The Bucharest Tarafs - The Picturesque Emblem Of A Fascinating City

Ever since the mid-18th century, the city off the Dâmboviţa banks has enjoyed a particular sentimental popularity, not only from the point of view of its merry, party-loving, enterprising inhabitants, but also in the memory of tourists, who christened Romania's Capital of the 1920s–1940s by the honoring name of Little Paris. Very few people now acknowledge the following fact: namely that the particular charm of daily life in Bucharest was given by the tarafs whose guild had its dwellings in the residential quarter of downtown Bucharest (around the St. Gheorghe Square and extending as far as the Scaune street) and its cemetery in Colentina (the Pătrunjel area). The place where you could go to hire tarafs for weddings and other parties had been established ever since the 1880s at the Musicians' Café (behind the Colţea Hospital, not too far away from Potcovari Church).Though it is true that the Bucharest tarafs had wielded a folk repertoire and played by the ear (although they would also perform in the great artistic centers of Paris, London, Sankt-Petersburg, Riga, Berlin, Côte d'Azur), after 1900, they found their way into Conservatoires, and became "notemen" (i.e., professional masters of the art of sounds), orchestra conductors, soloists in classical music concerts and professors at the Musical Academies in Romania or abroad. The lives of the taraf members were inside the public places, such as pubs, eateries, restaurants, private clubs and night clubs, whose names were bequeathed to the common history of the Capital either by the names of the owners who managed them (Iordache, Petrache, Răcaru, Vişoiu, Coşna ) or owing to the entertaining atmosphere and the clients: Leul şi Cîrnatul (The Lion and the Sausage); Maica Borţoasa (The Pregnant Nun); Roata Lumii ( The Big Wheel of the World); Groapa dulce (The Sweet Pit); La Berbec (The Lamb's). The soloists or "first-handers" (primaşii) were exceptional talents (such as: Zavaidoc, Maria Tănase, Vasile Cristian, Titi Botez, Ioana Radu, Jean Moscopol, Maria Lătăreţu, the "charming mouths" (guriştii)) or they were violinists, Flute-de-Pan soloists and of course cembalo virtuosi ( Barbu Lăutaru, Grigoraş Dinicu, Năstase Ochialbi, Cristache Ciolac, Lică Ştefănescu, Nicu Buică, Fănică Luca, Nicu Stănescu, Ionel Budişteanu). Some of them proved to be extremely gifted composers, bequeathing scores which gained world-wide renown (the Ciocârlia by Angheluş Dinicu, Avant de mourir by Georges Boulanger, George Pantazi by his real name, the Hora staccato by Grigoraş Dinicu,  Petite conversation by George N. Ochialbi). Not a few Romanian taraf members gleaned the admiration of Liszt, Brahms, Ceaikovski, Rimski-Korsakov, George Enescu, Bartók, Weingartner, Pablo Casals, Kreisler, Heifetz, Menuhin, Karajan, Oistrah etc., while some foreign composers collected Romanian folklore in order to use it in their own creations (Liszt, Brahms, Max Bruch, Bartók, Erik Satie, Ravel and others). Also, to preserve the memory of their precious art over the centuries, into posterity, the recording houses: Columbia, Odeon, His Master's Voice, Polydor, Pathé-Marconi, Electrecord etc. inscribed their music on thousands of audio-discs. The king of the golden and platinum LPs unanimously acknowledged everywhere in the world is the Flute de Pan master, Gheorghe Zamfir, whose name remains ingrained in the 20th century legend.For all the changes for the better and for all the social commotions, devastating revolutions and world wars, the art of the Bucharest tarafs is still continuing the traditions of the former virtuosi, because the soul of contemporary man, even though torn by anxieties and stress, feels the permanent need to listen to a deep-felt blues every so often, a song barely whispered in his ear, to accompany his self-communing moments or his rest.


by Viorel Cosma (b. 1927)