Nor do I care to know, for the time being, whether the Balkan influences do or do not affect the identity of Romanian music. I agree, though, that all these rhetorical questions actually point to research topics worthy of interest. But there is another question haunting me now: Could it be that the Balkan influences on Romanian music are recurrent? Could it be that they come in and out, like the ebb and flow? I could formulate this question after realizing that the pan-Balkan propensity, which identifiably goes back to the end of the 19^th century, is again manifest now, after a short ebbing, at the end of the 20^th century. This is, certainly, too little to base a theory on. But the hypothesis is worth investigating. If it does stand, it would mean that we are now on a wave crest that will disintegrate after a while ? hard to tell how long it may take ? in order to make room for the alternative ?pan-European? diatonic wave. It would also mean that the purist defenders of the Romanian musical specificity can rest assured: today?s manele will disappear? for a while, at least.

The first objection the above hypothesis will have to face is that the Romanians? folk music has by no means been subject to circumstantial stylistic fluctuations of such a large scope. Its endurance in time has been repeatedly demonstrated by numerous and authoritative voices. I agree. But I have not for one second referred to the music of the peasants, but to that practiced by the lăutari. The assumptions I started out from were that the music of the ploughmen, shepherds and ordinary townsfolk, and the music of the professional lăutari, although branches of the same trunk, have had partially autonomous developments. I also assumed, from the very beginning, that the fiddlers? music can allow ? under the pressure of factors which I will not mention here for the sake of coherence in argumentation ? apparently spectacular, yet actually rather superficial and reversible transformations, which is not the case with the peasants? music, an undoubtedly more inert type. 

            When and if the hypothesis of the ?pan-Balkan waves? has been proved to reflect the reality of Romanian musical life, a series of new questions will be raised. Two of them already come to mind:

            The first question would be whether the other sectors of the oral tradition culture are or are not affected by pan-Balkan waves similar to those at work in today?s music ? this might be an exciting path to follow for the specialists in other domains of ethnology.

            The second question is whether there is any connection between a certain pan-Balkan wave and the dominant ideologies; the balance of power among the Balkan peoples and ethnic groups; and the political situation of south-eastern European countries at the time of its birth. A provisional answer would be to notice the Western-oriented stylistic development of the fiddlers? music at the end of the 19^th century and in the first part of the 20^th century ? one which seems to echo the general orientation of the Romanian Principalities, and eventually of the Kingdom of Romania, towards the West.