May God Grant Me Better Enemies-Nicolae Guța: The Missing Link – Part II

Written by Claude Cahn. Claude Cahn has worked for several decades on Roma rights issues in Europe, including for eleven years at the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). He regularly purchased market cassettes of Nicolae Guța’s recordings from 1998 until YouTube and other electronic sources ended the need to do so. Pale MendeDe Cind

Animal metaphors are not incidental to any physical description of Guța. From the reedy man in solid-color polyester suits in the early videos – now recently reposted on Youtube – to the ever-more-portly incarnations of the late 1990s and beyond, Guța’s face comes increasingly to resemble a bulldog. His bulbous eyes are planted at a slightly sad angle on either side of a huge slab of nose. His default gaze is somewhat addled, as if withered under the relentless impact of poor quality alcohol. Chin, dimpled; teeth, rabbity; jowls, packed; gums propped up and tight as if packed with immense wads of cotton; a single fang (upper, right) points slightly outward, describing the arc down the immense bulb of his belly. The latter object is perched atop two spindly legs, which originate from a dark cavern deep underneath it. These are capable of shifting the bulk of the item around with considerable grace, given the circumstances. It is often nowadays in a white suit. Particularly in light of the imbalance between torso and disembodied head, his dance style owes something to Charlie Chaplin. This effect is heightened by the fact that current Romani shoe styles render even longer his already over-long feet. Stuck to either side of his muscle-bound head are a pair of elfin ears and pasted across the centre of his face, the trademark moustache, curved in two sad half-moons downward. The organizers of this year’s New Years Eve television gala gave him a slapstick role dressed in a Securitate uniform, which seemed strangely appropriate.3 Remarkably, in light of the sum of the parts, the overall impression is of devilish charm.

But Guța’s voice, at the height of its powers, has been pure gold: instantly recognizable, precise in several octaves of range, in turns honeyed, sharp, gravelly, slightly nasal. He has – or at least had –immense stamina for the endless, quavered and embellished keened notes of the siniake/doina table-song laments. He has seemed never to need to resort to crooning because his voice has managed to

follow even his more intense emotional ambitions. In some films of weddings – his natural performative element – even he seems surprised at his abilities. In this sense, neither his children, nor national rivals such as Adrian Minune, Copilul de Aur or Florin Salaam, nor his only approximate rival on the Romani scene — Sandu Ciorba — are in his league.

Despite a boom in Romani music – including Romanian Romani music – taking place over the last decade in the “World Music” scene, Guța is relatively unknown outside Romania. He does not appear on the major World Music labels and is not featured in the major summer festival circuit of Europe’s summer. He is too expensive. In 2005, he cost 2500 EUR per hour or 10,000 EUR per night. Since his milieu is Romani weddings and similar Romani community events, this sum is a mere down payment for bakshish and request payments at the event itself.

As a result, particularly prior to his Bucharest move, his has been a performative mode developed almost entirely facing traditional – and highly demanding — Romani audiences, in performances generally lasting twelve hours or more. These Romani audiences come for the most important affirmative event on the Romani calendar – the wedding – and expect the Romani world reflected in the mirror of the band – and especially the singer. In the case of virtuoso wedding performers like Guța, the singer becomes the narrator of Romani values and of a Romani lifeworld, played out in the course of the event itself.

TO BE CONTINUED

Coming next…

Coming next: Part III – Nicolae Gutsa: Esteemed Listener

Third Saturday of October, 1999: A thin, poor and obviously Romani man is peddling wares on a ragged blanket at the annual market at Negrin/Fekete tó, just outside Cluj Napoca, the capital of Transylvania.
The Negrin market is held in an open expanse of field just off a small railroad stop. The Hungarian name for the village – Fekete tó – adds mystery to the place; the Romanian name means “Black”, while the Hungarian name means “Black Lake”. There is no lake anywhere nearby. Clear, blue sky; cold, bright autumn sun. A cloud of smoke from roasting meat drifts past. Behind the man are two tattered columns of audio speakers, blasting music at such high volume that it is impossible to get close enough to see what he is selling. The music is so distorted that it is barely recognizable as music, more pulsing fuzz than anything else; unbearably, shockingly, painfully loud. The man rocks back and forth, as if in a trance. Guța Volume 7.

1. clau...@gmail.com. The author is grateful to his wife Cosmina Novacovici for extensive assistance with the translation of the texts of songs quoted in this essay, as well as for critical comments on a number of observations included here.
2. This is a somewhat different kind of claim to the series of observations concerning “the invention of tradition” included in the volume of the same name edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence (eds.), The Invention of Traditions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
3. Vaguely suggestive of brutality is Guța’s past in heavy industry in the town of Petroşani, a mining centre. On several occasions after 1989, miners been summoned to Bucharest to violently quell protests by students and intellectuals. Among many Romani fans, Guța is believed to have actually been a miner. However, his official website (http://personal.nicolaeguta.ro/, accessed 30 January 2009) identifies him as having worked for the railroad.
4. See Stewart, Michael, Time of the Gypsies, Boulder: Westview Press, 1997, particularly pp.50-72 and 181-202.
5. Someone has recently uploaded videos of these – featuring Romani dancing in the Timiş style and a thin Guța seemingly from a different era — onto YouTube. The direct links are provided with each song.
6. Lyrics are not included on Guța cassettes, though the titles of songs are. For a number of reasons, I am not using the Romanian-language orthography used by Guța on the cassettes to render Romani. I use instead spelling more conducive to unequivocal recognition by native English speakers. Thus, for example, I have rendered “Shukar San, Shukar Kheles”, where Guța uses “Şucar san, Şucar cheles”.
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch
8. http://www.youtube.com/watch8
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?9
10. For an excellent exploration of this tension, see Sante, Luc, “The Genius of the Blues”, in New York Review of Books, Volume 41, Number 14, August 11, 1994.
11. See Verdery, Katherine, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991.
12. This is a somewhat different kind of claim to the series of observations concerning “the invention of tradition” included in the volume of the same name edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence (eds.), The Invention of Traditions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.