WARNING: This post contains yet more Popular Culture, (and other people’s Popular Culture at that). Normal, boring, service will be resumed as soon as possible.
There are still many other splendid genres of music to look at - from Turkey, former Yugoslavia and most certainly from The Gypsy Side of Town - before we reach the musical apotheosis that is proper Manele. We’ll have to wait a bit longer before we can gaze upon the fine young men with their gelled hair and expansive grins, their short-skirted girlfriends and their regulation all-white Mercedeses. But first here is a small glimpse of what’s to come: Babi Minune, a name which means “Amazing Baby”. He may still be just a lickle baby but he’s already got the voice, and the attitude – I'm not sure I'd want to be one of his teachers... I wouldn’t even want to be the woman who comes in once a week to teach them raffia work... and if I was his headmaster I suspect a strong letter to the parents might be in order. But whoever’s handling him has at least some appreciation, sometimes, as here, of the traditional instruments of Romanian gypsy music, instead of just employing the usual cheapo synthesiser. Students of Latin, a language dangerously close to Romanian (...and we don’t want any Oxbridge classicists coming over here and taking our jobs and sweet-talking our women, so naff off), will be able to decipher that he’s singing about The World Economic Crisis, which I think is laudable of him. In the second verse he clearly mentions Lehman Brothers and the risks inherent in sub-prime loaning, and in the third verse he has some really quite caustic things to say about Milton Friedman.
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This clip reminds me of a Greek Osmond family tribute band trying to take off something Turkish - they fail badly. Typical Balkan behaviour!
ReplyDeleteNikos beat me to it - Jimmy Osmond is this your offspring?
ReplyDeleteNikos, I hadn't seen the Osmond connection, and I'm afraid I still can't. I do feel, however, that they succeed, if only on their own terms.
ReplyDeleteLulu, but did Li'l Jimmy ogle adult mini-skirted women twice his size? Perhaps I erased it from my memory!
Now myself I was wondering if Tom Jones had ever been in these parts?
ReplyDeleteGadj, this is all getting far too disturbing for words.
ReplyDeleteThank Christ it's nearly Eurovision time.
Sx
Pat, Tom's been almost everywhere, but I don't reckon even he would stoop to performing on Romanian TV!
ReplyDeleteScarley, why disturbing? Please tell me! This is perfectly normal here: gypsies singing and dancing and with the kid out front to lay the charm on. Eurovision will have it's day.
Welders make really good music too - especially Romanian ones
ReplyDeleteBit bhangra-ish, innit? You can tell the Gypsies were originally from India.
ReplyDeleteMichael Jackson wore a white suit when he was a bit older than your young feller. I wonder whether he'll also end up with a pet chimp, and all the other accoutrements of the severely disturbed child star? (Or was he a midget eunuch?)
Fascinating or what? One can't imagine Boyzone singing about quantitative easing.
ReplyDeleteI presume the woman in the black dress and boots is there because she's his mother?
ReplyDeleteAlice, excellent. I think I know that bloke - I think he did my guttering.
ReplyDeleteGaw, certainly, you would be forgiven for thinking that many gypsies here just got off the plane from Rajasthan. Babi's a genuine child, and I don't think his culture would allow anything as non-macho as a Michael Jackson lifestyle.
Madame, quite, or Westlife rapping about adjustable rate mortgages - though who knows what these groups will be doing when they get to middle-age :-)
zmkc, lads like Babi start early, but then so do the lasses, so maybe she's his matchmaker and was there to assess some suitable mates in the audience.
I couldn't tear my eyes away from the bloke behind him's truly appalling tie-knotting abilitites. Did he get dressed in the dark?
ReplyDeleteWorm, it really is quite appalling isn't it, and compounded by his unfortunately choice of a white tie with a black shirt. I do hope somebody tells him.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Scarlet, this is disturbing: just the same way that US TV series are cast by numbers to set demographics, this video's populated with all the wedding party regulars. Even down to the dancing grannies in the background.
ReplyDeleteKevin, ok; you and Scarlet together are a convincing lobby. But is any more disturbing than was Top of The Pops in, say, 1973, with Jimmy Saville??
ReplyDelete