Muzică lăutărească

Muzică lăutărească is the professional folk music of Romania's Romani lăutari musicians, virtuoso hereditary bands — tarafs — engaged for weddings, feasts and restaurants across Wallachia and Moldavia. Played on violin, cimbalom, accordion, double bass, cobza and nai panpipe, it moves between slow, rhapsodic doina-like laments and furious dance tunes, absorbing Ottoman, Hungarian, Jewish and later jazz influences while preserving a nineteenth-century urban repertoire. Singers such as *Romica Puceanu*, *Gabi Luncă* and *Dona Dumitru Siminică*, and instrumentalists such as cimbalom master *Toni Iordache*, define its recorded canon.