The drama of the lute player who repented and ended up playing only church music. Gabi Luncă ends up struck down by pandemonium: “I mourned for days”

Whether you listen to lute music or not, you can’t have missed Gabi Luncă. Somehow, the artist managed to enter the collective memory of Romanians through her songs of longing and mourning.

At the age of 82, Gabi Luncă passed away. It happened in 2021, after a suffering caused by the terrible virus that has changed the way we all exist.

Gabi Luncă had a hard life, but she never forgot to smile

Although she had an extremely difficult life, Gabi Luncă always used to smile. She longed to have children and even prayed to the holy ones to grant her wish.

To be granted, it was granted, but she didn’t get long to enjoy one of her children. Her first daughter died at the age of two months after being diagnosed with encephalitis. “She was black in the face, like the earth, she was disfigured. She died because I couldn’t keep my vows,” Gabi Luncă once confessed.

What’s more, it seems the artist had to face the Ilicit (old term for the taxman now). “In the 1980s, a salary was 1,700 lei, and we had a phone bill of about 8,000 lei. The Ilicit knocked on our door because they thought it was strange, but our girls managed to evade the inspectors,” the artist also said.

Probably in order to hide better from the old IRS, Gabi Luncă had dressed some of her teeth in the gold she had received at one of the events at which she performed. Incidentally, back in the day, she and her husband were invited everywhere, being much appreciated at wedding, christening and other events.

And since life doesn’t give you all good or all bad, in 2009, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was later cured, and the artist claimed that prayer had helped her in this regard.

“You can get rid of cancer very easily nowadays. I went to the doctor as soon as I felt there was something wrong with me. I had surgery, treatment, everything the doctors said, and I got rid of it. God delivered me. I want to advise all women to go for a check-up at least once a year,” she added.

As usual, the divinity Gabi Luncă believed in helped her, but in her own way. As a result of cancer, she lost a breast. “This disease is very hard, I had moments of despair. I mourned for days, I looked at all my clothes and wondered if I would ever come home to wear them. The cytostatics were unbearable for me, but God didn’t let me.”

Pandemic gave her the last blow

On April 2, Gabi Luncă breathed his last, after a two-week stay at Ilfov Emergency Hospital. She had been diagnosed with Covid-19. Although they tried hard, the doctors could do absolutely nothing for her.

Obviously, the artist’s family received the news of her death with sadness. “After 23 years, together again! Singing together to the One they have loved and served all their lives! We’ll see each other again,” Rebecca Onoriu, the singer’s youngest daughter, wrote on Facebook at the time.

To clarify the situation, it should be noted that the artist’s husband, Ion Onoriu, died in January 1998, which, as is easy to understand, caused the artist additional suffering for 23 years.

Those years since her husband’s death she spent playing Pentecostal church music, giving up lute music forever.