Resurrecting the lost sound of Romanian and Eastern European Tangos as played in Bucharest cafes and parks.

...restaurants and clubs across the 1930s. Oana Cătălina Chiţu and her musicians combine the lost tango songs of that era with the folk ballads of Maria Tanase (1913-1963; the Romanian Piaf). Oana was born in rural Romania and grew up listening to her father sing the lost tangos. Visiting relatives in Bucharest she found they had old gramophones and scratchy 78 recordings of the tangos. She began to memorise this beautiful, vanished music. At the same time she loved the songs of Maria Tanase, the tragic diva of Romania, whose voice once haunted the nation. No other singer of the younger generation from Romania has been able to approach both the tangos à la romanesque and Tanase's ballads so authentically yet freely. Although Romania is a country with a rich musical tradition a virus of cheap, electronic pop music has seized the nation post-revolution. Oana represents the cutting edge of a new generation of Romanians interested in the brilliant - now largely forgotten - musical traditions from a bygone age. "Da-mi gurita s-o sarut" (give me your mouth, so I can kiss it) was sung by the Romanian tango star Jean Moscopol in the thirties. The ladies of interwar Bucharest who fell for his charms were many. Moscopol lived for some years in Berlin where he entertained the wealthy clientele of the Romanian casino together with the George Boulanger Orchestra and sang in UFA films. And yet, he returned to his homeland again and again to perform. When Romania's King Mihail was forced to abdicate in 1947, many artists left Romania, crossing the green border to the West. The voices of the elegant tango and foxtrot singers were gone, Jean Moscopol had emigrated, the Gypsy singer Zavaidoc had died and Cristian Vasile had fallen silent: There was no place for "decadent tango" in the Socialist People's Republic of Romania.