June in Moldova

It is now truly summer. Days are hot, although we are to have rain for Saturday and Sunday this week. You may suspect that since I am approaching the end of my time in Moldova I am not as active on the blog, but actually I have been busy with everything from monitoring elections to attending my son Colin.s wedding in Denver, to conducting many amazing interviews among the nai players in Moldova.
I know photos add a lot to my blog so here are a few.

This is a photo from my apartment. It is a very large flower that appeared on the plant in my living room. My landlords use the health of the plant to gauge my involvement as a renter, and so far I have done pretty well (except for one time when my landlady scolded me and made quite a show of carrying several large containers of water to rescue the plant). I am very happy to have a big flower in the apartment!

I have been practicing on a large nai, but this week I decided to take a smaller one to my lesson. My professor was very happy and said that this should be my primary instrument now. Here is a photo showing a collage of the two instruments, a flag advertising the current mayor - Dorin Chirtoacă - and some CDs from Dmitru Blajinu - a fantastic Moldovan musician. This is taken in my living room.

Food is the most important thing for many Moldovans. I love to ask people about food because it brings any conversation to a halt while the person describes how to make their village (and family) version of sarmale, mamaligă, zeamă, or other Moldovan favorite dishes. Here is a shot of my favorite dish - crenvurști (Moldovan hot dogs) fried and put on top of fresh tomatoes, rice, and peas. Add balsamic vinegar and it is delightful! (and the Romanian language texts in the background....)

 

One of the reasons I have not posted recently is that Moldova has been having some very close and very crucial elections during the past few weeks. I was honored to serve as an international observer on June 5th for the first election of local officials. The election results were very close and another election took place on the 19th in which the incumbent mayor, Dorin Chirtoacă, a very brave young man, made a strong showing and clearly won by a small margin. I hope the very best for Moldova and am so thrilled that over 60 % of the people eligible to vote came out for the most recent runoff election.

So I will show a photo of Moldovan and Ukrainian chocolate to represent Moldovan desserts. Both very tasty!!! Bucuria is made right here in Chișinău and is my very favorite chocolate.

May Music in Moldova

I have enjoyed music in Moldova this month. It is the month of examinations plus a month of great concerts. Here is a photo of some students performing their folklore examination. They wrote the script and selected songs for acting out a Șezatoarea, a visiting event in Moldovan village life. The songs were quite beautiful with some solos and some group songs accompanied by cobza and violin.

Tonight I bought ten tickets for some American and Moldovan friends to attend a concert by Valy Boghean (in the photo) and his band at the Eminescu Theater. My Russian translator and my Romanian translator were there along with some special musical friends from Cricova.

The concert was extremely interesting and moving. Valy Boghean performed with a band of țimbal, bass, percussion, and electric guitar for the first half. They performed music with a strong basis in Moldovan village and folklore music. Valy himself played alto and soprano saxophones, caval, fluier, tylinka, some kind of reed instrument from central Asia, guitar, and flugelhorn. He sang several doinas (sad songs in rubato style) along with fabulous dance tunes.

In the second part of the concert he brought out a group of backup singers along with electric bass, keyboards, and auxiliary percussion to perform a long set of his popular songs.

The first time I met Valy was in October following a violin competition in Ialoveni, a nearby village. It was late and there were not enough seats in the cars we had used to drive out there so Valy was asked to take me back to Chișinău. Several of us packed into his very small car and chatted on the way to the city. He was friendly and a very happy person who was obviously crazy about music. I had not idea that he was actually quite famous and on his way to being a big star.

My Romanian translator has already planned an interview with him. We hope to catch him sometime next week. The most interesting question in my interviews so far has been about what Moldovan music and musicians can offer to the world. Valy Boghean is certainly one person with a very special set of sounds to offer.

The Day of Europe in Moldova

I am going to post some photos from today. This was The Day of Europe in Moldova and there was plenty of action in the center of the city. It was cold and windy, but everyone was enjoying the sunshine.

