The Banat Scene of Manele and the Polish Papal Complex<\/p>\n
My plan at home was to do exhaustive anthropological research and analyse Timi\u0219oara\u2019s\nschizophrenic relationship with the manea. Given that the city on the Bega is one of the\nbirthplaces of the pop manea and the Serbian proximity predetermined its Balkan harmonies,\nwhy does it continue to reject the manea so vehemently even today, when the moral panic\nsurrounding this phenomenon has subsided?<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, that kind of research sounded too ambitious and focused on far too many\nfactors interacting in a complex cultural equation. I would have had to analyse: 1. the status of\nTimi\u0219oara as the Romanian capital of rock during communism; 2. the strong anti-communist\nsentiment, originating in the pride of having triggered the Romanian Revolution; 3. the cultural\nbovarism of a space that preferred self-mirroring in the flattering lie of belonging to the Central\nEuropean, not the Balkan space that lies in its geographical proximity; 4. the dissolution of\nYugoslavia, replaced by Serbia, a ruined state; and, last but not least, 5. the population\u2019s racism\nintensified by the prosperity of the Roma people, who bought heritage buildings in the city\ncentre.<\/p>\n
In the space of a month, I wouldn\u2019t have had time to clarify so many issues that were\nfundamental for understanding this city. For that reason, I decided to write a history of the Banat\nschool of manele in relation to its public reception (pros and cons) and, taking advantage of the\nfact that my residence was literary, to carry out my analysis of the fundamental questions as\nliterary speculation.<\/p>\n
Conceptual clarification<\/p>\n
For the beginning, a conceptual clarification is required: the history of the manea starts, if\nnot during Dimitrie Cantemir\u2019s time, at least during Anton Pann\u2019s. In the seventh and eighth\ndecades of the last century, the manea was in the repertoire of well-known folk singers like Gabi\nLunc\u0103 (Mama mea e flor\u0103reas\u0103, R\u0103pirea din serai 1 ) and Romica Puceanu (\u0218araiman,\nFlor\u0103resele 2 ). Yet it is not the historical manea played by \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019 on acoustic instruments\n(cimbalom, double bass, violin) that makes the object of my research, but the pop manea, played\non electronic instruments (synthesizer, electric guitar, bass guitar). The period I am discussing\nbegins in the 80\u2019s, when the manea became electronic and turned into ethno-pop, and extends up\nto the present.<\/p>\n
The beginnings of the pop manea: (probably) double origin<\/p>\n
When it comes to music, when you say Timi\u0219oara you say rock \u2013 a real school that started\nwith Phoenix \u2013 the band that generated formidable emulation on the banks of the Bega \u2013 and\nlater expressed itself through top bands such as Pro Musica and Celelalte cuvinte (musicians\nfrom Oradea who studied in Timi\u0219oara).<\/p>\n
Not many people know that, in addition to rock, Timi\u0219oara also has a history of the manea.\nThe city created a school whose influence on the genre was as strong as that of Phoenix on the rock scene. Its privileged geographical position on the border with Serbia turned it into one of\nthe entry points of manele in the Romanian cultural circuit.<\/p>\n
The origin of the pop manea is disputed. On the one hand, Paul Breazu claims, with valid\narguments 3 , that the genre appeared in 1982, with Nicolae R\u0103ceanu\u2019s song, Magdalena, recorded\nin the USA and available in Romania on samizdat tapes. On the other hand, Margaret Beissinger\nand Speran\u021ba R\u0103dulescu 4 claim that the genre originated in Banat. Called either Oriental, or\nTurkish or Serbian music, the genre would have emerged as the local adaptation of\nnovokompovna narodna muzika (roughly translated as \u2018modern folklore\u2019) from the former\nYugoslavia. Banned by the communist government as \u2018polluted folklore\u2019, the manele were still\nplayed by \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019 at weddings. In those years, the genre was popularised by both Roma \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019\nand Serbian folk singers who played both acoustic and electric instruments. For example, Laza\nCnejevi\u0107, a Romanian singer of Serbian origin specialised in Serbian music, performed with both\norgan and traditional accompaniment.<\/p>\n
