Although it extinguished in 2002, at just 47 years old, the artist Drăgan Muntean remained the “voice” of the forest land, a picturesque mountain region, which became famous through his doins. The hometown of the performer, located in an old village of the forest, is today the only museum of the region.
Drăgan Muntean. Photo: Hunedoara Replica archive.
The house in which he saw the light of Drăgan Muntean day (1955 – 2002) remained the only museum in the Land of Forest, a picturesque mountain region in western Romania, with archaic villages, crowded on the ridges of the hills or strung in the deep valleys, shaded by forests.
The place in the village of Poienița Voinai, which became a museum after the lightning death of the folklore performer, houses a collection of traditional forest objects and costumes, but also the memory of the one who, for over two decades, has promoted through music the world of the forest village.
Childhood in the land of the forests
One of his most famous songs, “Good Sara, Bade Ioane”, play the life of the elderly alone, a scene inspired by the life of many locals in the mountain villages of Hunedoara.
The house in Poienița Voiii. Photo: Daniel Guță
“Good sara, bade Ioane. Mulțămescu. You, virgins, when you get married, not to forget, that nothing more expensive in the world, like parents next“They are its lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4hm_2lebia
Some of his songs remember the life of the locals in Alun, the old woman and other settlements of the forests, once full of life, but remained almost desolate with the passage of time.
Drăgan Muntean was born in Poienița Voiii and he had a childhood on the hills in the forest of the forest, in old villages that were gravitating around the Iron Mines from Ghelari and Muncelu, of the stone, talc and marble careers and, later, around the Hunedoara Metallurgical Center.
However, the large forests and pastures on their edge represented the true wealth of the patriarchal villages in the mountains, which kept old traditions and a special popular port.
“Here it was possible to maintain an archaic popular culture, extremely original and differentiated from that of the surrounding regions”informed the ethnologist Romulus Vuia.
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The Festival of the Forests of Poienița Voii photo Daniel Guță Adevărul (28) JPG
Drăgan Muntean declared himself proud of his origins and the fact that he started his musical careers on the plains of the Hunedoara Mountains.
“I was born in a good sign for me, that of Aries, on April 18, 1955, in the village of Poienița Voiii, Hunedoara county. After graduating the primary classes in the native village, in the class I attended the courses of the Music School in Deva, until the eighth grade, then in the Pedagogical High School, I worked for 14 years in education, then at the People’s School in Deva and, later, I graduated from the Faculty of Law ”declares this in an interview in 1999, from Timpul magazine.
“The boxes of the forests”
The performer of the Poienița Voii (video) he remembered that, in adolescence, he had been advised by Rhapsod Achim Nica – which he had taken as a model – not to imitate anyone and to create his own repertoire.
“This ambit me up very much and I began to scoot in the dowry box of my forests and I tell you, with all sincerity, that I found extraordinary things. I made up my repertoire, I gave it for approval on the radio and thus entered the radio phonote the value songs,” declared Drăgan Muntean.
Drăgan Muntean became known in the mid -1980s, with his first television appearances. In addition to the musical activity, he teacher as a teacher in Vețel commune and then in Deva. After graduating from the Police Academy, between 1997 and 2000, he was the director of the “Ciocârlia” Ensemble of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He returned to Hunedoara as an employee of the Hunedoara County Police Inspectorate, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
In April 2002, shortly before he was 47 years old, he suffered a stroke. Despite the efforts of the doctors, he died on a hospital bed in Târgu Mureș. Thousands of people took part in his funerals, organized in Deva, before being buried in the cemetery of the village of Leșnic, in Vețel commune (Hunedoara county).
In the village of Poienița Voiii, a festival dedicated to local folklore (video), organized in August, bears his name. Drăgan Muntean was the one who was in charge of organizing the event in the 1980s.
In Poienița Voiii, a village about 25 kilometers from Hunedoara, in the heart of the land of the forests, now living dozens of people, most of them. Almost every family here owns a home in Hunedoara.
The old village of the Middle Ages, made famous by Drăgan Muntean
The village, documentary attested since the time of Huniazilor (the beginning of the fifteenth century), has become a landmark of Hunedoara county, thanks to Drăgan Muntean. It is also the place that the interpreter often sang.
“Domains, that’s how hard it is, I left my village, I asked the world, I asked! But the old man is no more, through the detour, an increased grass!”, He was one of his doors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iisdpjsz_so
A few kilometers from Poienița Voiii there are other picturesque settlements of the forest of the forests: the village Alun, with the road and the church in Marmura; Ghelari, with the remains of some of the largest iron mines in the Poiana Ruscă Mountains and with the imposing Cathedral of the Forest – one of the most spectacular churches in western Romania.
Nearby is the village of Vadu Dobrii – a picturesque settlement located at over 1,000 meters altitude, inhabited today by only 10-12 people; Govâjdia – with the famous cast iron furnace, over two centuries old; as well as the archaic villages Lelese, Bunila and Cernișoara Florese.
