Music in Romania
Because we arrived in the country with a list of CDs to try to find for various bands from Romania and Moldova (a.k.a. Romania Lite), the music around here has been a particular point of interest.
Buying a CD of a fairly recent popular artist who hails from the country you're currently visiting — shouldn't be so difficult you'd think. But you'd think wrong.
Because, you see, "popular" is a relative concept. If you turn on the television, there are more music channels than you'd ever see in the US or Canada (even if the alleged music channels abck home actually played music). You've got:
Taraf TV, the Manele jukebox station. For the uninitiated, Manele is a sort of Gypsy pop, surrounded by this whole Gypsy hip-hop sort of culture, and despite the antipathy most ethic Romanians feel towards Gypsies (Ţigani) in general, they love Manele. So much so that, yes, there is a TV station that plays nothing but Manele music 24 hours a day. It's one of those jukebox channels where [persumably bored teenage] people can call or send SMS messages to dedicate a particular catchy yet misogynistic, money-obsessed, or gangster-oriented song to the tender young flower of their desire, who I suppose is supposed to be flattered rather than offended by the dedication. Ah, teenage life.
MTV. It's MTV. All the popular-as-of-last-week-and-no-earlier pop, dance, and hip-hop songs from around the globe.
Kiss TV. More or less like MTV, Kiss plays also all the popular-as-of-last-week-and-no-earlier pop, dance, and hip-hop songs from around the globe, but with a Romanian artist thrown in maybe every 6 songs or so, as well.
Etno TV. According to our guidebook, a residual artifact of the nationalistic communist regime of several decades past, the Etno station (mentioned in previous posts) shows nonstop footage of quasi-traditionally-dressed peasant people bobbing back and forth and belting out sanitized folksongs for young and old alike. No one around claims to like this stuff, but inexplicably it remains the politically correct, inoffensive, and unobtrusive programming of choice for those times when people have company over, and for restaurants and hotels. I find the Etno station pretty funny, and have become quite adept at the step-tap step-tap bobbing back and forth etno dance, but am still working on the giant plastic smile that goes with it.
So, if the TV selection is any indication, in order to hear some good, interesting local pop or electronic music, you've got to dig first through several layers of the standard international (i.e. American and British) pop and hip-hop, then a bunch of manele and etno, and finally you get a taste of the interesting stuff every so often.
Unfortunately, CD shopping for said artists is even tougher. First off, because music stores around here (and even the music sections of larger book or electronics stores) are pretty small affairs with limited selections, and within those stores you have:
3 to 4 racks of international pop/rock/hip-hop
1 rack which is never labelled, but is essentially the ABBA and Tom Jones rack. I'm not sure what it is about ABBA and Tom Jones in Romania, but half of their worldwide fan base must live in Bucuresti alone. I've heard more Tom Jones in the last week than I've heard in my whole life.
1 rack of manele
1/2 rack of traditional Romanian folksongs and etno kind of stuff
and finally 1/2 rack of Romanian pop
. . . which is further divided into:
about 3 rows of Kiss FM / Kiss TV sponsored compilations of Romanian artists, and
around 5 actual albums by actual Romanian pop artists, none of which are the ones you're looking for, nor have actually heard of.
Presumably someone somewhere sells the albums by the bands in the compilation albums and on TV, but not any of the stores we've found yet.
All in all, our fairly non-picky search for any of the albums by O-Zone, Activ, Voltaj, K-Pital, Hi-Q, and Class, has only turned up one actual album, and two relatively not-too-sucky compilations.
It's no wonder illegal downloading of Romanian artists is rampant: I would have had better luck trying to buy them from the shady orphanage guy than from a music store.
Perhaps I should just give in and buy a bunch of Manele instead — to which, as I write this, O says, "You know, I'm starting to like Florin Salam* , and Nicolae Guţa is even growing on me. . . ."
* When I first arrived in Romania, the first reaction of many of O's friends and family upon first meeting me was, "Oh! He looks just like Florin Salam!" I can see the resemblance, I suppose, and of all the manele artists he's the one I like the most (we included some of his music at our wedding), so I've been playing up the resemblance for all it's worth.
Buying a CD of a fairly recent popular artist who hails from the country you're currently visiting — shouldn't be so difficult you'd think. But you'd think wrong.
Because, you see, "popular" is a relative concept. If you turn on the television, there are more music channels than you'd ever see in the US or Canada (even if the alleged music channels abck home actually played music). You've got:
So, if the TV selection is any indication, in order to hear some good, interesting local pop or electronic music, you've got to dig first through several layers of the standard international (i.e. American and British) pop and hip-hop, then a bunch of manele and etno, and finally you get a taste of the interesting stuff every so often.
Unfortunately, CD shopping for said artists is even tougher. First off, because music stores around here (and even the music sections of larger book or electronics stores) are pretty small affairs with limited selections, and within those stores you have:
. . . which is further divided into:
Presumably someone somewhere sells the albums by the bands in the compilation albums and on TV, but not any of the stores we've found yet.
All in all, our fairly non-picky search for any of the albums by O-Zone, Activ, Voltaj, K-Pital, Hi-Q, and Class, has only turned up one actual album, and two relatively not-too-sucky compilations.
It's no wonder illegal downloading of Romanian artists is rampant: I would have had better luck trying to buy them from the shady orphanage guy than from a music store.
Perhaps I should just give in and buy a bunch of Manele instead — to which, as I write this, O says, "You know, I'm starting to like Florin Salam