Overview
This edited volume examines manele (sing. 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.
Full Product Details
Author: Margaret Beissinger ,
Speranta Radulescu ,
Anca Giurchescu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Dimensions:
Width: 15.70cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 23.80cm
Weight: 0.680kg
ISBN: 9781442267077
ISBN 10: 1442267070
Pages: 348
Publication Date: 08 August 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
This extraordinary book has a high applicability both among scholars from various disciplines and the wider public of those who want to achieve a greater understanding of the turbulent social reality Southeastern countries are struggling with. * Folkloristika *
This extraordinary book has a high applicability both among scholars from various disciplines and the wider public of those who want to achieve a greater understanding of the turbulent social reality Southeastern countries are struggling with. * Folkloristika * The richness of grounded knowledge throughout Manele in Romania would distinguish a single-author work in popular and folk music studies, let alone an edited volume. * Slavic Review * To my knowledge, this well-researched book is the very first volume of essays written in English on the subject of the musical genre of manele. . . The fieldwork completed for the volume has resulted in a diverse collection of material . . . . