A memory about Traian Popescu

I met him in 1997 when he came to Casa Radio to arrange the singing of his composition “Cantatele”. I was accompanied by a colleague, Dan Manolache, and by Ana Maria Sireteanu, the director of Canalului Cultural. His modesty left an unforgettable impression on us, and the short dialogue is etched in my memory forever:

– Are you a composer? he was asked.

– I’m not a composer, nor do I have any special musical training. I composed them in a special mood and under special circumstances.

– What were they?

– I was in prison, after some terrible investigations and tortures; the first chords came to me like a prayer to the Most High to help and protect me. Suddenly the unknown individual, so humble, became dear to us, like an older brother. There was a dew of tears in his eyes, he had cried for a long time. On the spot, we all decided to help him and had these pieces of music, which were simply miraculous, played on the radio. We remained forever in a bond of rare friendship. He told me a lot about what the so-called generation of 1948 and its struggle represented, and about the suffering that had marked these people, suffering that seemed to have forged them to become ennobled and to create each in a different field: music, painting, poetry. Since then, I have been a regular at all the events organised by former political prisoners, whose collective has become structured in my heart as the purest sample of Romanians in love with the truth and with our country, with every moment of its past.

(Elena Perdichi, editor, programme producer for TV and Radio Romania – Permanențe Magazine, January-February 2010)