Be that as it may, it is certain that as early as the ninth decade of the last century, the\n\u2018modernised\u2019 manea could be heard in two regions, Banat and the south of Romania. The south\nmeant the counties on the banks of the Danube (Gala\u021bi, Br\u0103ila) or near the sea (Constan\u021ba), where\n\u2018bi\u0219ni\u021ba\u2019 5 was in full swing, thanks to the sailors who, in addition to jeans and cassette decks, also\nsold Balkan music, Greek in particular, or preset organ harmonies. In Banat, the trajectory was\nmost likely similar: not only electronic appliances, chewing gum and Vegeta, but also Balkan\nethno-pop, in this case, Serbian music, was sold.<\/p>\n
While the communist regime in Bulgaria\nreacted to the ethno-pop manea as its Romanian counterpart, banning and labelling it as \u2018polluted\nfolklore\u2019, the liberal socialist regime of Yugoslavia, which allowed the free mix of modernised\nfolklore and Pan-Balkan fusion music, did not enforce folkloric purism; on the contrary, it\nallowed TV and radio stations to broadcast the new pop mutants from which the turbo-folk, the\nSerbian equivalent of the manea, emerged. A lorry driver from my native village remembers that\nhe used to bring Serbian music tapes from Novi Sad, and that even singers from Banat went there\nto record tapes of \u2018new folklore\u2019.<\/p>\n
Audiotim, the music studio that trafficked Serbian music under communism<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, there were also quasi-clandestine recording studios in Banat. In those years,\nthe most important player on the market was the proto-entrepreneur Ghi\u021b\u0103 Olaru\u2019s studio,\nAudiotim, which promoted modernised folklore (mostly acoustic instrumentation, but with\n\u2018capitalist\u2019 lyrics such as \u2018Money, money rules\/Money, money make you rich\u2019), as well as\nSerbian music of the manea type.<\/p>\n
What served as a turning point for the change in the folk music was, in Radu Pavel Gheo\u2019s\nopinion, the \u2018ruga\u2019, a festivity similar to the \u2018Sons of the Village\u2019, where people ate \u2018mititei\u2019,\ndrank beer and listened to folk music to celebrate the anniversary of the dedication day of their church. Gheo also says that a whole industry proliferated around these \u2018rugi\u2019, so that many folk\nsingers subscribed to these celebrations, which were generously funded by the town halls; in\nGheo\u2019s words, \u2018people knew that between Easter and autumn, that was where big money was\nmade.\u2019<\/p>\n
It is clear that the public wanted the modernisation of the traditional repertoire \u2013 if not the\nmusic, then at least the lyrics, so that they could see their universe and philosophy expressed in\nwords. This led to songs about new characters such as the driver, the smuggler etc., and a\nphilosophy of life that moved sensibly away from the ideological commandments of the age and\nthe folkloric ethos to embrace (proto)-capitalist materialism, meaning money and family\nprosperity as one\u2019s purpose in life.<\/p>\n
However, the new musical productions had to circulate somehow \u2013 hence the need for\nrecording studios. Pavel Gheo remembers that besides Audiotim, other such studios of uncertain\nstatus (there was one in Re\u0219ita too, says Gheo) existed, but the shop where he bought tapes was\ncalled Audiotim and was located somewhere near the railway station. \u2018At the end of a tape, a\nvoice announced that the album had been recorded in the North Station Studio. The North\nStation may have been a code name for Audiotim. Audiotim had become a brand; when my\nfriends and I were talking about that place, we always said Audiotim. Who knows how they\nmanaged to hide its real purpose, maybe they called it an artisans\u2019 cooperative. I have no idea. I\nused to buy bootleg Western or Yugoslavian rock music from there, for one leu per recorded\nminute. For my family, I bought brand new original folklore, especially Vasile Conea\u2019s\nmodernised folk albums\u2019.<\/p>\n
