Doina

The Doina (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈdojna]) is a Romanian musical tune style, possibly with Middle Eastern roots, customary in Romanian peasant music, as well as in Lăutărească. It was also adopted into Klezmer music.

Similar tunes are found throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In some parts of the Balkans this kind of music is referred to as scaros or scaru.

Béla Bartók discovered the doina in Northern Transylvania in 1912 and he believed it to be uniquely Romanian. After he found similar genres in Ukraine, Albania, Algeria, Middle East and Northern India, he came to the belief 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 system. Bartók's conclusions were rejected by some Romanian ethnomusicologists, who accused Bartók of anti-Romanian bias. Nevertheless, the similarities between the Romanian doina and various musical forms from the Middle East have been subsequently documented by both non-Romanian and Romanian scholars. Until the first half of the 20th century, both lăutari and klezmer musicians were recorded using a taksim as an introduction to a tune. The taksim would be later replaced by the doina, which has been described as being similar, though not totally identical to the taksim. Romanian ethnomusicologist and musician Grigore Leşe, after performing with a group of Iranian musicians, noticed that the doinas of Maramureş have "great affinities" with the Arabo-Persian music.

The doina is a free-rhythm, highly ornamented (usually melismatic), improvisational tune. The improvisation is done on a more or less fixed pattern (usually a descending one), by stretching the notes in a rubato-like manner, according to the performer's mood and imagination. Usually the prolonged notes are the fourth or fifth above the floor note.

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