I’m not going to lie. When I met my very first Romanians in the United States, I only knew of two things to talk about. One was Romanian gymnasts (especially Nadia Comăneci) and the other was Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute.

I “knew” of him only because during the 1980s he had a long-running series of commercials pitching his music, which you can see here thanks to the magic of YouTube. I realized after reading this post that I guess I’m not the only one who remembers poor Gheorghe Zamfir either. To us, in America, he was just a guy pitching some kind of weird alternative music CDs and tapes that “couldn’t be found in stores”.

The man, in Romania and Europe, is a legend however. He has won literally hundreds of awards and recorded over 200 albums, most of which are him playing the “pan flute” known as nai in Romanian. The instrument is a series of ever-lengthening hollow tubes, often made of bamboo or wood, and is a “wind” instrument, as you’d probably expect from the name (flute) in English.

Sadly, like many other famous Romanians, Zamfir spent most of his adult life in exile in France but he has since been back (mostly to visit and play concerts) after the 1989 Revolution.

He has his own website which you really should go visit since it has less than 500 visitors, poor bastard.

Here’s a track of Zamfir doing “Unchained Melody” on his nai/pan flute and it is absolutely gorgeous and haunting and is more delicious and sparkly than a bowlful of rainbow mist and unicorn dust.