Theremin Music In The Streets Of Bucharest

Reader Simon Iddol, founder of Moarrr, shared this video with us, which captures an interesting experience he had in Bucharest.

“This was one of my most trippy and most heart warming experience in 2014,” explains Iddol. “I was wandering around alone in the Old Town….before my gig. I heard a strange and really unique sound from somewhere,and I got really excited. Is it a theremin? How? Why? On the street? In winter?”

He explains what happened next:

In a minute or so I’ve found an old gentleman, he was playing a theremin indeed, and he had his own lights, speakers and technology with him.

His name is Benedict Popescu, and he built the theremin himself. I was lucky enough to have a small talk with him, and here are the things I’ve found out.

This is the third theremin he made, and according to him the street conditions are not making any issues for the instrument, even it was really cold. He is a professional musican, he did several albums with theremins, and he likes to play on the streets because of the inspiration and the experience.

His English was not the best and I didn’t want to force a video interview, but he allowed me to record a song.

People been passing by, it was really cold and dark, but it was probably the best time of my 2014.

We are considering ourselves as producers, musicians, DJs, the heroes of today. But we are so spoiled with technology, managements, agencies, labels and so on. The joy of playing music gets lost so easily and so often.

And on the other hand, me the star blogger and star DJ turned back into a little kid in no time, just because of this old man and his wicked machine. We don’t need all those fancy stuff to play music and we don’t need all those hype to give joy to the audience. Benedict Popescu is the living proof, and I feel really lucky that my guardian angel guided me to see him.

If you see a street musician do not judge, but listen. Amazing talents can be found in any random city.

4 thoughts on “Theremin Music In The Streets Of Bucharest

  1. Thanks for sharing. The song is called “Pe langa plopii fara sot” which is a love poem by prominent Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu. There should be a few versions with vocals on YouTube.

Leave a Reply to Simon Iddol Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *