Doina
Encyclopedia
The Doina (ˈdojna) is a Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

 musical tune style, with Middle Eastern
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 roots, that can be found in Romanian peasant music
Romanian peasant music
The Romanian peasant music is the music of the Romanian peasants. The Romanian peasant music has largely disappeared, but it can still be found in isolated villages in regions like Maramureş, Hunedoara, Tulcea or Bucovina....

, as well as in Lăutărească
Lautari
The Romanian word Lăutar denotes a class of traditional musicians. Most often, and by tradition, Lăutari are members of a professional clan of Romani musicians , also called Ţigani lăutari. The term is derived from Lăută the name of a string instrument...

 and Klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...

 music.

Origins and characteristics

Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

 first discovered the doina in Northern Transylvania in 1912 and he believed to be uniquely Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

. After he found similar genres in Ukraine, Albania, Algeria, Middle East and Northern India, he came to the conclusion that these are part of a family of related genres of Arabo-Persian origin. He particularly linked the Romanian doina to the Turkish/Arabic Makam
Makam
Makam In Turkish classical music, a system of melody types called makam provides a complex set of rules for composing and performance...

 system. Bartók conclusions were rejected by some Romanian ethnomusicologists, who accused Bartók of anti-Romanian bias. Since then, however, the similarities between the Romanian doina and various musical forms from the Middle East has been documented by both non-Romanian, as well as Romanian scholars. Until the first half of the 20th century, both lăutari, as well as klezmer musicians were recorded to use a taksim
Taqsim
Taqsim is the name of a melodic improvisation style that could be metric or non-metric, which usually precedes a composition in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and other Middle Eastern music. The taqsim is usually performed by a solo instrument, yet sometimes the soloist can be backed by a percussionist...

 as an introduction to a tune. The taksim would be later replaced by the doina, which has been described as been very similar, though not totally identical with the taksim. Ethnomusicologist and doina performer Grigore Leşe, who recently performed with a group of Iranian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...

 musicians, said that the doinas of Maramureş have "great affinities" with the Arabo-Persian music.

Doina is a free-rhythm, highly ornamented (usually melismatic
Melisma
Melisma, in music, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.-History:Music of ancient cultures used...

), improvisational
Musical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...

 tune. The improvisation is done on a more or less fix pattern (usually a descending one), by "stretching" the notes in a rubato
Tempo rubato
Tempo rubato is a musical term referring to expressive and rhythmic freedom by a slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor...

-like manner, according to the performer's mood and imagination. Usually the prolonged notes are the fourth or fifth above the floor note.

The peasant doinas are mostly vocal and monophonic
Monophony
In music, monophony is the simplest of textures, consisting of melody without accompanying harmony. This may be realized as just one note at a time, or with the same note duplicated at the octave . If the entire melody is sung by two voices or a choir with an interval between the notes or in...

 and are sung with some vocal peculiarities that vary from place to place: interjections (măi, hei, dui-dui, iuhu), as well as glottal clucking sounds, choked sobbing effects, etc. Instrumental doinas are played on simple instruments, usually various types of flutes, or even on rudimentary ones, such as a leaf. The peasant doina is a non-ceremonial type of song and is generally sung in solitude having an important psychological action, to "ease ones soul" ("de stâmpărare" in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

). Grigore Leşe believes that, while scholars describe to great detail the technical aspects of the doina, failed to understand its psychological aspects. Doinas are lyrical in aspect and its common themes are melancholy, longing (dor), erotic feelings, love for nature, complain about the bitterness of life or invocations to God to help ease the pain, etc.

Unlike peasant doinas, lăutar and klezmer doinas are usually accompanied and played on instruments with more possibilities (violin, pan-pipe, cymbalom, accordion, clarinet, tarogato, etc). Also, unlike peasant doinas, lăutar and klezmer doinas are mostly played as an introduction to another tune, usually a dance.

In the regions of Southern Romania, Romani lăutari developed a more complex type of doina called "cântec de ascultare" (meaning "song for listening", sometimes shortened "de ascultare" or simply "ascultare"). The "cântec de ascultare" spread to other regions of Romania, with local particularities.

Etymology

Before being studied by ethnomusicologists, doina type of song were known by many names varying from region to region, "doina" being one of them. It was Constantin Brăiloiu, director of the National Archive of Folk Music, who proposed that the word "doina" be used to described all these songs.

The very origin of the word "doina" is unknown and it is spread throughout Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

 and Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

.

Although there is no universally accepted origin, the word could be of Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 origin, since a similar form (daina
Daina
A daina is a traditional form of music or poetry from Latvia. Lithuanian dainas share common traits. Latvian dainas often feature pre-Christian themes and legends, drone vocal styles and Baltic zithers ....

