Keynote paper at the IX edition of the Forum Romania. Vienna University / Austrian Academy of Sciences. 6-9 October 2011.

Abstract

In Romania, manele have been a popular and controversial musical genre for the past 20 years. They are linked to several "immoral" things like sensuality, quick money making, pride, ambition and violence. Some Romanians also link them to low education status and Gypsy ethnicity (although most manele lovers are ethnic Romanians). Such arguments are typically based on the lyrics of the songs and on the iconography of recorded media. They often ignore the musical aspects and the pragmatic features of live manele performances.

This paper will start from the reverse perspective, focusing on the accompaniment of the voice, the sound effects, and the instrumental choruses. I will consider primarily performances by professional musicians in live settings, based on fieldwork in Bucharest during 2009-10. In such events, the music is open to various distributions of social agency. These are continually reshaped through interactions between audiences and musicians. I will describe a particular intersection of power, freedom and (self-)irony, which seems to be a key feature in many manele performances.