Audio CD (28 April 2008), Asphalt Tango CD-ATR 1508

“Alongside Romica Puceanu, Gabi Lunca was the most valued performer of Romanian ‘muzica lautareasca’. Yet unlike her sensuous and hard-drinking rival, Gabi Lunca’s life, partly because of the four children she had with the accordion player Ion Onoriu, was spent in familiar seclusion and without excess. Not only for this reason, but also because of her carefully selected stage clothes and her great professionalism, she was also referred to as the ‘Tziganca de matase’, the silken Gypsy woman. Gabi Lunca played with Aurel and Victor Gore’s taraf until her marriage to Ion Onoriu. Later she worked with the trumpeter Costel Vasilescu, the cymbalom god Toni Iordache and other big names from the Bucharest Lautari scene in the state-owned Electrecord studio.” – Grit Friedrich

Available from Amazon.co.uk, HMV.com (CD) and from Play.com (as download). Prices start at £7.25.