http://www.observatorul.com/Default.asp?action=articleviewdetail&ID=2999

Maestro Gheorghe Zamfir in Canada

An interview with Maestro Gheorghe Zamfir for media in Canada regarding
his upcoming national tour.


Q: In the 80’s you were the first European artist to obtain two gold
discs in US, and in Canada you beat all records, selling 5 million
discs during the same period of time. How do you explain this
impressive success? Did you adjust your music especially for our
audience, in Canada?

A: In the 8o’s my success was enormous indeed in both US and Canada,
and I am sure my discs were sold not by millions, but by tens of
millions. They sold far better than Michael Jackson’s and Madonna’s
discs. However, other people took advantage on my rights, dishonest
people in front of whom I was powerless. Considering what I sold in US,
for example, I should have had 20 gold discs.


Q: Your exile started in Montréal. Why did you choose Montréal, how did
you get here?

A: My exile started in France, in Paris, but I was afraid that the
communist regime would come to power in 1981, after Mitterand won the
elections. So, I chose the exile again, and I had to choose between
Canada and Australia, so I chose Canada because it was closer. Plus, in
Québec and Montréal I could speak French, or that was the language I
was speaking fluently.

Q: How would you describe the period of time you lived in Montréal? How
long did you live there and why did you leave? What did the exile mean
to you?

A: In Montréal I lived sporadically, for just one year, 1987, which was
actually my last year in Canada, before I went back to Switzerland.
Between 1983 and 1987 I lived in a house on the banks of the Lake des
Deux Montagnes.

I left Canada because I was denied the Canadian citizenship as I had
never lived continuously for more than three months in one given year.
I was exhausted after each performance, mainly because the huge of
distances between a city and another. Besides, I was going back to
Paris quite often since I was missing the city, so I always jet-lagged,
travelling between Montréal and Paris. The exile had a huge negative
impact on me. I suffered a lot because I always loved the country where
I was born and I could never accept the fact that I would never be able
to go back to Romania.

Q: In a 2002 interview you were saying that you had been disappointed
by the lack of unity among the members of the Romanian community in
Canada: “In Canada I met lots of communist priests, “wannabe” priests.
In the Romanian diaspora, these false priests, this false church led to
a terrible tendency of disunion and man’s hatred”. What determined you
to come to this conclusion? Would you be able to give us some concrete
examples?

A: I was absolutely convinced that Ceausescu had placed communist
priests, previously “trained” secretly in Craiova, in all the orthodox
churches in the world where entire communities of exiled Romanians were
living. Their role was to keep track of all the exiled Romanians and
divide them through intrigues and misinformation. I was able to
identify some of them in Australia. For example, Father Gaina of
Melbourne was one of them, as well as another one in Adelaide, both of
them from Bucharest. In Canada, the priest in Hamilton was one of them
too, just like one could find tens and tens of them, sent all across
the world with a special mission.

Q: In the 90’s you decided to go back to Romania. The Romanian media
published contradictory information related to your involvement in
politics (besides “The Great Romania Party”), the problems you had with
the financial system, your relationship with the Electrecord Music
House etc., culminating with the rumor according to which you were on
the point of having a depression. What is true of all these?

A: In April 1990 I went back to my native country, hoping to play a
role in the salvation of the Romanian people from the political
collapse. I was hoping to use my huge reputation, the world myth and
legend that had been created about me and I was bringing back to
Romania. In that organized “CHAOS”, I tried to take a stand as a person
who loved his country, fighting for truth, powerfully divulging the
communist horrors. However, I didn’t know that the cards had been
already played and a plan was already in place, carefully organized in
every single detail. I was wrong and I felt betrayed, so President
Iliescu’s regime added my name to their lists of unwanted people, and
they tried to get rid of me. They seemed to be quite successful through
the diabolic campaign of public misinformation and denigration they led
against my celebrity. I consider President Iliescu as being the biggest
political calamity of Romania after 1950. He was and still is more
dangerous, more destructive and more vengeful than his predecessor,
Ceausescu. The tyrant Ceausescu never succeeded to destroy me, instead
Iliescu was fully successful. He gladly contributed to confiscating and
liquidating my belongings and my properties, annihilating the Zamfir
myth and legend in Romania as well as in the entire world getting help
from occult forces that carefully planned this.

With regard to the “Great Romania Party” I was never its member. I
helped Vadim Tudor but only for pure national, religious and patriotic
reasons. I appreciated and still appreciate Vadim Tudor because, as a
political man and artist, he is the only one who had the courage to be
straightforward and talk openly about the corruption in Romania, about
political, economical, social and cultural issues. He will remain a
great poet, satirist, and writer despite any rumors circulating about
him. Because of the comments regarding my joining the “Great Romania
Party” I was subjected to a third exile in my own country (the second
exile had been in France between 1995 and 1997). I was judged in
Jerusalem by the Israel Parliament for claims brought against me as
having antisemitic and fascist views. I was subject of a five-year
cruel campaign that both the Romanian and the world media led against
me.

I never had problems with the financial legal system. It was an entire
occult plot meant to make me appear as being in debt. In Canada only I
paid $513,000 in taxes. France did not want to accept this and I was
asked again to pay taxes, a second time. It was outrageous! I was not
the Labatt beer factory to pay millions of dollars! I was by myself, I
was working honestly and I was making superhumanly efforts to
contribute to the world culture as well as the culture of my own
country, trying to bring its fame to the highest levels.

Q: After going back to Romania, you were offered the first academic
position in the world to teach panflute at the National Music
University of Bucharest. However, you appeared to have had problems
related to obtaining a permanent position. How would you describe the
situation today?

