Those of you who have heard Taraf previously will know they are justifiably famous for being a band that's guaranteed to play with total abandonment. That doesn't mean they play at full speed all of the time, although on occasion it can seem that way. What it does mean is they always surrender themselves to the music completely. There's no way you think they can wring another iota of passion out of their instruments if they tried.
However, Maskarada sees them transcend all previous performances I've heard and obtain levels of excellence in music and passion I didn't think possible. On the liner notes, what they've done is referred to as "re-gyspyfied" the music. While that might be technically correct, I think it also does Taraf de Haidouks a disservice. This is a reclamation project on par with what's being done by indigenous peoples all over the world in reclaiming what has been stolen from them over the years.
When Taraf De Haidouks plays Bela Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances the wonder is how anybody missed out on not seeing them as the music of the Roma in the first place. (Romania and Roma have nothing in common by the way, as the words come from two separate language groups: Romanian is a Romance language derived from Latin, while it is believed the Roma language is derived from Hindi or Sanskrit. That the Roma ended up in Romania is just one of those weird jokes that the world plays on us periodically.) Of course, that's the point, these pieces weren't played like this before, – they were kept proper and civilized to appeal intellectually to its audience. In other words diametrically apposed to the way they should be played.
When Taraf De Haidouks gets their hands on them they reinvent them as they should have sounded all along. Instead of pretty folk dances that you'd see at some multicultural festival where everyone is clean and in bright costumes, they are played by people who have, until recently, lived a hand to mouth existence.
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