FOCUS: ROMANIA

This year, Music Gallery explored resistance music and presented inspiring stories from around the world. We saw how the cassette became a platform that helped music circulate, how records were made from X-rays, and we discovered the stories behind banned songs from different corners of the globe. Now, we are ready to bring you stories like these from closer to home — from Romania.

This time, however, we are shifting the perspective slightly. Our research shows that Romania holds many stories waiting to be uncovered, and we want to discover them all. What we are presenting now is only the beginning — a first sample of our country’s musical stories.

For one month, our gallery will take you through the story of vinyl in Romania, what Phoenix meant for the development and identity of Romanian rock, how hip-hop and cassette tapes went hand in hand, why Pablo Casals called Enescu the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart, and how Johnny Răducanu, had he lived in a different time, might have been invited to all the major jazz festivals.

To build your future, you need to know your past. We are not revealing secret histories; we are simply curating the information so that, by the time you finish exploring our exhibition, you leave with a little more admiration and inspiration for what it means to be Romanian.

Come to the gallery, listen, and if you know a Romanian music story that deserves to be told, bring it to us. It might be on a cassette, on a record, in an old article, or simply a story that has never been widely known. We are only at the first chapter, and we want to write the rest together.