Some bad Romanian music... and it's antidote

Coming back on an older subject: Romanian music.
I think I shared with you some groups that I like and I consider as good music. It might be a clear sign I'm getting old, I only like those that no longer play.
Now I have to share some that are pretty bad. By my standards, so it might not mean much, I guess. Except to me. I digress. That is soooo unusual…
Back to the topic. There’s an expression in Romanian highly used since the last… 25 years (Jeez, it’s been that long!). It’s “since the Revolution…”. Almost any conversation can start with this. And it’s all the Revolution’s fault – or the governments. You guessed: governments “since the Revolution”.
Anyway, there is a point to this, I think. Because I was about to write that “since the Revolution” there’s been a surge of really really stupidly horribly bad music in Romania. Might have been a general (natural?!) evolution, but all I saw was my simply surprising Romania.
And this is when the category of “manele” has been born. It’s really quite indescribable. What follows is my view on it. It is (or supposed to be) a mix of popular music and one “no-way-this-is-a-man” singing something after he drank tons of unidentified alcohol. This is one famous guy who was (is??) one of the ‘leaders’ of this type of music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHNI6FXXbIA
Ok, the music is what it is and I won’t comment on it further. The lyrics are worse. They speak about love, women, heartaches, money, how cool & powerful a person is if he has the right car/money/clothes, whatever. A total mess all in all.
And now for the antidote I promised in the title.
Also ‘since the Revolution’ we have finally seen emerging some rap/hip-hop Romanian music. I’m not a big fan, but it was pretty good for the style, I would guess.
There’s one group though who I really like, called Parazitii (yes, it means parasites…) – and of course it’s mainly because of the lyrics. This kind of music relies on them heavily. And they have a terrific song that I listen regularly just to reassure myself that there are still normal people in Romania. The song is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATTFDPLgaQ
 
And this is just an extract of why I love this song:
[…]
Imi place sa ma vad pe TV in cadru,
Mulumesc lu' mama ca mi-a pus televizor prin cablu.
Am 113 centimetri,
Sunt inalt in ochii tai,
Cu pantofii mei de lac las urme 53, ma vrei?


Femeile si banii sunt doar in capul tau, ba!
Bate, bate-bate inima, ti-e rau?
Toata lumea stie ca esti doar un lingau, ba!
Bate, bate-bate inima, ti-e rau?
[…]
In orice club ma duc, ma-ncurca
Pantalonii domnisoarelor pe juma' de buca.
Dedic aceasta piesa acelui tip de Casanova
Care-nvrte volanul de Renault pe Dacie Nova.

With my translation:

[…]

I like to see myself on TV

Thanks mom for getting me cable

With my 113 cm

I am tall in your eyes

With my cheap shoes I leave a size 53 trace

Do you want me?

Chorus:

Women and money are just in your head,

Your heart beats, beats, beats – are you sick, man?

Everybody knows you’re just a boot licker

Your heart beats, beats, beats – are you sick, man?

 […]

In any club I go I’m bothered

By the ladies’ pants that hardly cover half their ass

I dedicate this song

To that type of Casanova

That steers a Renault’s wheel

On a Dacia Nova.

 […]

Disclaimer: I realize my translation is crappy. It is way funnier in Romanian, probably also because it refers to some common stereotypes over there.

Let's get retarded

And here's what I had in mind when going back to work after my lunch break:

I wonder if this says something about what expect from my work? Or maybe I'm already in that state?

How much can the music represent a nation?

I recently went to a wedding near Toulouse (so at about 5-hours drive from my place). This gave me and my husband enough time to listen to all CDs we had bought and not listened for a long time. One of them is with Romanian music. Quite old Romanian music and what can be thought as good Romanian music (we consider it that way, at least).
One of the songs actually made me laugh in a way, because of the lyrics. This is the song, if you feel like listening.
Basically, what this says is that luck was given to people. By God, probably, but it's not clearly mentioned in the song, so maybe by someone who had tons of it and didn't know what to do with it... Anyway, so when luck was "provided", everybody got loads of it, but the singer got only a glass, because he was off to work. Wait, it gets better... Then he says that even the glass was only half full, and even that half was actually with bad-luck instead of just luck
So what made me smile/laugh at this? The thought that this kind of represents for me the Romanian way of thinking. Everyone else is luckier than me, poor me, I have only bad luck and nothing goes the way I would have liked it to be... Maybe I am exaggerating in generalizing this, it's just when I heard the song (that I knew very well) it struck me as obvious.

The singer also has other very beautiful songs. My favorite is this one. But it's all in the lyrics, so it's probably boring if you don't understand them.

So I wonder how much music defines a people? Probably a lot, it just depends which one. I will talk in another post about some really bad Romanian music :-)

for reference, other very nice pieces that I love:
Phoenix (an extremely popular rock band for Romanians, one of the first...and I think also known in the US):
  Marele URSS
 Timisoara
Iris (another classic for us): Somn bizar
... and the list is long, but I have to go to a meeting. So to be continued as well...

Qu’est-ce qu’on se marre… (July 2011)

I know it’s not about a book, but I can’t get this very nice song out of my head. I heard it on a radio station I listen to quite regularly (France Inter) and since then, every now and then, I spend (more than) a couple of minutes listening to it over and over again.
It might be related to my next post about a book I’m reading now, if I ever manage to take the time to write it…
Anyway, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZjExxr2S_c
For those of you understanding French, enjoy! For the others, just appreciate the music