This double album is part of the series ''CNRS-Musée de l'Homme'' and made of recordings by Bernard Lortat-Jacob and Jacques Bouët; both died in 2024 and 2018 respectively.
They worked on the music made by the lautari from Southern Rumania mainly in Oltenia in villages during weddings and social events.
They focused on the ballad type which was already at that time (1980-1981) fast declining in competition with more modern style of singing. As they emphasise the ballad is sung first to the oldest people in the crowd who are ready and willing to listen to epic or mythlogical stories. More and more younger people try to prevent a singer from singing if it's not to their taste.
Here several ''taraf'' or a single singer perform for a public. Lortat-Jacob explains that these semi or fully professional musicians are generally Rom and that some of them are local performers in a small area while others have a bigger reputation and play with several players over a large region.
Apart from the singers we can hear fiddles, guitar, cymbalum, accordion and double bass.
Seven ballads are presented here along with three short dances, one song improvised I think to welcome the French scholars, one song when the bride leaves her home and family, one song sung for the wedding procession and finally a ''modern'' song.
Strangely the text is in French only.You can nevertheless read it here :
https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_E_1986_002_001/
