For One Night Only - Taraf and Marko

The Hackney Empire hosted royalty – Romany royalty - last night. The beautifully ornate Victorian theatre, so shabbily splendid that you could imagine Angela Carter’s Fevvers flying above the heads of the assembled revellers, was the perfect setting for an incredible line-up of two of the brightest jewels in Roma music’s spangled crown: Taraf de Haidouks, supported by Boban I Marko Markovic Orkestar.
Boban wasn’t able to perform for personal reasons, but Marko, the stellar Serbian trumpeter’s son, proved himself worthy of the title of anointed heir, leading the Orkestar through a set of jazzy, oriental coceks that proved that a band of portly, hoodlum-looking young men with tubas and trumpets can teach the world a thing or two about rocking out, and rocking hard. Oozing testosterone, swagger, swank and gypsy flash, they parped out snakey, insistent sounds that induced a collective sweat-soaked delirium. This was music so upbeat and infectious that not moving to it wasn’t an option: it was heady, glorious stuff.
Marko and his band of tuba-toting troubadours took no prisoners in forcing the audience to live in the moment, but the fabled Taraf de Haidouks transported them to an older, stranger place. Apparently timeless, the virtuoso Romanian band of lautari play music so deep and wild that as you hear it and are drawn into their world, you somehow understand that you are hearing stories – strange, terrible and beautiful - that are elemental, or universal, and completely entrancing.
Taraf have survived the deaths of two of their members, the legendary violinist Nicolae Neacsu and singer and cimbalon player Cacurica, and their shifting line-up makes it feel as if the music they are channelling is of more significance than any one member of the band, no matter how vast his contribution may have been. Onstage, it looks shambolic as veteran Taraf members come and go, but with each tune they cast a spell that is powerfully potent. In particular, singer Ilie Iorga raises hairs on the backs of necks with the Cind Eram La, a chronicle of a peasant uprising; to call it haunting is an understatement. Razor-thin flautist Falcaru blows thrilling, trilling notes from his instrument like a demented Pied Piper; his solo in Flight Of The Bumblebee is so fast and so fluid that it seems impossible for a human being to produce such shimmering, quicksilver sound. An hour and a half passes as if in a dream, and having been transported by the Taraf into what felt like another world, afterwards it seemed as if they were only onstage for a few brief, magical minutes.