According to folk's spirituality, on 24^th February is the celebration of 'Dragobete's Day', who is the symbol of youth, love and joy. For that reason, 22^nd February is dedicated to love, in the way it is perceived and sung in Romanian folk music: love in spring's breeze, love as joy, love as truth, love as freedom, love as a miracle, as freshness and tenderness, love as harmony, love, as the beauty of the celebration of life, of the spirit's renewal. Love has a name in the traditional Romanian Pantheon: Dragobete, the one who 'kisses girls'.

Also known as 'Ioan Dragobete', 'Drăgostițele' (The Loving One), 'Sântion de primăvară' (Spring's Saint John), 'Cap de primăvară' (Spring's Beginning), he is considered to be Old Dochia's son and he is pictured as a handsome, loving young man. Dragobete also symbolises the 'wedding of the birds', or the day when they gather in flocks, they fly, they mate, and they start building their nests. It is said that the ones which do not find a mate this year will remain lonely until next year. Same as the birds, boys and girls must meet and celebrate Dragobete by singing and being joyful, in order to be happily in love for the whole year.

We will listen to love songs from Vlașca, performed in the way the old fiddlers from Clejani did until not so long ago, in their unmistakable style; we will watch the stories about first loves and the pure love between young couples, which blossomed even before that, in the middle of the winter, between the Epiphany and the Great Lent, when they met at small gatherings or after finishing collective work; we will find out that love is not always happy, mutual or socially accepted; we will see the feeling of longing as it appears in folk's love songs (named 'doine'), as the representation of a superior state of love, as an elevation to a purer and a more spiritual state, as an act of creation which can occur both during and after falling in love, and as a durability which tends to become everlastingness.

Therefore, with the 'pretext' of Dragobete's Day, I invite you to rediscover with me the fascinating universe of Romania's spoken word culture, Sunday, 22^nd February 2015, at 19.00, only on the Traditional Music programme.