As Popicu saw it, World Music is a hybrid, an incongruent phenomenon that comes from everywhere and nowhere. He disliked its violent, electric sounds even though rural youngsters embraced them enthusiastically. Popicu decided to face up to both competitors. He set up his own traditional music group with the best musicians, dancers, country folk and shepherds he could find. Iza exists to help the people of Maramures appreciate their own music, without feeling the need to adulterate it with alien innovations.
Popicu is an achiever. He is one of the best-known – and unconventional - interpreters of folk music in Romania. He only performs with Iza and constantly turns down offers to collaborate with any of his country’s many other folk orchestras. If TV producers ask him to do things he considers silly, such as playbacks against cardboard settings, or to pontificate about his ‘love of ancestral traditions,’ Popicu takes his band and leaves the set. However, before being recognized in his own country, Popicu had to find success in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Switzerland and Germany, where he performed on stage and made records. Meanwhile, he continued to play at weddings, because he enjoyed it, because he needed money for the ‘museum,’ and because he had to learn the latest village party music.