An important moment in the history of the genre is Lepa Brena\u2019s concert in 1996. What I\nhave in mind when I say important is the further evolution of things: Serbian music, i.e. the\nmanea, was to separate from the (proto)turbo-folk promoted by the Yugoslav diva. Her concert\nfilled a whole stadium and remained in the city\u2019s memory as one of the hottest musical events in\nthe communist period, close in reverberation to the Phoenix concerts.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, although specialized literature includes Lepa Brena in the turbo-folk style (she\nis considered the godmother, the founder of that style), although manele singer Stana Izba\u0219a\nimitates her, although Lepa Brena\u2019s songs were played by \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019 of manele (see Cik Pogodi),\nthe people of Timi\u0219oara continue to perceive Lepa Brena\u2019s music as something else, arguing that\nit is not turbo-folk and it has nothing to do with manele. Where does this difference in perception\ncome from? Either my ear is not trained enough to distinguish between regional differences, or\nthis is about a bias that \u2013 I dare to believe \u2013 does not characterise me.<\/p>\n
The 90s and the Banat school of manele<\/p>\n
As far as the manea is concerned, we have two schools: the southern school and the Banat\nschool. Up until the end of the first decade after the Revolution, the two schools went each their\nown way. They were never mixed because, after 1989, competed by Anglo-American music, the\nmanea gradually lost its appeal and its mainstream audience. That is why, by the end of the\ndecade, the schools had developed underground, supported financially by their faithful public of\nlimited education. In other words, while in the first years after the Revolution the manele could\nbe heard in the discotheques of the big cities, later they disappeared from the playlists.<\/p>\n
After 1989, the Banat school based its discursive universe on rural coordinates (probably\nbecause the audience itself was mostly rural), while the southern one used mostly urban\ncharacters and settings. In addition, the Banat school singers did not specialize in manele, which\nwas usually one of the genres they played besides modernised folklore (acoustic or ethno-pop).\nThe best example here is Carmen \u0218erban, who switched spectacularly between genres: she burst\nonto the scene in duet with Adrian Minune between 1996 and 1999, only to disappear from the\npublic\u2019s attention until 2004, when she received a golden record for the album V\u0103d numai\noameni nec\u0103ji\u021bi 6 , with synthesizer rhythms borrowed from (modernised) Romanian folk music.\nEven today the manele and the Transylvanian Roma folklore videoclips and lyrics sound more\nrural than those in the South.<\/p>\n
The man who promoted the new genre in Banat was the same tireless Ghi\u021b\u0103 Olaru, with his\nAudiotim production house. After the Revolution, Ghi\u021b\u0103 Olaru preserved his brand. Moreover, in\naddition to managing Audiotim, he became the agent of a huge number of singers of folk music,\nmodernised folk music or manele; unlike Dan Bursuc, whose career as producer and agent\nremained strictly within the province of manele, Ghi\u021b\u0103 Olaru\u2019s diversified portfolio includes\nproductions from all ethno, pop or acoustic areas even today.<\/p>\n
In the area of manele, the most important singer launched by Olaru in the music circuit is,\nwithout a doubt, Nicolae Gu\u021b\u0103, a name that \u2013 according to the world music market \u2013 is more\nimportant and better rated internationally than Timi\u0219oara\u2019s rock emblem Phoenix. His 1996\nalbum, Nicola\u00e9 Gutsa - La Grande Voix Tzigane D\u2019aujourd\u2019hui, which had gone unnoticed at the\ntime of its initial release, was rediscovered in 2010, when it was released again by a more\nimportant label (Innacor) and included by Le Monde in the top five world music albums of the\nyear.<\/p>\n
Although from the town of Petro\u0219ani, Gu\u021b\u0103 built his career on the more profitable harmonies\nof Banat. After \u201989, he commuted between Petro\u0219ani and Timi\u0219oara, where he caught Ghi\u021b\u0103\nOlaru\u2019s attention. Until 1998, although he used a synthesizer and an electric guitar, Gu\u021b\u0103 had not\nsung manele, but created his own style while testing various harmonies. By the end of the\ndecade, however, when it was obvious that the manea had won the ethno-pop battle, Gu\u021b\u0103 shifted\ntowards the manea harmonies and rhythms until 2003, performing his own compositions.<\/p>\n
Just as Copilul de Aur was Dan Bursuc\u2019s golden goose, the singer whom he launched and\nwho made him a lot of money and ensured his fame, Nicolae Gu\u021b\u0103 was the vehicle that launched\nGhi\u021b\u0103 Olaru and his Audiotim on the national level, placing him among the leading players on\nthe Romanian ethno-pop market.<\/p>\n
