This time, I’d like to present you a collective (maybe that’s the right name? “band” is somewhat wrong here) of great musicians from Romania who call themselves Taraf de Haïdouks.
They are mainly a result of gipsy traditions but have joined together into this project and already released quite a few albums.
Having also given quite a lot of live concerts they started to become known a little all over europe and the other day it was my turn to discover them, when they played a song of them on Antena3 radio station.
It was a track which is part of their newest album, where they decided to combine their original compositions with “covers” of famous works of classical composers of the 20th century, especially when they had been inspired by romanian folk music (like Bartok, Khachaturian, Falla, Albeniz).
In this case it’s the famous piece Asturias – Leyenda by Isaac Albeniz, which is best known on guitar, I’ve played it myself.
Have a listen:
Taraf de Haidouks – Asturias
And here are some videos of other tracks of them:
Waltz from Masquerade (A. Khatchaturian)
Lezghinka (A. Khatchaturian)
Ostinato (B. Bartok)
To finish up this post, I leave you links to their biography on wikipedia and a page where it is possible to order their CDs.
About this series:
One of the ideas I have for this blog is to start periodic post series about a few interesting topics. Like one post a week or a month, about the same topic but always bringing you new (or classic but little known) musical discoveries.
This series that I gave the name “The Alternative Music Lounge” is about presenting you bands and projects that I like a lot or respect much because of the quality of their music although they haven’t made it into the so called “main stream” and therefore probably will remain unknown for many people.
Whatever might be the reasons for this (sometimes their creations are just too good, too unique, lacking any “commercial characteristics”, othertimes it’s just another case of being disregarded by the music industry, we all know what’s usual to happen…), I think the’re more people out there who might like their music but just didn’t have a chance to discover it yet, so I hope these publications of mine might be helpful.
By the way, if you’re a musician and think I might like your music and would like to propose your creations for being featured in a post of this series, you’re welcome to comment this post or any other future post of this series, stating your project’s name, a link to where I can listen to some tracks and a way to contact you.
I promise to try and listen to everyone’s tracks and respond, even if I happen to not accept the proposal.