Gică Diricel, violinist and vocalist, was born about 69 years ago into a poor family of lăutari. His father was Gypsy, his mother Romanian. "At seven father had me play the 'cobză' (accompaniment instrument from the lute family). When grandma saw that, she broke it on his head, for in our family there had only been violinists". His mother got his child a violin. "Father had a brother to whom he said, 'You take care of the boy.' /My uncle/ put the violin in my hand and showed me how to play, 'Look, you do this, and this, and that.' He was not theoretical, but practical." From the very beginning his uncle taught him one of the hits of the time. "I learned it in two or three days. I was seven. I could not put the violin under the chin, only on the shoulder, here, for it was a full-size violin? Neither could I sit at the table, for my head was full of what he was showing me? After a month I could play by myself what I heard?"

Before long his father was forced to join the Army and his mother died. ?I grew up wretchedly. I worked by the day, and provided for two, three, or four brothers. Father was away in the war? that is, about his unit, making music like all the Gypsy 'lăutari'? When I was ten I was working on a farm in the landowners' service?? Discharged, his father apprenticed Gică to another brother, a blacksmith in a nearby village. ?It was a mean world then? and I didn't want to stay around and be sworn at, as was the habit in those days? (meaning: because I did not work, though my family was having hard times). One day the master "dipped my hands into the crude oil he lubricated his wagon shafts with" to prevent him playing the violin again. "I burst out crying and went away on foot? I stuck to my violin." "Father would teach me what he himself played, the dances from here, their melodies? After a year I could teach myself the tunes I heard?" At eleven or twelve Gică first accompanied his father to a wedding as an accompanist. Then, "at 13 or 14 I would make music at weddings by myself. Father played at a wedding, I at another. My brother accompanied me with a dulcimer and another boy with a 'cobză'? There weren't female vocalists in those days? There weren't so many clever people then, with radios, tape recorders?" His clients paid him only half the price for grown-up musicians or else in kind. "I often got two sacks of corn as payment, for our family was large and we never had enough." That was after the war, and after the great drought that starved the entire country. In the meantime, his father remarried with a Gypsy woman and his stepmother was always picking quarrels with him and made him work hard.