 These young people were out in support of Igor Dodon, the Communist Party candidate for mayor of Chișinău. They stood near the statue of Ștefan cel mare.

 Across the street the Romania booth had many visitors.

This booth was set up to promote study of European languages. The poster says - Europa este mai aproape! - Europe is very near!

 There were many police walking through the exhibits. You can see that they were dressed in very fashionable uniforms. Appearance is important!

This photo shows police footwear in Moldova. Very nice shoes!

A week of vacation

I am going to post some photos from the past week and give each a caption. As always, I am never sure what is going to happen day to day in my life in Chișinău. This week was full of delightful surprises.

I attended a paște (Easter) celebration at a Romanian orthodox church that lasted all Saturday night. For me it was a moving and beautiful time of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This photo was taken at about 4 a.m. and shows families with candles preparing to eat the special foods they have brought to celebrate.

On Sunday, after about three hours of sleep, I took the bus to a nearby village to participate in the music making to celebrate Easter at a Baptist church. The first photo shows the sign at the front of the church that celebrates the Biblical idea that God is Love. One of the wonderful pastors from the church plays a seven stringed Russian style guitar. He was imprisoned for two years under Soviet rule for refusing to close his church and now obviously loves being alive to enjoy every day.

On Tuesday my great friends Bob and Beth and I rented a car to drive to Giurgiulești in the farthest southern tip of Moldova, where the Prut River joins the Danube as it makes its way out into the Danube Delta and eventually the Black Sea. Being a smart American I documented the missing tail light, broken bumper, and other scrapes and scratches with a photo before we left. The rental company never mentioned anything and I think they were just happy to get the car back after our trip on the crazy Moldovan highways. We encountered wonderful families with great home made food and wine, and great music.

I took these two photos in the center of Chișinău today. The first one shows one of my favorite city attractions - the old trolleibuses. The city received a lot of brand new buses this week with assistance from many international agencies from both Russia and Western Europe. This is one of the old buses which I love so much, and you can see that sometimes the doors do not open and need the passengers to give some assistance.
The second photo shows the way many Moldovans read the newspapers. They are posted in these display cases in one of the city parks each day.

Today was a day for remembering lost loved ones. The first photo shows wreaths and flowers for sale at one of the large cemeteries in Chișinău. The second photo shows the main entrance to that cemetery with many thousands of visitors and a police presence to help maintain an orderly process of coming and going.

The last photo shows the front of one of the special buses lined up to take people to the largest cemetery in Chișinău. As I waited for my bus to Cricova I saw dozens of these buses headed for the cimitrul Sf. Lazăr, described by a friend at that stop as the "doina" buses - for remembrance and sadness.

Spring Painting and Cleaning

It is finally springtime in Chișinău and people are very happy. We have had a few days of sunshine already and the week looks pretty good. The students at the Academy of Music are having a hard time staying inside the building because it seems to retain the cold and it is so nice outside. The people who care for the building have done extensive work to clean and prepare the flower beds and we are all awaiting the full show of flowers to come.

Springtime means cleaning and painting.

I am attaching some photos from my day. First of all, I took some photos at about 7:45 this morning of the newly painted benches in the park. "Vopsit" means "painted." There is a lot of fresh green paint on these benches. They are going to need the paint in the good weather ahead since already the park is full of people enjoying the sunshine.

As I made my way up Strada Nicolae Iorga toward the Academy of Music I saw these newly painted trees. Groups of volunteers came out last Saturday to clean up the parks and streets and paint the bottom of the trees. I saw the people doing these trees. They had a truck with a big container of white paint and a sprayer. It looks like the paint got away from them on a few trees! I am told that the paint helps protect the trees from bugs and makes them look good.

The volunteers were meticulously raking and picking up scraps of paper and other garbage. People were chatting and laughing together most of the day.

My local "Orange" box (a small square building along the street that sells candy, pop, cigarettes, and cards to recharge your Orange brand mobile phones) is managed by a very cheerful and energetic woman who was out painting her trees and even digging up some spots for a garden. I stopped by at 10 p.m. to buy some minutes for my phone and she was excited to show me the garden out back and to tell me that she will paint the sidewalk borders tomorrow.

