18 CIOCÂRLIA being the case, we larks have a kind of responsibility towards our country, and our song is not insignificant. I’m not going to say we have a mission, so as not to sound pretentious, but look: you live in Luxembourg, I live in France, and yet we are firmly rooted in Romanian culture and family tradition. My father, when he was a student, performed folk dances in a semi-professional ensemble, and it was more than just a hobby, he loved doing it. I can’t help thinking that there’s something there which, by capillary action or genetics, has been passed on to me, just as your love of words and literature was passed on to you by your father. In any case, when I recorded the album Ciocârlia, I felt like a messenger, like an arrow shooting out from Romania to the rest of the world, not just as a performer of heritage music, but also of the music of my country, which is still not very well known. Of all the regions you travel through as the crow flies, which ones do you feel really close to? I’m very attached to the music of Banat and Transylvania. They’re also the two regions I know best, as my parents come from there. From an early age onwards, my father introduced me to the folklore of Banat and my mother to that of the Mureș and Maramureș region. Several years in a row, around the age of twelve, I even went to sing colinde in Mădăraș, my mother’s village, and in Baia Mare at Christmas. Incidentally, as a child I actually sang some of those same Christmas carols which I now play on the recording in arrangements by Béla Bartók.
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