Balkan Dances That Are Often Confused, Part Nine : Sirba Din Cimpoi and Cimpoi

Men are like bagpipes. No sound comes from them until they're full.
Irish proverb

Bagpipes are popular all over Europe: Ireland, Scotland, and the Balkans. This week's post is part of the continuing (and possibly never ending) series: Balkan Dances That Are Often Confused.

Video #1 is Sirba din Cimpoi. Sirba is a very popular Romanian dance usually punctuated with shouts and stamps. Cimpoi is a bagpipe. Bagpipes and Sirba go very well together, especially when the bagpipes are well inflated with hot air :)

Although bagpipes are often associated with Bulgaria and Macedonia, where the instrument is called gaida; they are part of the folk music of Romania as well.

The choreography is by Mihai David (seen here in the video) and the one most popular with recreational folk dancers.



Video #2 is another variation of Sirba din Cimpoi.  The group is Tingluti from Copenhagen, Denmark. The in and out step with the arm swinging reminds me of a dance very popular in Bulgaria: Dunavsko Horo.



Video #3 is Cimpoi, a fast and furious dance played on (guess what?) a bagpipe.  The rhythm is 6/8.

I have noticed when the Dunav group posts a video, the number of people dancing indicates the difficulty. They are from Jerusalem in Israel and have an excellent web site, with downloadable music and video, as well as song lyrics, dance notes, and sheet music.

Yehuda and Mika, the dance experts, demonstrate Cimpoi.  



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Another Country Heard From: The Bagpipe in Romanian Folk Music

The "Flavors" of Romanian Sirba

The series: Balkan Dances that are Often Confused:  this link leads to part eight, which in turn goes back to seven, six, five, four....it just doesn't go to liftoff!


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Romanian Folk Dance in the United States

When you're dancing, you're dancing for people to see.
Pharrell Williams

Today's post features a costumed folk dance group, Hora Romaneasca, from Boulder, Colorado, USA.  I found them totally by accident, during a search for the dance Hora de Mina on YouTube.

I found several of their videos posted in the sidebar, and I had to share them, they were so good.  These were taken during a festival in 2011.

Video #1 is the graceful Hora Spoitorilor.



Video #2 is something a bit more animated;  Alunelul de Briu, accented by shouts (strigaturi). Strigaturi are a feature of many Romanian folk dances, along with stamps. Should Romanian dancing be stamped out?  I don't think so.



Video #3 is of a dance some find intimidating because it's fast and has sudden changes of direction.  The name is Cimpoi. It means "bagpipe" in Romanian.



Video #4 is Trei Pazeste. It translates into "three times beware"; something about the sudden changes of direction and speed. There is a family of dances with the name Trei Pazeste, with different music and choreography, from other towns in Romania. You can read about them in one of the posts on the bottom of the page.

Notice how how the group uses different formations; first the men, then the women, then the entire group in a circle. (Check out the cute little girl in costume, running in front of them! I think she wanted to join the dancers.)



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Three Variations on the Romanian Folk Dance Trei Pazeste

Two Variations on the Romanian Folk Dance Hora de Mina

The Different "Flavors" of the Romanian Folk Dance Alunelul

Another Country Heard From:  The Bagpipe in Romanian Folk Music

This month's post on Light and Shadow is about the autumn season.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Different "Flavors" of the Romanian Folk Dance: Alunelul

Today's post features several variations of a popular folk dance from Romania, Alunelul. It means "little hazelnut" and how a dance came by with that name, I don't know. It probably started out as a children's song with the following lyrics:

Alunelul, Alunelul hai la joc
Sa ne fie, sa ne fie, cu noroc...

You will find the rest of the song, with translation in German and English, here:

First, here's some background on the dance. It has variations that are done in the different villages and districts in Romania.  We will explore a few of them today.

The first video shows the basic version titled simply Alunelul. It is is the one most commonly used by recreational folk dance groups, and an easy dance that anyone can do. It is also very popular with children, probably because of the stamping. 



Alunelul Batut takes the dance to the next level.  This variation is a bit more complex than the previous one, and there is no song to accompany it, although there are violins and an accordion.

Here it's performed by a group from Copenhagen, Denmark. The translation of the second word, according to Google Translate, is "beaten."  My guess is that it has to do with the amount of stamping.  They are beating up the hazelnuts here.



The next video shows Roy and the gang dancing Alunelul de la Urzica. If you want to see some really cool folk dance videos, check out Roy Butler's YouTube Channel. 

Roy seems to be partial to Balkan dances, especially those from Romania. For some reason the person who took the video was a little too close, so it looks like the heads and feet have been cut off. There is enough here, however, to make watching it worthwhile. They are even wearing folk costumes!

Urzica is a small district in southern Romania.  Some of the best dances come from the rural regions; this is one of them.



The next video is of a group from China that is very fond of music from the Balkans and calls itself a "bonding folkdance class." This dance teacher posts under the name gpknh and he also has many videos on his YouTube channel. If you are a regular reader of this blog you have seen some of them. 

Here they dance Alunelul de la Goicea.  Goicea is a district in southern Romania, in the county of Dolj. This one is done to a bagpipe accompaniment; they call it a "cimpoi" in Romania. The Romanians like the bagpipe,almost as much as their Bulgarian neighbors :)

Now that there are two bridges crossing the Danube instead of one, hopefully there will be even more intercultural exchange between Bulgaria and Romania.  According to the Bulgarian Radio's Vidin affiliate, this has already been happening...



