A hori bine
Singing the Hora Well

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the Maramureș village of Breb during the 1970s and 1980s, the author collected an impressive corpus of hora songs composed and continually re-created by women. These songs were meant to express, with both depth and simplicity, the fundamental stages of human existence: birth, childhood, love, marriage, and death. The title of the resulting volume, Mother Told Me/ To Learn to Sing the Hora Well, encapsulates the essence of the spiritual heritage transmitted through the maternal line. Unlike purely cultural heritage, the spiritual heritage of the women of Breb constitutes a vital impulse: the call to shape one’s own life through song, while passing on the strength of inspiration and interiority to future generations. The article also recalls the author’s efforts to translate these hora songs into English while living abroad and to publish them in a bilingual edition—a project undertaken as a heartfelt obligation to the community that had entrusted her with this remarkable legacy.

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