In addition to Gu\u021b\u0103, Olaru also launched Sorina (who, as Gu\u021b\u0103\u2019s official mistress, benefitted\nfrom his compositions in the first and most successful part of her career), Stana Izba\u0219a, Adriana\nAntoni and especially Dorin Covaci, one of the most underrated Romanian \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019, partially\nforgotten today. In the Banat school, he comes right after King Gu\u021b\u0103.<\/p>\n
Towards 2000: beyond Audiotim, but inside the Banat school<\/p>\n
The most important name of the Banat school, though not promoted by Olaru, is Carmen\n\u0218erban from Timi\u0219oara, who had her albums released by the rival of Audiotim, Studio Recordings \u2013 also from Timi\u0219oara. Carmen \u0218erban burst onto the national scene due to her\nperformance with Adrian Minune between 1996 and 1999.<\/p>\n
Adrian Minune belonged to the first wave of \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019 who debuted after 1989, like Dan\nArmeanca, Dan Bursuc, Vali Vijelie, and Jean de la Craiova. By the end of the decade, he had\nbecome famous mostly in Bucharest, but once he started his collaboration with Carmen \u0218erban\nhe achieved celebrity in Transylvania as well.<\/p>\n
The credit goes to Carmen \u0218erban, who became the mistress of a businessman from\nStrehaia, Mehedin\u021bi County, called Ion Mihai Stelic\u0103 and known as Leo de la Strehaia, who\nsponsored the albums of the two singers. It was no surprise that by the end of the 90s, the\neccentric businessman\u2019s yard had become the national centre of the manea. On the released\nalbums, important names from the south, such as the clarinettist Dan Bursuc and Doru Calot\u0103\n(aka Doru from T\u00e2rgovi\u0219te) were featured as guests.<\/p>\n
Adrian Minune is, first of all, a performer, and only then a composer. On the albums he\nreleased with Carmen \u0218erban, the latter, who wrote the songs, is more visible than Adrian\nMinune. Things must be seen in relation to their position in Leo\u2019s yard. As the sponsor\u2019s\nmistress, Carmen \u015eerban was in a position of power. The five albums released with Adrian\nMinune told the phantasmagorical biography of Leo and his relationship with \u015eerban.\nConsequently, in most of the songs, Adrian plays Leo, and Carmen \u0218erban plays herself. The\nalbums strongly promoted customised songs; as far as I know, they are the first albums to build a\ncomplete biography of a sponsor, whose name and biography are embedded in the tracks. Not\nthat Leo invented this genre, whose tradition is lost in the history of the \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019, but he practiced\nit systematically and there are entire albums about the anointed Prince Leo.<\/p>\n
The albums were a mixture of the two schools and enjoyed success both in the south of the\ncountry and Transylvania. Carmen \u0218erban and Adrian Minune became the most famous names\nof the manele scene, and in 1999 the latter was the true of this genre, crowned as such at \u2018Miss\nPiranda\u2019, the Bucharest Miss Roma festival, which also gathered the cream of all the \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019 in\na concert.<\/p>\n
1999-2003: The two schools merged<\/p>\n
After 1999, through the album of Costi Ioni\u021b\u0103 and Adrian Minune, F\u0103r\u0103 concuren\u021b\u0103 7 , the\nmanea burst onto the mainstream scene. For a few years, just like at the end of communism, the\nmanele went beyond the boundaries of their loyal, poorly educated public, regaining their\ngeneral audience. By 2002, the discos in student campuses had been playing manele ad nauseam.<\/p>\n
In that period, the Banat school stood out due to the fusion with the southern one, so much\nso that from a certain point the Timi\u0219oara-type manea lost its specificity. All the important\nsingers of the Banat school did duets with their southern counterparts: Stana Izba\u0219a with Adrian\nMinune; Adriana Antoni with Salam, Sorina with Copilul de Aur, Gu\u021b\u0103 with countless others etc.<\/p>\n
2003-2012: The moral panic and the dissolution of the Banat school of manele<\/p>\n
After the period in which it revived its old singers by having them do duets with their\nsouthern counterparts, the Banat school no longer launched important names on the national circuit. The local manele scene seemed to have lost its compass and dissolved itself either in\nmodernised Romanian folk music (Carmen \u0218erban, Adriana Antoni) and Roma compositions\nlike those of Sandu Ciorb\u0103 (Sorina), or simply dissolved in the Bucharest school (Nicolae Gu\u021b\u0103);\nin other words, it was like a dead organism which the neighbours tore apart piece by piece. In\nthis regard, the fate of the One Million club seems paradigmatic to me. It was opened in\nTimi\u0219oara in 2008-2009, by Dan Bursuc and a \u2018l\u0103utar\u2019 from the south, Florin Salam, gave two of\nhis live masterpiece performances, Cap \u0219i pajur\u0103 and Solda\u021bii 8 (unfortunately deleted from\nyoutube) there. Unfortunately, the club went bankrupt, a sign that the local market could not\nsupport a di granda manele club.<\/p>\n
