Doina (traditional lyrical song)

The doina is one of the most profound expressions of the Romanian soul, a lyrical creation — vocal or instrumental — through which the performer pours out, directly and freely, the deepest feelings: longing, sorrow, estrangement, love, but also revolt against injustice or against oppressors. Specific to the Romanian lands, it is the individual song par excellence, in which every performer becomes, in fact, also an author, shaping the melody according to the feeling of the moment.

Origin and meaning

The term "doină" is held by many researchers to be a very old one, related to "daina", which among Lithuanians and Latvians likewise means "song" — a testimony of belonging to the family of Indo-European peoples. The word is recorded in the eighteenth century in Dimitrie Cantemir's "Descriptio Moldaviae", and is considered by some to be of Dacian origin. At the centre of the doina stands "dorul", that word hard to translate into other languages, which George Enescu called the only truly original trait of Romanian songs.

Musical characteristics

The doina is characterised by free rhythm, rubato, by rich ornamentation and by that melody which seems to flow without metrical constraints, following the breath and the emotion of the performer. Its themes are very wide-ranging, from nature, joy and love to solitude, sadness, conflicts and social revolts. There are numerous regional types — the doina of sorrow, of conscription, of estrangement, the shepherd's and the outlaw's doina — each with its own particularities. It may be intoned by the voice or performed on the fluier, the caval, the violin or other folk instruments.

UNESCO recognition

On 30 September 2009, the Doina was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as an element proposed by Romania, being recognised as a profoundly original form of expression of a people's soul. In the Republic of Moldova the doina continues to live in the repertoire of folk music performers and of the lăutari, passed from generation to generation and preserved as a treasure of the cultural identity shared by Romanians on both banks of the Prut. Great performers and folk rhapsodes have carried this art further, and ethnomusicologists have collected and preserved hundreds of regional variants. It remains, beyond any border, the deepest voice of longing and one of the most prized treasures of Romanian spirituality.