Black Shawl" was translated into Romanian and became a "folk song." The translation was done in 1841 by the Moldovan poet and writer Constantin Negruzzi, though the composer remains unknown. Performed by the Romani singer Don Dumitru Siminică, this song became one of the emblematic pieces of lăutărească music.
The Romanian folklorist and musicologist Teodor Burada recounted a story published in the journal La Vie Parisienne about a meeting between Franz Liszt and the leader of the Iași lăutari guild, Vasile Barbu, better known as Barbu Lăutaru [ro]. In January 1847, during his tour of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova, Liszt was hosted by a local boyar in Iași. The guests were entertained by a taraf led by Barbu Lăutaru, featuring instruments such as the violin, nai, and cobza. According to the account, Liszt was impressed by Barbu Lăutaru’s performance and his ability to accurately reproduce by ear a piano piece that Liszt had played for him. Liszt himself mentions encounters with several lăutar groups in Bucharest and Iași, though without naming them: "We discovered in them a remarkable vein of great musical heritage." After meeting the lăutar Nicolae Picu, Liszt incorporated the melody of the Moldavian dance "Corăgheasca" into his Romanian Rhapsody.
In 1889, the lăutari Ionică Dinicu [ro] and Angheluş Dinicu (father and grandfather of the renowned lăutar Grigoraș Dinicu) participated in the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Among the pieces performed was the nai melody "Ciocârlia", attributed to Angheluş Dinicu. In Grigoraș Dinicu’s violin arrangement, the melody became one of the symbols of lăutărească music. A French reviewer in the Revue de l’Exposition Universelle de 1889 praised the musical talents of the Romanian musicians: "…highly gifted, they are almost instruments themselves".
Lăutărească music is complex and refined, requiring solid technical skill. Improvisation plays a crucial role, with lăutari often reinterpreting melodies, akin to jazz. The violin is the central instrument, and lăutari are renowned for their virtuosity, developing unique techniques:
In 1923, Leopold Auer wrote about the famous Hungarian gypsy violinists, noting that only Romanian gypsies could rival them.
There is no single style of lăutărească music, as its musical forms vary by region. Urban lăutari adapt and develop musical styles known as muzica de mahala, catering to city audiences. Rural lăutari, such as Alexandru Cercel [ro] and Constantin Lupu, are closer to traditional peasant music. According to Moldovan researchers, stylistic studies on the music of the Bessarabian lăutari are practically non-existent, except for certain fragments in Kotlyarov's book.
Nicolae Filimon, a writer, folklorist, musician, and Romania's first music critic, noted, that in addition to pastoral motifs, lăutari drew inspiration from Byzantine church music, Oriental (Turkish) music, and later, from European music.
Speranța Rădulescu emphasized that lăutărească music is not gypsy, but Romanian music. She repeatedly recorded rare or entirely forgotten Romanian folk melodies from lăutari. Romani lăutari have played a key role in preserving Romanian musical traditions. She also noted their balance between respect for tradition with a love for innovation – lăutari are the first to grasp new melodies, techniques, and trends. Tarafs and lăutari played a key role in preserving traditional music, passing it down through generations while maintaining its authentic sound and stylistic characteristics.
Lăutărească music developed under the influence of the tastes and preferences of its patrons, cultivating a sort of "aesthetic conformism and eclecticism," where lăutari adapted their repertoires to specific social contexts. The Romanian and French anthropologist Victor Stoichiță notes the lăutari’s assumptions about music: music is not so much about expressing personal feelings, it is rather about manipulating the emotions of the listeners.
The core components of the lăutari repertoire included: epic ballads or the so-called "old songs"; music for "listening", dancing, and feasts; wedding music; popular or fashionable music.
Musical forms include traditional Romanian dances, such as hora, sârba, brâu [ro], corăghească, bătută, căluș, melodies with asymmetric rhythms such as geamparale [ro], breaza, rustem, lăutari manele, cadânească [ro], and lyrical love songs such as doina. Wedding music also includes marches borrowed from military brass bands.
In lăutărească music horas can be played in the slow, expressive style, characterized by irregular rhythmic groupings (e.g., 5+4 or 11+9) rather than usual strict duple meter. Medium and fast-tempo horas, sometimes called hora lăutărească or hora țigănească, feature a clear duple pulse in the accompaniment. However, the melodic and rhythmic subdivisions often follow 12-beat permutations, creating a syncopated effect reminiscent of certain American jazz rhythms.
While much of the lăutărească music repertoire is based on Western European major and minor scales, a significant portion incorporates Turkish modal concepts. The makam system, like other modal traditions from India and the Middle East, is more than just a scale or interval structure; it also defines the hierarchical relationships between pitches, following a complex set of rules not found in European music.
Since the late 18th century, lăutari and klezmorim have coexisted in Moldova, often forming mixed Jewish-Romani ensembles. Many musicians were bi- or trilingual, speaking Yiddish, Romanian, and Greek. This exchange resulted in a mixed repertoire: Moldovan music with klezmer elements for the Moldovan audience, and klezmer music with Moldovan elements for the Jewish one. Klezmorim assimilated Moldovan motifs into their core genres while retaining Romanian names (doyne, hora or zhok, sirba, bulgar…). Moldovan music is considered the main non-Jewish source of the klezmer tradition. In turn, melodies like sher, freylekhs, and khosid entered the repertoire of the lăutari of Bessarabia and Bucovina. Filimon was the first to note that Jewish musicians introduced cimbalon to the region, which later became a key accompanying instrument in lăutari tarafs.