If you enjoyed this you may like:

Another Country Heard From: The Bagpipe in Romanian Folk Music

The "Flavors" of Romanian Hora

How to Stamp Out Your Frustrations and Relieve Stress (dances from Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia)



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The "Flavors" of Romanian Sirba

Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
H.P. Lovecraft

May is Dance Month on The Alien Diaries, and today's post focuses on different "flavors" of the Romanian folk dance, Sirba or Sârba, as it is spelled in Romanian. The hora and the sirba are the two of the best known Romanian folk dances. There are many varieties of hora; with regional differences, and they are usually done in a circle. The hora is especially popular during festivals and weddings, big communal celebrations in which everyone is expected to get up and dance.

The sirba may have had Serbian origins because the name means "Serb like." This proves that the Balkans are a multicultural mish-mosh. Dances (as well as dancers) are notorious for crossing existent and non-existent borders. Sirba can be done in either a circle or a line, depending on the preference of the leader, and the dance is often punctuated by stamps and shouts.

The first group, from Denmark, performs Sirba din Cimpoi.  Cimpoi is Romanian for bagpipe (also known in Slavic-speaking countries as a gaida).  They like the bagpipe in Romania, too, almost as much as their friends across the Danube, the Bulgarians. The in and out step with the arm swinging reminds me of a dance very popular in Bulgaria, Dunavsko Horo.



The next video is of  Sirba Pe Loc, also played on a bagpipe, and a staple in the repertoire of folk dancers around the world.  It translates into "dance in place." Most of the steps here are stamping and heel clicks; there's just a little bit of lateral movement.  Notice the shoulder hold, this is very common in Romanian folk dances.



These guys take sirba to a whole new level.  Since this is a male only group at a party, they, of course, want to show off.  My guess is that they have been hitting the bar as well, which fuels the energy here.

The shouts you hear are called strigaturi, and they are a common feature of Romanian folk dances. If I were there I would have joined the circle, the men have more fun. Notice that the men try to outdo each other, it's most likely a contest to attract the women with their physical prowess; in that respect sirba is similar to Bulgarian rachenitsa.

The music here is also different, a brass band with accordion, accompanied by a singer.  Despite all the distractions (staff bringing plates to tables and little kids running around), these men are totally focused on the dance.  Maybe it's the booze.



This integrated (male-female) group dances an extremely lively and animated sirba at a wedding. My guess is that the craziness is related the the amount of alcohol consumption. This dance has lots of stamping (bataie),  and everyone circles around the accordion player.  Some people consider the accordion an instrument of torture. In Eastern Europe, however, they love it almost as much as the bagpipe. 



If you enjoyed this, you may also like:

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa, Part 1

The "Flavors" of Bulgarian Rachenitsa, Part 2

Another Country Heard From: The Bagpipe in Romanian Folk Music

Stamping it Out: Vlach Dances from Serbia


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Another Country Heard From: The Bagpipe in Romanian Folk Music

Bagpipes are the missing link between music and noise. E. K. Kruger

The Eastern European gaida, or bagpipe, is an instrument that gets around the Balkans. It's extremely popular in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece. Believe it or not, the Romanians like it too.

Romanian music is usually associated with panpipes (also called panflutes), and with another unusual folk instrument, the cimbalom. A cimbalom is also known as a hammered dulcimer, and belongs to the percussion family of instruments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbalom

You can read about the panpipes and Romanian folk music here.

http://www.eliznik.org.uk/RomaniaMusic/nai.htm

In this video is some traditional Romanian music played by a bunch of Dutch guys in Amsterdam on clarinet, accordion, violin, cimbalom and panpipes, and they are pretty damned good. This instrumentation is typical for folk ensembles in Romania.



I don't know if the Romanians got their liking for the bagpipe from their Bulgarian neighbors across the River of Many Names, but you'll find that the music of southern Romania is very big on the cimpoi (Romanian for bagpipe). Don't confuse it with the cimbalom, the cimpoi is a totally different animal. (Just so you know, the cimpoi is made from either goat or sheep hide). Both panpipes and bagpipes have been used as instruments of torture on susceptible people (but not on Bulgarians). I'm sure that the Bulgarians are flattered that their friends across the Danube have taken up the gaida.

Last year, I wrote about the bagpipe in Bulgarian folk music, you can read the post here:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/bagpipe-and-bulgarian-folk-music.html

Now it's time to hear those bagpipes in action, along with cimbalom and panpipes, the "unholy trinity" of instruments of torture :) This dance is Hora de Mina. Hora means "dance" in Romanian, and can be easily confused with horo, the Bulgarian name for the same thing.



Sârba pe Loc, a dance from the region of Muntenia in southern Romania, is another example of the gaida (oops, cimpoi) in action. Sârba is a generic name for energetic dances from Muntenia and Oltenia (another province in southern Romania) with lots of stamping. This dance is extremely popular among folk dance groups, probably because it's a socially acceptable way to get your frustrations out.



This hora from the Oltenia region of Romania is titled simply Cimpoi. You'll understand why when you hear it.



The dance notes for Cimpoi can be found here:

http://www.phantomranch.net/folkdanc/dances/cimpoi.htm

If you're interested in more interesting and unusual Eastern European folk instruments, including the kaval, the gadulka, and the panpipes you may enjoy this post:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-interesting-and-unusual.html

If you've had a bad week, here are some socially acceptable ways to relieve stress:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-stamp-out-your-frustrations-and.html


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