) can be found in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

 and Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

 meaning "folk song".


Another unrelated possible resemblance is made with the Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 word "daljina" meaning "furthering", because most doinas are about the feeling of "dor" - a Romanian word for "intensely missing" (similar to German Sehnsucht
Sehnsucht
Sehnsucht is a German word literally meaning "longing", which C. S. Lewis used to describe an "insatiable longing" for "we know not what".Sehnsucht could also refer to:* Sehnsucht , 2009 album* "Sehnsucht"...

 and Portuguese Saudade
Saudade
Saudade ) is a unique Galician-Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English. Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return...

). "Daljina" is supposed to have become "doina" in a similar way in which the word "haljina" ("clothing") became "haina" in Romanian.


Dimitrie Cantemir
Dimitrie Cantemir
Dimitrie Cantemir was twice Prince of Moldavia . He was also a prolific man of letters – philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer....

 mentions "Doina" in his "Descriptio Moldaviae" among a series of old pre-Christian (Dacian) deities, persistent in popular oral tradition, noticing that "Doina, Doina" is a starting phrase incantation in many folk songs.

In the region of Maramureş the word "horă/hore" it is still the most commonly used. The Maramureş "horă/hore" is not related with the word "horă" found in southern and eastern Romania, which comes from the Greek "choros", meaning "(circle) dance", but it is derived from the Latin "oro/orare", meaning "to say/saying".

Types of doina

  • Hora lungă
    Hora lunga
    Hora lungă , is a Romanian regional folksong style characterized by the union of a lyrical text and improvisational melody....

     - Maramureş
    Maramures
    Maramureș may refer to the following:*Maramureș, a geographical, historical, and ethno-cultural region in present-day Romania and Ukraine, that occupies the Maramureș Depression and Maramureș Mountains, a mountain range in North East Carpathians...

  • Ca pe luncă - found along the Danube
    Danube
    The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....

  • Oltului
    Oltului
    Oltului is a type of Romanian folk song, or Doina, sung near the area of the River Olt. Oltului were performed by professional ensembles as part of state-sponsored cultural management efforts during the period of Communist control of Romania....

     - found along the Olt River
    Olt River
    The Olt River is a river in Romania. It is the longest river flowing exclusively through Romania. Its source is in the Hăşmaş Mountains of the eastern Carpathian Mountains, near the village Bălan. It flows through the Romanian counties Harghita, Covasna, Braşov, Sibiu, Vâlcea and Olt...

  • De codru - codru means "forest"
  • Haiduceşti - haiduc means "outlaw" or "brigand"
  • Ca din tulnic
    Ca din tulnic
    Ca din tulnic is a unique type of doina in which the melody resembles a type of Alpenhorn called the tulnic....

     - unique type in which the melody
    Melody
    A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

     imitates a type of Alpenhorn called the tulnic
  • Ciobanului - shepherd
    Shepherd
    A shepherd is a person who tends, feeds or guards flocks of sheep.- Origins :Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations, beginning some 6,000 years ago in Asia Minor. Sheep were kept for their milk, meat and especially their wool...

    's doina
  • De dragoste
    De dragoste
    De dragoste are Romanian popular love songs and poetic.More specific De dragoste is a special musical category played in the south of Walachia, in the Danube Plain....

     - popular form, usually about love; dragoste means "love".
  • De jale - mellow, mournful doina; jale means "grief".
  • De leagăn
    De leagan
    Cântec de leagăn is a lullaby in Romania which is a free form song performed in personal and unstructured context. There is some debate as to whether or not it may have spawned the doina musical style.-External links:* *...

     - a lullaby
    Lullaby
    A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....

    ; leagăn means "cradle".
  • De pahar - drinking song; pahar means "drinking glass".
  • Foaie verde - classical form; literally "green leaf".
  • Klezmer
    Klezmer
    Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...

     - played by Jewish musicians from Bessarabia
    Bessarabia
    Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....

     and Moldavia
    Moldavia
    Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...


Current status

While at the beginning of the 20th century, the doina was the most common type of peasant song (in some areas the only type), today it has almost completely disappeared from the peasant life, as most peasant music did. This process has been accentuated during the communist era
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

, with the rise of the new "popular music
Romanian popular music
In Romania, the syntagm popular music is used to denote a musical genre based on folklore, but distinct from it. The distinction is both in form and essence and it arises mainly from the commercial aspect of the popular music.-Origins:...

", bringing a new style of performance that degenerated the peasant styles.

The doina it is still, however, common in the repertoire of the lăutari from Ardeal and Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...

 regions.

In 2009 the doina has been included in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
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