In addition, Timi\u0219oara joined quite quickly the loud voices that demanded the prohibition of\nmanele, allowing for regrettable exaggerations. In 2006, SRADSCD 9 Timi\u0219oara Branch proposed\nthe action-manifesto \u2018Romanians, let\u2019s play Mozart to the whole neighbourhood\u2019 10 , as a civilising\ncountermeasure and a polemical protest against the manele fans, who played their music loudly\neverywhere.<\/p>\n
2012-present: almost nothing<\/p>\n
The only name from Banat who managed to make some noise in the world of manele is Dani\nPrin\u021bul Banatului (Dani, the Prince of Banat), but it is not clear how much of his celebrity is due\nto him and how much to the charismatic Dani Mocanu, with whom he sang most of his songs\nand who, according to my information, was mostly responsible for their naughty lyrics. The\nPrince of Banat\u2019s voice is not impressive in any way; he imitates Gu\u021b\u0103 and doesn\u2019t bring\nanything new. Dani Mocanu\u2019s voice sounds even worse, but he (like Romeo Fantastick in the\nprevious decade) owes his success to the fact that he managed to invent himself as a character \u2013\nhalf thug, half pimp \u2013 and compose transgressive songs consistent with that character. The Prince\nof Banat couldn\u2019t get past the one-hit wonder stage (let\u2019s say two-hit wonder \u2013 Sunt \u00een \u00eenchisoare\n\u0219i S\u0103 m\u0103 feresc de gard\u0103 [11] , both duets with Dani Mocanu).<\/p>\n
To this day, Timi\u0219oara has stubbornly maintained its anti-manele attitude. Vlad Tollea from\nTimi\u0219oara accounts for it in an article for Vice [12] . To this I must add the disdain with which Ghi\u021b\u0103\nOlaru, the financier and the creator of the Banat school of manele, is treated. Instead of being\nworshipped and having a statue raised for him, like the bard Nicu Covaci, his reputation is\nconstantly trashed [13] .<\/p>\n
An analysis \u2013 the bad luck of having a progressive pope<\/p>\n
What bothers me about the manele in Timi\u0219oara is precisely the opinion that the manele are\nok, they are Serbian music when they are sung by authentic Serbs, not by the Roma. To put it\ndifferently, Timi\u0219oara does not have a problem with the Balkan heritage, with what comes from\nthe Serbs, but with the Roma and the lumpen.<\/p>\n
Two factors enter into this equation, subsumable to the Polish messianic complex, as I call\nit. What is the Polish complex? The answer is easy: the fact that sometimes progressive things\nhave very conservative consequences. In the Polish case, the bad luck was that, during\ncommunism, Poland produced a pope loved by the whole world, which perceived him as\nprogressive. Based on this fact, a counterfactual inference can be made as to what would have\nhappened if Poland had not produced a pope. Would Catholicism have coagulated with the same\nfrenzy? Would PIS, the Polish reactionary conservative party, still have won two mandates?<\/p>\n
Based on this counterfactual interrogation, one can speculate that during communism,\nhaving produced a pope helped coagulating Poland\u2019s anti-communist energies and subsequently\nbecame a sign of patriotic pride in the public consciousness. \u2018We Poles are special. We produced\nthe smartest pope ever\u2019.<\/p>\n
In the case of Timi\u0219oara, the papal-type bad luck is twofold: 1. the city produced the most\nimportant Romanian rock band, Phoenix, which also had an aura of anti-communist dissidence\n(masterfully debunked by Emanuel Copila\u0219 [14] ), and 2. the city started the Revolution of \u201989.<\/p>\n
As far as Phoenix is concerned, the most vehement anti-manele musical subculture was\nprobably the rock one (especially heavy metal). Starting with Phoenix, Timi\u0219oara gained its\nprestige as the dissident capital of rock, and after \u201989 it preserved this prestige on the social\nimagery level, meaning in a symbolic context.<\/p>\n