The term manea (plural: manele) first appeared in Moldovan sources in the 1850s. At that time, it referred to a slow, languid Turkish love song, presumably with a free rhythm, interspersed with laments. By the late 19th and early 20th century, manele gradually became less frequently performed, mostly by lăutari. The exact time when dance associations appeared with manele songs remains unclear. Examples of lăutari manele include the songs "Șaraiman", "Ileană, Ileană" by Romica Puceanu and "Maneaua" by Gabi Luncă.
In the mid-1960s, new manele began to appear among Bucharest musicians, possibly influenced by the music of the Turkic population in Romanian Dobruja. The new manele were characterized by the rhythm of the çiftetelli, used in belly dance in Anatolia and the Balkans. This genre became popular among Romani communities in southern Romania, and by the early 1990s, after the lifting of censorship, the new manele became popular throughout the country.
In the post-war period, concert tarafs emerged in Moldova, focusing on stage performances. These groups contrasted with traditional lăutari tarafs, which were associated with folk customs and rituals. Concert tarafs could be either amateur or professional and were often part of state concert institutions. They typically consisted of 4–5 musicians in small ensembles and up to 7–10 in larger ones, with the leader often playing the violin or accordion. By the 1970s, the style of concert tarafs had become more eclectic, and their repertoire was less connected to traditional lăutărească music. The use of sheet music and arrangements reduced the improvisational style characteristic of lăutari. The repertoire included processed versions of instrumental and dance music, as well as folk song.
A more developed form of concert tarafs emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with the creation of folk music orchestras as part of state concert institutions. The number of musicians increased to 15–25 people, introducing a fixed conductor's role and featuring performers with academic musical training. The folk material performed by these orchestras was heavily processed and stylized, with traditional rhythmic and structural elements simplified and made more rigid.
During the same period, Romania saw the establishment of large folk orchestras modeled after Soviet examples, some numbering up to 100 lăutari. Among these stood out the orchestra "Barbu Lăutaru" [ro], founded in 1949. It featured well-known musicians like Fănică Luca, Luță Ioviță [ro], Victor Predescu [ro], Nicu Stănescu [ro], Ionel Budișteanu, Ion Zlotea [ro], Ion Păturică [ro], and others. These orchestras played a positive role in preserving folk instruments such as the cobza and nai. However, the officially promoted music lost much of its improvisational character, and regional features became less pronounced.
In the second half of the 20th century, Bucharest's urban lăutari elite became a privileged community known as the "silk Gypsies", who were well integrated into Romanian society. Many of these musicians gained fame through appearances on radio and television. Despite the predominance of men in lăutărească music, two prominent female singers – Romica Puceanu and Gabi Luncă – became central figures during this period.
Since 1972, scientific literature on lăutărească music has stopped mentioning the Romani origin of the musicians. During this period, commissions were established to monitor the "purity" of lăutărească music. Concurrently, a widespread belief emerged that Romani musicians were responsible for the degradation of Romanian folk music. French musicologist Bernard Lortat-Jacob [fr], who collaborated with Speranța Rădulescu, cites her emotional statement from 1981 countering this narrative: "Gypsies do not distort Romanian music... they make it alive!"
Since the 1990s, many lăutari gained international recognition, including Taraf de Haïdouks, Romica Puceanu, Gabi Luncă, and Fanfara Ciocârlia. Taraf de Haïdouks participated in several Western films, including Latcho Drom and The Man Who Cried. For their contributions to the latter film, they received the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in 2002 as the Best Group in the Europe/Middle East.
The current state of lăutărească music reflects societal changes influenced by urbanization and globalization. Traditional celebrations no longer feature lăutărească music as prominently. Alexandru Cercel, who recorded around 150 melodies in 1957 with the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore [ro], lamented that many old songs had disappeared in the last 10–15 years. Speranța Rădulescu echoed similar concerns in the liner notes of a 1993 cassette: "This cassette represents the first edited recording dedicated exclusively to the village wind band music of Moldova, caught at the beginning of a superb but inexorable decline."
Many contemporary performers integrate elements of lăutărească music into pop genres and manele, increasing its popularity but often facing criticism for simplifying or commercializing its original style.
Alongside commercialization, there has been growing interest in preserving authentic folk traditions. Musicians and researchers like the early music ensemble Anton Pann, the group Trei Parale, Bogdan Simion [ro], taraf Zicălașii (Romania), and Tudor Ungureanu [ro] with his folk ensemble Ștefan Vodă (Moldova) are actively reviving old forms and repertoires of lăutărească music.
The traditional lăutari tarafs preserved in Romania were included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2020. The Moldovan National Orchestra of Folk Music [ru] established at the Moldovan Philharmonic [ro] was named Lăutarii in honor of the traditional lăutari musicians. The film Lăutarii by Emil Loteanu is dedicated to showcasing the lives and artistry of Moldovan lăutari.