A: I had a 10-year battle, fighting with the windmills trying to
introduce the first University panflute department in the world. This
time again, I was the victim of an obnoxious plot. In 2001 the first
class of panflute was introduced at the National University of
Bucharest and it was the first of this kind in the world. I was hired
as associate professor and I held this position for four years.
Immediately another panflute class was created, running in parallel
with mine, although there were only four students enrolled. The
professor was supposed to be a certain lady, Dalila Cernatescu, 27
years old, no diploma or background in panflute or music. The students
threatened with submitting a complaint to the Ministry, so, eventually
the situation changed for the better, but the following year a chamber
music class was introduced for that lady, although chamber music for
panflute never existed. An unscheduled audition followed and the lady
obtained high marks, so she was immediately offered a permanent
position as associate professor, she was introduced to the music
department of the University, and then, slowly but surely, she pushed
me out. Eventually, in 2005 I was totally eliminated, so the lady
became the only panflute master in the country and across the world.
The panflute teaching position offered to Dalila along with my
elimination by the University Chancellor, Dan Buciu, and the Dean,
Serban Soreanu, constituted a definitive decapitation of the Romanian
panflute. Useless to add, a huge scandal followed. The entire country
was on my side, besides my ten students who had been left without any
professor.

The absolute unscrupulousness of the two music amateurs, mercenaries
and technocrats of the sound, totally unknown individuals, corrupt
bureaucrats abusing the system, led to the disaster of the Romanian
music by killing the panflute. To this, Dalila Cernatescu, totally
unknowledgeable and incompetent, had her contribution. She had in her
hands the fate of 11 students, five of them being already destroyed and
their future ruined. These killers of our national music who could not
accept a panflute to play folk music have committed the biggest crime
for the last 50 years. The Romanian music would face a big tragedy if
these decisions that were taken 8 years ago were not revised and the
project was not aborted.

When Dan Buciu was asked if this minutely organized circus was
necessary, his answer was: “This is politics”. That’s when I understood
the truth. Both he and Soreanu were obeying orders coming from higher
ranks.

Dalila bragged for years to come: “I am a Jew, my back is shielded, and
I have the best entertainment manager. I will become someone because I
have people in high positions supporting me.”

It’s easy to understand this tragic ending. I always had lots of
problems with the Jewish people, and I was even asked to go to Tel Aviv
for a press conference and answer questions, trying to defend myself
the best way I could in front of the accusations that were thrown at
me. I suffered again because of injustice – at both national level as
well as world-wise. The 7,000 year old instrument, with its powerful
endless sonorities, this divine, cosmic instrument, our national
Romanian panflute in Dalila’s hands led to a catastrophic ending of our
national being. The life of my 11 students, as well as Dalila
Cernatescu’s 5 students was completely compromised. This is what the
University Chancellor Dan Buciu meant by “This is POLITICS” by obeying
without questioning the orders coming from his superiors.

Q: After all, do you regret going back to Romania?

A: I regret going back to Romania because of all the tragedies I have
been going through for the past 20 years. I would immigrate to any
country, but it still doesn’t matter because I have been followed from
very close, just like a fox is chasing a rabbit.

Q: Your special relationship with Pope John Paul II is well known. What
is the meaning of becoming “the messenger of the moral testament” of
the ex-Sovereign Pontiff?

A: It’s very true that when I went to Pope John Paul II, my intention
was to ask him to accept the use of the panflute as a purifying
instrument that was bringing PEACE and LIGHT. After having discovered
the PRAYER in the PANFLUTE through our Romanian folk music, I planned
to purify the entire country and planet, to save the mankind from
disaster, from its imminent catastrophic ending. I had a colossal power
in the 80’s or this led to a project of bringing my actions to a stop,
as well as destroying me by any means. The project consisted of
destroying me materially first, then morally and in every other way
afterwards.

The great Romanian astrologist and erudite, Vlaicu Ionescu, who is also
a friend of mine, was crying when he said this to me in 1997: “Dear
Gheorghe, please don’t go back to Romania because they will totally
destroy you. You might also lose your life”. Now I realize he was
right.

The Pope did not understand my message. The church would have gained
immensely if the sound of the panflute had been accepted, but again my
intentions were misinterpreted.

In the 80’s I was among the three or five first artists of the world.
The very first moment I dedicated everything to God and to the
salvation of the nature, mankind and the planet, the action of
annihilating my mission automatically started.

I recently celebrated 50 years of musical activity and as a panflute
soloist, and on this occasion I performed two of my own compositions in
première at the George Enescu National Philharmonic. I played the Peace
Messa for panflute, choir and organ, for poem reading, folk instruments
and symphonic orchestra, as well as the Concert for panflute, piano and
orchestra in world première. I also played the Great Spring Rhapsody
for panflute and orchestra. Although my success was immense and the
concert hall was full, the media did not write a word about me as if I
didn’t even exist.

I feel like an exiled, like a prisoner living free. I am totally
ignored, especially by the politicians, and I am continuously
marginalized. None of the exiled Romanians who went back to the country
could ever succeed in achieving anything. They’ve been all treated with
hatred, jealousy and envy.

Q: You are one of the great artists who dedicated to God their entire
creation. On the other hand, you are also practicing meditation and
yoga. On top of all these, you are related by blood, to the Jewish
people. Do you think you are an ecumenical spirit?

A: My only salvation was the prayer and the meditation. As for YOGA,
both here in Romania as well as in Europe, it’s a whim. Let the Indians
practice YOGA as they know what are doing since they’ve been practicing
it for over 3,000 years. We should remain faithful to our orthodox
church, and our 2,000 years old religion. That’s where we have our most
precious spiritual values.