TARAF de HAIDOUKS

Taraf de Haidouks come from the village of Clejani near Bucharest. They appeared at the first Respect Festival in 1998, and will bring this year’s third festival to a symbolic close. During the ten years the group has been playing together, its members have become the world’s most famous emissaries of Romany music, and their concerts and recordings have met with success all over the globe.

They caused a sensation at the 1991 Womad Festival, sold out the Royal Festival Hall in London and opened the World Exposition in Lisbon, and recently have also performed and recorded with the celebrated Kronos Quartet. Their CD recordings have repeatedly held the top positions on world music charts. Today no prestigious festival of world music can do without them. The music of Taraf de Haidouks is truly irresistible.

In the dance numbers, the rhythm is propelled by two accordions and anchored down by a slapped bass that sounds like some kind of Arabic rockabilly mutation, while the fiddles and cimbalom race along in dizzying flights of fancy. And in the ballads, the vocal pyrotechnics of Ion Manole and the melancholy violins seem to transport listeners to an old nomad camp, where tears glisten like stars in the flickering light of the campfires.