Brena International
By special request of estavisti, today's Gazette has nothing at all to do with a certain general, or even the people who like to sing about them. (Denis Latin responds in Novi list to the Latinica scandal, if you'd rather have today's concession to things political.)
Instead, the Gazette looks further along the Danube to note that where Serbia has turbofolk and Bulgaria has chalga, Romania has manele, the local brand of blingy melodramatic turbokitsch: widely despised, but not so despised that people don't know exactly what it is. Some months ago, a computer virus swept Romania which deleted manele files from users' PCs.
Among the top names in manele right now are Adi de Vito, Adi de la Valcea, and (you don't have to be called Adi, but it helps) Nicolae Guta, while Carmen Serban is one of the few to oblige with an official site. The Gazette is more interested by a certain Lepa Iasna. Iasna sings in Serbian, and her easiest song to find may well be her duet with Adrian Minune, Ghici ghici: nothing to do, as one might fear, with The Cheeky Song, but in fact a cover of Lepa Brena's Čik pogodi.
Yes: over and above kickstarting chalga, Lepa Brena, the icon of 1980s Yugo-consumerism, also has her own Romanian tribute act.
Some might say that Croatia on its own has quite enough Brena tribute acts for any other country to need another, but that's enough of that.
posted by Catherine @ 2:47 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
For music out of Romania/Moldova, what about the three members of what used to be O-Zone with the Mia hee mia hoo song. They've all gone solo- apparently because Dan Balan, the ex lead singer thought he was too 'rock' for the rest of the band. Any way, the most folk of the lot is the one who everyone just called 'the ugly one' but is actually Arsenje who never sung but just danced. He's now rebranded himself as 'Arsenium' (is that from the periodic table?) and has utter folkness to his music. Check out his site at www.arsenium.net
Calling himself Arsenium is going to be asking for it if he ever goes for the UK novelty hit market again.
Estavisti, apparently Brena used to play concerts in Romania and Bulgaria in the late 80s, but I don't know who was in the audience - clearly not just Serbs, if people like Lepa Iasna are around...
Who was in the audience?
Well, Brena packed 50 000 capacity stadium in Temisoara back in 1984, as well as 80 000 capacity Vassil Levski stadium in Sofia/Bulgaria in 1990. She arrived in that particular concert in a helicopter that once belonged to Todor Zivkov. She was the biggest Balkan star then and is also considered the most famous singing star of all time in former Yugoslavia. Even more, she was like the most beloved person by people of former Yugoslavia after president Tito. Still very popular today. Madonna, Elvis an Monroe in one women for the Balkans...
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