Zavaidoc
His real name was Marin Gheorghe Teodorescu
Steliu Lambru, 14.12.2024, 13:00
Every big city or capital has a golden period in its history. Bucharest’s is the interwar period, the golden period of all of Romania, in which the pluralism of ideas, aspirations, freedoms, tastes, and experiences were fully manifested. And the history of music from Bucharest’s golden period also includes Zavaidoc, a very successful urban traditional singer during the 1920s and 1930s.
His real name was Marin Gheorghe Teodorescu, Zavaidoc was born in Pitești in 1896, and died in Bucharest in 1945, at the age of 48. He was part of a Roma family with a brother and two sisters. His father played the violin and the cembalo, and was a much appreciated urban traditional lautar, players of urban traditional music. Unfortunately for young Teodorescu, he lost his father at the age of 13. Together with his brother and sister, he founded a band, “The Teodorescu Brothers”, and sang, achieving local success. These were the beautiful “la belle epoque” years of the first decade, which would, however, lead to the first great misfortune of the 20th century, the First World War. In 1916, when Romania entered that conflict after two years of neutrality, Zavaidoc was 20 years old. He was drafted into the Romanian army fighting on the Carpathian Line, and was part of the army’s artistic teams that held concerts and performances in hospitals in support of the wounded, together with other artists such as Elena Zamora, Fănică Luca and his band, and the composer George Enescu. The end of the war meant great relief and a great release, and the world was learning to live again after the horrors it had gone through. Zavaidoc and his generation of artists performed without inhibitions and the qualities of his voice are a serious recommendation. Settled in the capital, Zavaidoc collects folklore, sings in the best bars, restaurants and terraces in Bucharest. The mid-1920s also bring him financial prosperity, his records selling very well. His financial success was also due to signing a collaboration with the Columbia record label. His best-known songs will be “Zavaidoc’s Song”, “De cân dân m-a aflat arâmă”, “Foaie verde spic de grâu”, “Pe deal, pe la Cornățel”, “Dragostea e ca o râie”, the latter’s lyrics being reprised by the ethno-blues band Nightlosers in 2010. At the end of the 1930s, Zavaidoc married and had three children.
The artist’s notoriety was so great that references to his name and habits appeared. Also, romanticized stories circulated, such as that of a love affair in which he was allegedly involved with another famous musician, Cristian Vasile, and his girlfriend Zaraza. Doina Ruști is a novelist whose sources of inspiration are in the Romanian past. Her latest novel is called “Zavaidoc in the Year of Love”, a love story from 1923. Doina Ruși referred to the urban legends and myths about the artist, to his formative years, to the years of glory, the “crazy years” after the Great War, to the period of reinvention and the years of professional setback.
“There was never any rivalry. Where Zavaidoc sang, Vasile did not have room, and vice versa. I mean, there were really two worlds. That man spoke with sincerity and let me tell you why. First of all, in 1923 Vasile did not exist, he was a child. Then, later, they were different worlds. Vasile played translated music, while Zavaidoc was “the soul of the nation”. So we can never put them together. And then, there is the well-known story with Zaraza, a made up story, which never happened. And about the year in which they say he died, that is, 1946, is a year in which Zavaidoc was not only dead, but also rotting already. But I must say that Zavaidoc was practically in his glory years after the war. The war caught up with him when he came of age. He actually went to school during the war. That’s when he met Enescu, that was his school. And, when he returned from the war, he did not want to return to Pitesti, but simply stayed in Bucharest. He was clearly fascinated by houses and things, he had met people. He stayed in Bucharest and began to dominate music, this is interesting, he began to create a trend. It was the period in which he was breaking away from traditional music and entering urban music, modern music. But after that, when things began to settle down in the interwar world, around 1926, when radio was also came into being, he had almost exhausted himself. I listened to his music from the 1930s-1940s, when, indeed, he sang many songs, but his voice was already tired, it was no longer the one of his youth.”
Zavaidoc’s existence, matured during the First World War, would end during the other great conflict of the 20th century, the Second World War. In 1941, Romania entered the war alongside Germany against the USSR for the liberation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, and Zavaidoc was called up to arms again. He ended up singing for the Romanian military in Bessarabia and Transnistria. He returned to the country, and during the American air raids of April 1944, his house was hit by a bomb. In December 1944, doctors diagnosed him with “nephritis” which, in mid-January 1945, would bring about his demise.
