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SEX. MONEY. MANELE.
Romania's hunger for dance-friendly, dirty pop
is propelling a low-down new form of
musical
folklore — ignored by the media and banned from radio stations and record stores.
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By Andy Luke
It's freezing cold under the gray tower blocks of Obor, a suburb of Bucharest.
The harsh winter started again yesterday; there's a meter of snow everywhere and I have to navigate puddles bigger
than my bathtub as I make my way through the huge outdoor market. I stop in front of a stand stacked with compact discs,
one upon the other like a castle of cards. I pull out a CD with a picture of a woman in a bikini stuffed with dollar bills:
Ascultã Manele: La Mare Plãcere — “Listen to Manele: The greatest pleasure.” Perfect.
Manele, a musical genre that mixes Gypsy culture and music with Oriental pop and
cheap electronics, was born in places like Obor. The roots of Manele date back to the
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early 1980s, or even, many would argue, much earlier than that. The former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had a policy about music
that was intended to clean up folklore; he had the Communist Party's propaganda department working to keep Romanian music unpolluted, which basically meant keeping it Gypsy-free and pro-Communist. But the suburbs of the major cities were populated by people from the countryside looking for something more out of life than working the land for not enough food — and by Roma (Gypsies) who have lived here for centuries but have always been an ethnic minority whose civil rights
are rarely respected — and this mixture of cultures, along with the dance-friendly beats imported from Asia by Romanians working abroad, spawned Manele.
Because of its ethnic roots and sexually explicit lyrics,
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Album Title: Listen to Manele: The Greatest Pleasure |
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Album Title: Godfather of the Godfathers
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Album Title: Miss Piranda 2004
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it was banned from being broadcast. (If it had been broadcast, it would have had more censoring beeps than words per sentence, much like a Kraftwerk B-side.) Nonetheless, Manele's popularity grew steadily: after the downfall of Communism in the 1989 Revolution, trade with other countries opened up, and cheap electronics were readily available in stores and markets. Manele exploded and took over the music scene. Today it's heard everywhere — even though it is still essentially an “underground” genre. The media doesn't recognize it as “real” music, and you can't buy Manele albums in “regular” record stores. So to hear it, you have to tune in to one of the thousands of pirate stations broadcasting from homemade devices, or go into the streets, the discos, or markets and follow the trail of jingly sounds coming from the cassette players of street vendors.
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| Manele is music about desire – desire for sex, money, and power.
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Some argue that Manele isn't really that big — mostly out of a sophisticate's distaste for the music itself (the latest in contemporary underground garage can also be heard here) — and for the fact that it offers a negative image of what Romania has come to be, a country that despite its past struggles is rapidly moving toward joining the European Union (in 2007), with new bars, cafès, and art exhibitions popping up by the month. But, in fact, Manele is so big that traditional Gypsy musicians are having to change their repertoire and style to please the growing fan base — because that's where the money is. Prejudice against Gypsies is a constant; however, that doesn't stop people — of all ages, positions, and social status — from listening to Manele.
Manele is music about desire — desire for sex, money, and power.
It's an exaggeration of the Romanian
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desire to become part of the West. Hopefully this won't extend into every aspect of the culture, turning wooden beams and tapestries into plastic bars and polyester.
Back to Table of Contents
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Album Title: ... A quickie, money and power
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Album Title: The Pleasure
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