Taraf De Haidouks

They are known in their native Romania as "Taraful Haiducilor". Roughly, this means "band of outlaws", but "taraf" is also the traditional name for a group of lăutari (traditional Romanian Gypsy musicians). "Haiduc" or "haiduk" is a word of Turkish origin which means "outlaw"; in Romanian it has a rustic or archaic connotation. Most of those who know the band in the Western world know them by way of French-speaking areas, where they are known as "Taraf de Haïdouks", since French lacks a genitive case.

The group formed in 1989, shortly before the death of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, but actually they were discovered by Romanian ethnomusicologist Speranta Radulescu, who first recorded them in 1983 for the archive of "The Institute for Ethnography and Folklore". The original group encompassed about a dozen musicians; later configurations were to include as many as thirty. Early contacts in the West included Swiss ethnomusicologist Laurent Aubert and Belgian musician Stéphane Karo.