Hoteni is anattractive and friendly village. It has many traditional features including wooden farmhouses, splendid monumental gates and woven wattle fences.
Each May people from the surrounding villages come here to celebrate Tânjaua, an ancient custom dating back to pre-Roman times in which the best ploughman of Hoteni is chased and caught by some of his fellows while the other young men of the village parade along the main street carrying a ceremonial plough made of saplings and decorated with multicoloured ribbons.
The Pops have converted their own house and two others into guesthouses; two of the houses are authentic stone and timber buildings and the third is a new-build made of concrete. Click here to see images.
Ioan and Georgeta Pop
Ioan Pop (Popicu) is a respected, established and much-loved Romanian traditional musician. As well as featuring as singer, dancer, and instrumentalist on frequent and extensive international music tours with his band “Iza” and with the Anglo-Romanian trio “Popeluc”, he works hard to preserve and nurture the musical culture from which his music originates. Together with British violinist Lucy Castle and his wife Georgeta (Geta), he is the founder of a Cultural Foundation (“Iza-Popeluc”) for traditional arts, in his home county of Maramureş, in north-western Romania.
He is also much in demand at home as abroad for weddings, community occasions, festivals and shows, and plays zongora (a regional take on the guitar), braci (a three-stringed, flat-bridged viola), vioara cu guarna (a fiddle which uses a horn as resonator), cetera (fiddle), tilinca (a simple length of pipe with which amazing musical things can be done!) and many more.
This text has been edited from the programme of the Small Nations Festival at Cilycwm near Llandovery, Wales, where he and Lucy performed on 8 July 2006. To see the full line-up go to www.cilycwm.com. You may be able to buy his music by going t0 Romanian music page 5 at http://www.passiondiscs.co.uk/romanian01/romanian_page_05.htm and http://www.sternsmusic.com.
