Manele in Romania - Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music

This edited volume examines manele (sg. manea), an urban Romanian song-dance ethnopop genre that combines local traditional and popular music with Balkan and Middle Eastern elements. The genre is performed primarily by male Romani musicians at weddings and clubs and appeals especially to Romanian and Romani youth. It became immensely popular after the collapse of communism, representing for many the newly liberated social conditions of the post-1989 world. But manele have also engendered much controversy among the educated and professional elite, who view the genre as vulgar and even "alien" to the Romanian national character. The essays collected here examine the "manea phenomenon" as a vibrant form of cultural expression that engages in several levels of social meaning, all informed by historical conditions, politics, aesthetics, tradition, ethnicity, gender, class, and geography.

List of contents

Chapter 1: "Music, Dance, Performance: A Descriptive Analysis of Manele"
Speran¿a R¿dulescu and Anca Giurchescu
Chapter 2: "A History of the Manea: The 19th to the Mid-20th Century"
Costin Moisil
Chapter 3: "Actors and Performance"
Anca Giurchescu and Speran¿a R¿dulescu
Chapter 4: "How the Music of Manele is Structured"
Speran¿a R¿dulescu
Chapter 5: "Village Manele: An Urban Genre in Rural Romania"
Margaret Beissinger
Chapter 6: "Manele and Regional Parallels: Ethnopop in the Balkans"
Margaret Beissinger
Chapter 7:"Manele and the Underworld"
Adrian ¿chiop
Chapter 8: "'Boyar in the Helicopter': Power, Parody, and Carnival in Manea Performances"
Victor Stoichi¿¿
Chapter 9: "Turbo-Authenticity: An Essay about 'Manelism'"
Vintil¿ Mih¿ilescu
Epilogue
Speran¿a R¿dulescu

About the author

Edited by Margaret Beissinger; Speranta Radulescu and Anca Giurchescu

Product details

• Authors: Beissinger, Margaret H. Radulescu Beissinger, Margaret Radulescu Beissinger
• Assisted by: Margaret Beissinger (Editor), Margaret H. Beissinger (Editor), Beissinger Margaret (Editor), Anca Giurchescu (Editor), Giurchescu Anca (Editor), Speranta Radulescu (Editor), Radulescu Speranta (Editor)
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 08.08.2016
• EAN: 9781442267077
• ISBN: 978-1-4422-6707-7
• No. of pages: 348
• Series: Europea: Ethnomusicologies & Modernities; Europea: Ethnomusicologies and; Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > Miscellaneous; MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional, MUSIC / Ethnic, Romania, World Music, Folk & traditional music, Other global and regional music styles, Folk, Folkloric styles, Traditional and folk music