by RAF KATIGBAK

My obsession with the Romanian composer and Master of the Pan Flute Zamfir (or Maestro Zamfir, as he prefers to be called) began when I was about 10 years old, watching Saturday-morning cartoons on TV. Curiously sandwiched between toy commercials was a 30-second, Vaseline-lensed spot featuring a man with slicked-back hair who wailed the theme from Chariots of Fire on what sounded, to my ears anyway, like Coke bottles. The ad, which subsequently played for three years on television, peddled albums by a man who was the next musical and alphabetical step after Yanni, and thus literally the last name in relaxing music—Zamfir.

I later learned that Zamfir was actually a true musical phenomenon, with over 250 releases selling a total of over 120 million units in more than 100 countries over a half-century career. Gheorghe Zamfir has played stadiums in Paris, Israel, Chile, China, Australia and Japan, performed three times for Pope John Paul II, and has soundtrack credits that include music for Sergio Leone and, more recently, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1.

But success is not the only remarkable thing about Zamfir. Despite his new-age aura, his past is rife with stories of lavish excess (houses in Paris, Switzerland and Montreal, a 1957 Rolls Royce, six fur coats), personal scandal (a 16-year-old once slapped him with a paternity suit) and a long list of political shenanigans that included exile from Romania and personal sabotage by political rivals, as he puts it, “serving occult forces.”

In other words, the more I learned about Zamfir, the more I needed to know.

Getting hold of the man, I was warned, was not going to be easy. He was busy rehearsing in Romania, preparing for his new Canadian comeback tour, which stops off in Montreal tonight. After a few failed attempts over the notoriously unreliable Romtelecom, he suggested we do the interview by fax. Granted, while some answers were clearly cut ’n’ paste responses from previous interviews (I told you he was busy), his responses were no less enlightening. Here’s how it went down:

Mirror: The obvious question is, why the pan flute?

Maestro Zamfir: The pan flute is the only instrument with cosmic divine values, and its sounds have become gigantic prayers releasing a colossal force, which helps us understand the divine forces.

M: How have your attempts to spread global peace through your instrument panned out so far? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

MZ: An inexcusable crime in the world of music occurred in October, 2005, when the chancellor and the dean of the University of Music in Bucharest destroyed an instrument like the pan flute, a shameful act for both the country and the entire world. It would be comparable to the removal of either saxophone or the trumpet from the conservatories of the United States, or even worse, having these instruments given to amateur players.

M: The thing that probably put the most fear into Zamfir was your exile from Romania in the ’80s. What was the hardest thing about returning after so many years?

MZ: I have been trying for the past 15 years to get readjusted and reintegrated in the Romanian society. All the ministers and politicians constantly lied to me. I was the target of a defamatory campaign and the subject was Zamfir the artist and Zamfir the man. President Iliescu launched numerous derogatory campaigns against me, demonstrating relentless malice, while the mass media strongly supported him. At the same time, different organizations from inside as well as outside Romania started taking actions against me. Thus, the chancellor Dan Baciu and the dean Serban Soreanu of the University of Music in Bucharest both cancelled my pan flute class, the only academic program of this kind in the entire world, and their reasons, besides political ones, were all the same—personal jealousy, hatred and envy. Presently, I am unemployed in my own country, the country that I made famous just like Pele brought fame to Brazil, Maradona to Argentina, Aznavour to France and Madonna and Michael Jackson to the United States. Nobody gives me any attention, all the doors are closed, and I have no home where I can go and study the pan flute, so I am questioning even my own existence.

With the Athenaeum String Quartet at Place des Arts tonight, Thursday, Jan. 19, 8 p.m., $51.76-$63.26

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