Manele in Romania

Edited by Margaret Beissinger; Speranta Radulescu and Anca Giurchescu

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.

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