Gheorghe Zamfir and Marcel Cellier Listening Party

The other day, the Gheorghe Zamfir record that I ordered from the UK finally arrived. I think I was waiting around three or four weeks - I'd forgotten about it, really. The record I bought is "A Theme From Picnic at Hanging Rock". So, Zamfir's music repackaged because it had become so popular from the success of the film. This afternoon I played it really really loudly at home. Zamfir is a Romanian pan pipist, I think the first and the only to become globally popular. He was discovered by an ethnomusicologist called Marcel Cellier who actually plays all the organ on the album. Predominantly, the album is mournful pan pipe alongside funereal organ - and I have to say, Cellier's organ work is my favourite part of the album, it lingers magnificently on a lower register behind the faster pipe-work. Because of the movie, my favourite track is "Doina, Sus Pe Culmea Dealuilui" (Miranda's theme), which if the internet can be believed means "sad song way up on the top of the hill", which is so perfect for Picnic!

Doing a little online research, the "doina" is a Romanian peasant genre that is influenced by middle-eastern scales, drawing from regions such as Arabia and Persia.  According to the wiki, "doinas are lyrical in aspect and their common themes are melancholy, longing (dor), erotic feelings, love for nature, complaints about the bitterness of life or invocations to God to help ease pain, etc". Apparently they were traditionally often meant to be sung or played by oneself, so it was an introspective and highly personal genre. Listening to the album by myself reminds me of when I was around fourteen (around the time that I first watched Picnic), and I used to play minor chords over and over again on the piano at home. I guess that was my own form of doina too - I definitely had a lot of sadness and anger to sort through by myself on the piano back then, it was a therapeutic zone. That is one of the reasons why I often find it hard to play the piano today, it brings back a lot of strange memories. And the film and the music of Picnic at Hanging Rock feels very much a part of my own history and adolescent development.