Mircea Florian

Mircea Florian (Romanian: [ˈmirtʃe̯a floriˈan]; born December 5, 1949), also known as Florian din Transilvania, M. A. N. Florian, and FloriMAN, is a Romanian multi-instrumentalist musician, multimedia artist and computer scientist, based in Germany. Having started his musical career as a folk rock singer, in the late 1960s, he developed a fusion between Romanian folklore and Eastern music, especially Indian sound, moving into psychedelic music. He founded Ceata Melopoică ensemble, with whom he recorded a concept album. These and his solo acts earned him a cult following among rebellious youth, establishing his reputation as one of the most original contributors to Romanian pop music. Florian was also an early member of Cenaclul Flacăra, a traveling music and literature circle, but parted with it when it became increasingly nationalistic. Before 1980, Florian was turning his attention to electronic music and new wave. In parallel, like other artists on the Romanian folk scene, he was pursuing his interest in non-pop ventures, from experimental rock and minimal music to biomusic, and exhibiting his installation art. In 1986, Florian escaped Communist Romania, having by then been exposed to much communist censorship, and took up cultural and scientific projects in West Germany. Since the Romanian Revolution, he has made frequent returns, playing at numerous festivals and composing film scores. Born in Satu Mare, Mircea Florian began his musical education as a pianist and saxophonist, before turning to guitar, blockflute, mandolin and various other instruments. He first took classes at the Satu Mare Art School, and first became interested in performing arts while an avid spectator of the local Medrano Circus (the place where he also witnessed the first concert by a rock band). Florian then studied at the Eminescu High School, where he had musical appearances with the band Zburătorii (1965). A while after, he also gave his first one-man show, which included a dance routine. In parallel to state-run education, he took private courses in music and visual arts. Florian first came into contact with the burgeoning hippie movement of the West, and met Romanians who, despite facing tight scrutiny from the communist authorities, wanted to replicate it locally. In 2005, he stated that the fundamental difference was in the drug culture, which Romanians had little access to, adding: "In any case the manner in which the artistic act was supposed to be carried out here was different from what one could experience in the West. Romanian artists created for a tighter circle, of (proper) connoisseurs." Elsewhere, he also noted that hippie culture was essentially becoming more accessible to Romanians by the end of the 1960s: "I remember that, once a record came out, fresh off the Western market, no more than a week would pass before it got to Romania, brought over by some sailor or an acquaintance who had been visiting 'out on the outside', or through heaven knows what channels..." Among the decade's pop acts, Florian was most impressed by Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Leonard Cohen. At the time, he became an avid listener of clandestine Western radio, where he first heard the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich and especially Luigi Nono: "Nono's music was so new, so captivating, so rich in meanings... I got hooked on it forever!" He carried out his first experiments with electronic music at the age of 16, when, in his search for new "tone colors", he turned a sound generator into a keyboard instrument. Zburătorii disbanded in 1967, and Florian left Satu Mare for Bucharest, the capital. He studied cybernetics at the Politehnica University, from 1967 to 1972, and was part of the first-ever graduating class at Politehnica's Faculty of Economic Calculations. After arriving in Bucharest, he played for a while with a band called Lotus, which, he recalls, was a "pretty interesting" folk project. In 1968, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Florian also had his first brush-in with communist censorship: a song of his, which was transparently critical of the Soviet Union, was banned from public radio. According to popular account, DJ Cornel Chiriac ignored such commands and played the song, being promptly sacked as a result (the other version attributes his dismissal to having played The Beatles' ambiguous record "Back in the U.S.S.R."). Lotus' major breakthrough came in 1969, when they performed at the 3-Gaură-3 Club, where music critic Florin Silviu Ursulescu organized Romania's first American folk-inspired music festival. As noted by Florian, Lotus appeared alongside the "first wave" of Romanian folk singers, among them Mircea Vintilă, Dorin Liviu Zaharia and Doru Stănculescu. At around the same time, Florian joined the Luceafărul literary club, and provided the avant-garde jazz background to the Surrealistic poems recited live by Valery Oisteanu. In parallel, Florian's work in mathematics opened new fields for his musical experimentation. The major factor, he notes, was his familiarization with transistor computers at the Economic Calculations laboratory and the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, during an era of "sheer luck"—that is, when liberalization allowed Romania to trade in electronics with the United States. He had a free hand to work in algorithmic composition and computer music. He was officially employed by the computer industry from age 22, supplementing his salary with semi-compulsory dispatches "on location", which allowed him to invest his own money in various cutting-edge musical instruments. By 1971, Mircea Florian had grown dissatisfied with the band concept, and committed himself mainly to solo projects. As such, in what he calls his "white period" of acoustic rock, he notably became the opening act for the celebrated rock band Phoenix. He also played at the Ion Mincu University hangout, Club A, in live concerts with Vintilă and actor-singer Florian Pittiş. The coincidence of names with the latter was a running joke, and it was here that he began using the stage name Florian din Transilvania (literally, "Florian from Transylvania"). It has endured as one of the singer's main pseudonyms, alongside M. A. N. Florian. His focus was on playing string instruments such as guitar or cobza, as well as being a singer-songwriter. He established a concept-band, known initially as Florian în Labirint ("Florian in the Labyrinth"), and later as Ceata de dubaşi, ceteraşi, kitarozi şi alţi meşteri lăutari ("A Band of Drummers, Cittern-players, Guitarists and Other Master Lăutari"), and also involving Gabi Căciulă and Sorin Chifiriuc as guitarists and Alexandru Beno as violinist. The project broke musical ground when it added Indian influences and sitar backing, which was contributed by Ljubiša Ristić, of Yugoslavia. The occasional tabla rhythm and flute melodies were played by a Pakistani performer, Arif Djafri. The music was described by Florian as combining "archaic and electric elements" into "a science", and covering successive colored "periods" in his creative history, when he was into amassing musical instruments. The new Western inspirations on his work were Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel and Todd Rundgren. Emerging from the core group of Florian în Labirint, Ceata Melopoică ("The Melo-poetic Band") became Florian's main project of the 1970s. Its often-changing membership included: Beno, Căciulă, Chifiriuc, Ristić, Zaharia, Andrei Oişteanu, Alexandru Beno, Valentin Andronescu, Günther Reininger, Andrei Cristea, Eugen Gondi, Dietrich Krauser, Mihai Creţu, Costin Petrescu, Alexandru Mitaru, Alexe Conta, Mircea Dordoi, Ortansa Păun, Sorin Baroţi, Gheorghe Popescu and Mihai Pintilie. From its choice of name, this new project also reflected its leader's mounting interest in Ancient Greek philosophy, the ideological source of his psych-folk, which he describes as more profound than generic folk rock. He referred to his earlier folk songs as "singable" and