As regards the Revolution, the fact of having started it gave the people of Timi\u0219oara a\nmessianic complex, the feeling that they were a kind of vanguard of anti-communism and\nwesternisation. The manele were not considered communist, but they entered a complex equation\nin which they were seen as a backward step, preventing the building of the New Capitalist\nSociety as it was abroad (i.e., without corruption and louts), of which Timi\u0219oara imagined itself\nto be a part; in that period characterised by a terrible national inferiority complex that preceded\nthe adherence to the UE, Timi\u0219oara symbolically deceived itself that it was not part of the\nBalkans, but of Central Europe.<\/p>\n
My argumentation could be reproached with ignoring the Serbian, i.e. the Balkan factor, for\nwhich the Banat has always had a fraternal affinity. In the first phase, before the war in\nYugoslavia, the people of Timi\u0219oara perceived this country, due to its liberal socialism that\nallowed free travel and a small consumer society, as a highly emancipated, almost Western state\n(this perception is accurately illustrated in Radu Pavel Gheo\u2019s autofictional novel Disco Titanic).\nIn this logical context, with all its ethno features, Lepa Brena\u2019s music was seen as a product of\nthe consumer society.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have enough testimonies to understand when exactly the perception of Serbia shifted\nfrom admiration to compassion after \u201990, when both states fell into the third world. I only know\nthat at some point, the things I heard from Timi\u0219oara were not about the Serbs, but about Central\nEurope. The Serbs disappeared as a civilisational model, but remained an ethical model (\u2018unlike\nthe Romanians, the Serbs are not bastards, they don\u2019t sell their friends and relatives\u2019). I have\nrediscovered them now, on the occasion of my residence in the European Capital of Culture.\nThey are still like our older brothers whose fate was marked by historical misfortune \u2013 the war\nthat made them miserable and hindered their progress, \u2018because if it hadn\u2019t been for that war,\nthey would be doing far better than us, they would have been integrated in the UE since 2004\u2019, as\nan interlocutor from Timi\u0219oara said.<\/p>\n
The present: the manele in hype orbit<\/p>\n
The great surprise of this residence was to discover a manele scene livelier than the one in\nCluj. This is not due to the authorities or the city\u2019s mature residents, but, most likely, to Banat\u2019s\npreference for Balkan harmonies and the latest generation\u2019s more relaxed attitude towards the\ncultural products passing through the \u2018dirty\u2019 hands of the Roma.<\/p>\n
I have discovered three manele clubs, two (actually one and a half) in the student campus\nand one, the most authentic, on Mure\u0219 Street.<\/p>\n
The club on Mure\u0219 Street is decorated in a rustic Romanian style that seems to be\nestablishing itself as standard decoration for manele clubs, after the success of Hanul Drume\u021bului\n(The Traveller\u2019s Inn) in Bucharest. Just like in the capital, the public gathers late, after 3 a.m.,\nwhen the boys are bored of electro or dance clubs and need to get drunk in a familiar d\u00e9cor. The\naudience is a mixture of white trash, bums and Roma, but no middle-class people or students.\nThe wine is sweet, semi-dry at best, and the whisky brands are unexpectedly affordable and taste\nlike surgical spirit. What differs is the scale, in the sense that this club is much smaller than those\nin Bucharest, and the playlist, which mixes southern raggaeton manele (reminiscent of Salam\u2019s\nclassical piece The Soldiers, performed at One Million club in Timisoara) with rhythms of\nTransylvanian Roma ethno-pop in the manner of Sandu Ciorb\u0103 (whose style is not from Banat,\ni.e. Serbian, but rather influenced by Hungarian rhythms).<\/p>\n
The club in the student campus also has an exclusive manele profile and \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019, but it\ndoesn\u2019t seem very prosperous, despite being private, having an intercom \u2013 which is broken, so\nit\u2019s free entry \u2013 and allowing customers to smoke; when I arrived there, it was deserted, a\ncomputer was running a playlist of manele and pop music (I must admit I arrived too early,\naround 1 a.m.). The place was set up like a lounge, with small leather sofas, but an element of\n\nauthenticity: two bored entertainers in everyday clothes, who scrolled through their phones and\nwalked barefoot around the place. Slightly depressing, so to say.<\/p>\n
