ACOMPANIAMENTUL TRADIȚIONAL DE COBZĂ ÎN FOLCLORUL MUZICAL AL MAGHIARILOR DIN ZONA SIRET-TAZLĂU
TRADITIONAL COBZA ACCOMPANIMENT IN THE FOLK MUSIC OF HUNGARIANS FROM THE SIRET-TAZLĂU REGION

Summary/Abstract: Cobza (in Hungarian: koboz) is the most common short-necked lute type in East European folk music. One of its home regions is Moldavia in Eastern Romania, where it was widely used in dance music until the 1950s, as an accompanying instrument paired with a fiddle. The collections captured the playing of nine cobza players from the valleys of the Siret and Tazlău (in Hungarian: Szeret and Tázló) rivers. Five of them are Moldavian Hungarians and four are gypsy musicians. On the basis of archival recordings of Cluj Folklore Archive of the Romanian Academy and my own fieldwork, I have been working on a reconstruction of the traditional techniques and style of this instrument in that region. One task of the cobza was to reinforce the tonal centre of the tune in a drone-like manner. Secondly, it realized a rhythmic function by repeating and varying a set of motifs based on broken chords, complying with the rhythmic pattern of the respective genre. Thirdly, talented cobza players would also include some fragments of the tune as played by the fiddler, providing an auxiliary melodic function.

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