What you’re saying reminds me of a question I’ve often asked myself about my real anchorage point. I’ve realised that, talking about ‘home’, I say ‘chez moi’ when I mean my flat in Luxembourg where I’ve lived for thirty years; but when I say ‘chez nous’, I always think of Timișoara, our grandparents’ house where I was born and where we spent several summer holidays together. Is it the same for you? Do ‘chez moi’ and chez nous’ coincide in your imaginative universe, or not? I really like the distinction you make between your anchorage point, which is in Luxembourg, and your roots, which are in Timișoara; but it’s not easy for me to answer your question, for the simple reason that I no longer have a ‘chez moi’ in Romania, whether in Bucharest or elsewhere. To put it bluntly, I feel more like a citizen of the world, and – it’s not a cliché – I really am ‘chez moi’ just about everywhere – maybe not in China, where the cultural difference is too great, but with all the friends I meet in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, the United States and, of course, Romania, I feel at home immediately. To get back to the album Ciocârlia: in concrete terms, what guided you in your choice of music? I tried to find pieces that correspond to different regions of Romania, with extremely varied rhythms and melodies. Until very recently, Romanian folklore was one of the liveliest and richest in Europe. In many other countries, the very notion of folklore or rural music has been lost, and popular music has come to be identified with what you hear in the cities, with rap and hip-hop, whereas in the countryside we come from, there are still real musicians at village weddings and celebrations. 19 DANA CIOCARLIE
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