Cornel Chiriac
Encyclopedia
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n journalist, radio producer, record producer, journalist and jazz drummer.
Early life
He went to high school in PiteştiPitesti
Pitești is a city in Romania, located on the Argeș River. The capital and largest city of Argeș County, it is an important commercial and industrial center, as well as the home of two universities. Pitești is situated on the A1 freeway connecting it directly to the national capital Bucharest,...
and graduated from the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of English Language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Chiriac made his radio debut in 1963, with the show Jazz of Yesterday and Today, later Jazz magazin. Beginning on July 10, 1967, he produced for Radio România the most popular music show of its day, Metronom. Together with Geo Limbăşanu, he presented listeners with the latest information from the pop, rock and jazz scenes. Shortly after the August 21, 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
(in which Romania did not participate) he played a ballad by Mircea Florian which relates how five small wolves and a bigger one attacked a sheepfold, and later put on The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' "Back in the U.S.S.R." According to his nephew, "everything came to an end one evening" when he played the song, "which had escaped the censor, who didn't know English. But the song was heard on the show by the wrong people and was banned in 1969", also leading to Metronom
From adolescence he developed a passion for jazz, gathering all the information he could about jazz musicians and listening to jazz songs wherever he could. In his notebooks he copied books, chronicles, interviews and news from specialty magazines. His aunt later recalled, "In high school music was his only preoccupation. He wasted nights writing. In the morning he would wake up with great difficulty to go to school." Some of the notebooks ended up in the possessions of important Romanian musicians, such as Radu Maltopol, Cristian Colan and Johnny Răducanu
Johnny Raducanu
Johnny Răducanu was a Romanian jazz pianist of Romani ethnic background, whose family has a long musical tradition dating back to the 17th century....
, being the only possible source for ready information about jazz at the time.
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
's My Life in New Orleans. He was a founding member of the European Jazz Federation in 1967. According to the minutes, he described the difficult conditions of Romanian jazz musicians at the time and accepted the idea of a federation under UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
protection. He said the federation should focus on creating a jazz academy, a bureau for international concerts and a centre where audio and TV recordings could be exchanged.
A great jazz aficionado, Chiriac would copy entire discs onto tapes and arrange them in the station archive. Aurel Gherghel later said, "The station's whole archive was written and arranged by Cornel Chiriac." In 1969, Chiriac organised and advertised the first national jazz festival in Romania, held in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....
. He also arranged for the songs played during the festival to be recorded.
As a producer, he especially backed the Timişoara
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
band Phoenix
Transsylvania Phoenix
Transsylvania Phoenix is a Romanian rock band formed in 1962 in Timişoara by guitarists Nicu Covaci and Kamocsa Béla. Guitarist Claudiu Rotaru, vocalist Florin "Moni" Bordeianu and drummer Ioan "Pilu" Ştefanovici completed the early lineup...
and the Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
band Sideral. He completed important recordings with the former in Radio România's studio (1968–69) and promoted them on different occasions. In 1969 took steps to bring them to the Golden Stag Festival
Golden Stag Festival
The Golden Stag Festival is an annual international music festival held in Braşov, Romania. The main organiser is Televiziunea Română, Romania's state-run television network. The festival has two main components: an international contest and guest performances by both Romanian and foreign stars...
, managing to include them in the lineup. Coincidentally, Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
, who eight years earlier had played in The Young Ones
The Young Ones (film)
The Young Ones is a British musical released in 1961, featuring singer Cliff Richard. The musical was directed by Sidney J. Furie and was produced by Kenneth Harper and Andrew Mitchell for the Associated British Studios at Elstree. The original screenplay was written by Peter Myers and Ronald...
, a film that inspired many Romanian rock bands, was scheduled to sing there. Meanwhile, the Phoenix members were staying at Bucharest's Hotel Nord so the censors could watch them. During the festival, Chiriac returned from Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
with the bad news that Phoenix' concert had been cancelled, but returned hoping to resolve the problem in extremis. Unable to convince the organisers, in protest, he locked himself in his hotel room and set fire to the curtains. The hotel employees and firemen broke down the door to stop the blaze, while Chiriac disappeared during the commotion, taking with him just the tapes with Phoenix.
At Radio Free Europe
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
with the help of a falsified invitation (received during the Braşov festival and having as its initial destination Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
). He spent some time at the Traiskirchen refugee camp, where he was discovered by Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
director Noel Bernard
Noël Bernard
Noel Bernard was a Romanian journalist, known for being the head of the Romanian-language department of Radio Free Europe...
. After getting his official documents in order, he continued his activity in Munich, in RFE's Romanian-language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
section. He re-launched Metronom, Jazz magazin and started a third show, Jazz à la carte. At first, Chiriac used his microphone to express the anger he felt against those who had hindered his work at Radio România. Ioana Măgură Bernard later recalled: "Often, after doing something without thinking, Cornel had such problems with the German authorities and with the American heads of RFE that he was almost kicked out of Germany and off radio". Later, according to Noel Bernard, "he realised that not politics but music was his calling". Until his death, his musical activity was rich, and included a Romanian translation of the rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started off as a rock opera concept recording before its first staging on Broadway in 1971...
.
On March 4, 1975, near midnight, Chiriac was stabbed near his car, in a Munich parking lot. An hour later, a female student returning home found him. The first suspect to be arrested was 17-year-old Mario Gropp, the last person seen with Chiriac that evening. As the investigation proceeded, Gropp was cleared and three Turks were questioned. Nicolae Munteanu, RFE's sports editor, mentioned this fact on air after returning from their trial. In Romania there was talk of a political assassination committed by the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
. Even after he died, the Securitate started various rumours: that he had been an anti-Semite, a homosexual and a Securitate collaborator. Chiriac's body was cremated in Munich and his ashes brought back to Romania by his mother. He is buried in Bucharest's Reînvierea Cemetery.
Legacy
Journalists later recalled that his murder was greeted with sadness in Bucharest. Alexandru Sipa organised a soirée at the BraşovBrasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
jazz club, in memoriam. In Bucharest, Phoenix was in the Electrecord
Electrecord
Electrecord is a Romanian record label founded in 1932. It served as the only record label in Communist Romania. It was then transformed into the national recording company, following the centralization-oriented socialist doctrine...
studio, recording the album Cantofabule. Octavian Ursulescu said in an interview, "The news that a good friend to all of us, Cornel Chiriac, had been assassinated, came to us in the Tomis studio; we all cried like children..."
On February 24, 1995, the Cornel Chiriac Jazz Club opened in Ploieşti.