There are a few distinct forms of song making up most of the Romanian folklore. As folk songs usually tend do, they are created to serve certain functions.
Such songs have been documented by Constantin Brailoiu in his book Esquisse d’ une mèthode de folklore musical published in 1931. Between 1951 and 1958 he released 40 volumes in the series Collection universelle de musique populaire enregistrée (Universal collection of recorded popular music) on 78 rpm records. This collection is today archived at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore „Constantin Brăiloiu”, Bucharest. After long searches, I came to the conclusion that a digitalisation of these recordings is yet to be completed (even though it has been in works since 2006).
The main category of folkloric songs highlighted in Esquisse d’une mèthode de folklore musical that I encountered growing up with peasant grandparents in Romania is the funeral lament song. A score exemplified in C. Brailoiu can be found below.
Lament songs are usually improvised and sung in an extremely dramatic way, usually accompanied by crying and shouting.
The reason I am looking at this sort of song is the striking contrast between the general everyday attitude of the peasant woman and this manifestation.
Feminism did not reach Romanian villages. Deeply orthodox Christian and still haunted by communism, families here still follow the patriarchal formula. The inferior nature of women is a fact generally agreed upon by most men (and some women too). The woman births children. Raises them. The woman cleans. The woman cooks. The woman looks after the farm. The woman digs the fields. The woman weaves. The woman sews. The woman does not make decisions. The woman does not speak in the presence of men. The woman does not uncover her hair nor attract attention in any way. The woman is expected to cheat. She is weak. She should not be trusted. Always guilty. A neighbour beating his wife on a Wednesday night is an usual sound. A girl being raped every night on the news. A woman being raped by her husband is no new news at all.
The woman is quiet.
But she can weep. She is allowed that. The only time I heard my grandmother sing.