The third place is a disco that plays manele on Fridays, and hip-hop and pop on Saturdays.\nThe good news is that this place fills to capacity on Fridays, although the computer runs the\nmanele playlist. Naturally, the audience consists of students, and there is, if not face profiling, at\nleast outfit profiling at the entrance: a young man was not accepted in the club because he was\nwearing a European lumpen outfit, i.e. a brand tracksuit.<\/p>\n
As I entered, I had a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. I felt like in Bucharest in 2016-2017, when the manele\ndecidedly entered the DJ-ing hipster orbit. The difference from Bucharest was the average age,\nwhich was lower in Timi\u0219oara, but higher and mixed with old boys in Bucharest, and the absence\nof the political dimension, of commitment.<\/p>\n
What does this tell us? Grosso modo, after the pandemic, the success of \u2018trapanele\u2019 (a post-\npandemic combination of manele and trap or dance) made the manea cool, more to the liking of\nthe latest generation. It seems that unlike older generations, the newest one is free of both elitism\nand anti-communist demons.<\/p>\n
The problem is that the students in Timi\u0219oara, like their counterparts in Bucharest, love these\nnew manele played by a computer, not in the original context of performance, i.e. by \u2018l\u0103utari\u2019. In\na sense, the same thing happened in the United States during late capitalism, when hip-hop began\nto catch on in white circles: young people liked the music, but only when isolated from its\ncontext of origin, as an experience lived by delegation: for one night, the white kid, in the safe\ncontext of a bourgeois club, took the liberty of imagining himself a bad boy like the African-\nAmerican in the ghettos. The same thing happens with the manea, which has recently entered the\n\u2018cool\u2019 orbit: for one night, the student from Timi\u0219oara feels like a bad boy from the Roma\nghettos.<\/p>\n
Is this good? Is this bad? The anti-communism of the 90s vaccinated me for life against\nethical purism and activism with a prosecutorial, judicial touch. Therefore, I am glad that this is\nhappening, that even though it was only after destroying its splendid manele school that\nTimi\u015foara came to its senses, the new generation seems to have overcome the papal provincial\ncomplex of being a rock citadel and the starting point of the anti-communist revolution.<\/p>\n
Because, that\u2019s it, if there is anything I didn\u2019t like in Timi\u0219oara, it\u2019s this brand of selective\nmulticulturalism: which neighbours we like (Saxons, Serbs, Hungarians) and which we don\u2019t \u2013\nthe poor or the underworld of the Roma ghettos. In other words, this new brand of\nmulticulturalism is just as imaginary as old Mitteleuropa: we are multicultural, multicultural to\nthe core, but when it comes to the Roma we let it go, let\u2019s talk about the Serbs and Lepa Brena\nbetter.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, as a fan of manele, I was somewhat amazed to discover that Timi\u0219oara, although\nlying on a completely unexplored treasure \u2013 a whole school of manele opened at the very\nbeginning of the phenomenon \u2013 prefers to put forward, as a local subcultural pedigree, the anti-\ncommunist relics of Saint Nicolae Covaci, which even the left-wing factions of the rocker sect\ndispute as genuinely anti-communist (see the ongoing debate around Emanuel Copila\u0219\u2019s book,\nForma\u021bia Phoenix: muzica, politica, filozofia [15] ).<\/p>\n
In a long lineage of commentators, Emanuel Copila\u0219 has exhausted the subject, playing the\npart of a contestant. It is time Timi\u0219oara moved on to more serious topics, namely the manele.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scena b\u0103n\u0103\u021bean\u0103 de manele \u0219i complexul papal polonez Planul de acas\u0103 era s\u0103 fac o cercetare antropologic\u0103 \u00een toat\u0103 regula, \u00een care s\u0103 analizez rela\u021bia schizofrenic\u0103 a Timi\u0219oarei cu maneaua: de ce, \u021bin\u00e2nd cont c\u0103 ora\u0219ul de pe Bega e unul din locurile de na\u0219tere a manelelei pop \u0219i c\u0103 proximitatea s\u00eerbeasc\u0103 i-a presetat armoniile […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-7281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eseu-2023","tag-adrian-schiop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7281"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7497,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions\/7497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taifasfestival.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}