Lache Gazaru

Lache Gazaru was the nickname of Mihai Constantin, a Romanian Gypsy lautar, described by a Romanian ethnologist as " a volcano of sound". His style was unusual and raw, using only his fiddle and thick voice. Born in 1915 in Poiana Mare, Oltenia, he lived most of his life in the village of Desa, playing with his voice and violin at local weddings, funerals and baptisms. He died in 1970. In 1951 two Romanian ethnologists recorded Lache Gazaru's songs in an improvised underground studio in Bucharest.