Then, as I was walking home tonight, I saw this advertisement for an upcoming concert. It features some wonderful nai players including the great Vasile Iovu and Marin and Alexandru Gheras. Marin is a professional naiist who performs all over the world. He recently gave me two of his wonderful CDs and I play them all the time in my apartment. His son Alexandru is a student at the Academy of Music and is also quite a good player. I hope to attend some of the rehearsals for this concert. Marin and Alexandru will perform duets with the orchestra.

I hope it is getting to springtime wherever you are! Thanks for reading my blog.

Spring continues.....

Tonight I attended a wonderful concert at the Sala cu orgă put on by students and faculty from the Academy of Music and a music school in Iași, Romania. Following a great performance by the wonderful Academy string orchestra and a visiting percussion ensemble, we stepped out into blasts of cold wind with lots of rain. The heat in my apartment building was turned off early in March so it is now extremely cold and on days like today also quite dark. I am happy to see the end of my very high heating bills and do not like to turn on lights during the day since electricity is quite expensive, but I am looking forward to the promise of spring we have seen for weeks.

I want to acknowledge my wonderful sister-in-law who passed away last Saturday. We will miss her so much. She was a great aunt, sister, and friend to all of us and we loved the way she continued to play (and win!) online word games even in the midst of painful cancer treatment trials.

Moldova is a special place. I gave a presentation about music in Moldova last week at a Fulbright conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. I have attached two photos that accompanied that presentation. The videos cannot be put on the internet since I made a promise to the performers that I would not let them be on YouTube.

I have been especially interested in the lăutar communities (long-time musical families) in Moldova which seem to be a musical model of integrating and enhancing music from many very different communities and families. This may be the special role Moldova has to play in the world community. As I interact with colleagues at my university, I am amazed to realize that some think I am living a wealthy alpine nation, while others assume that Moldova must be in Africa since they have never heard of it. I simply encourage them to Google it.

Nicolae Botgros, conductor of the famed orchestra Lăutarii from Moldova, spoke at the Academy of Music this week. His speech was very well attended and two TV stations recorded it and have already broadcast it in its entirety. He spoke about how Moldova is in a Romanian zone, and does not produce songs or singers with a specific identity.

Maybe this is something special about Moldova. As lăutar families with Roma, Jewish, Russian, Romanian, Gagauz (Turkish), Bulgarian, and Ukrainian backgrounds intermarry and interact in everyday life they share the complexities of language and music in Moldova. Lăutar musicians may be the epitome of this special Moldovan model of working together in complicated economic situations.

Music stands in Moldova

These are Moldovan music stands. They are handmade and maintained by a man who comes to the Academy of Music occasionally to fix them. I love them because they epitomize what I love about Moldova. People take time to care for each other and for their surroundings.

Each music stand is made from slats of wood, held together with small tacks and bits of glue. There are two essential parts in each one that must be hand carved to fit and serve its purpose. The cloth one in the photo is especially good for performing while seated. The others can be adjusted by moving the parts up or down. Any of them can be made taller by being placed on a chair.

There is a set of these stands in the Sala cu orgă and the Filharmonic Hall. Sometimes they use the more expensive folding stands similar to the ones I used to take with me to All-City Band in Denver in the 1960s, but I think the musicians have a special love for the handmade Moldovan ones.

Care and maintenance of these stands is intensive. While there is a tradition of taking a music stand home  after graduation from my university and other places I have studied or taught in the US, no one would ever think of stealing one of these very special Moldovan stands.

People perform quite a lot from xerox copies. These sheets of music have to be put on the stands and kept there using whatever means is possible.

As spring finally comes to Moldova the crews are out in the parks preparing for a good growing season with handmade brooms and tools for digging. And the music stands are being repaired and made available for the many wonderful musical events accompanying the change of seasons.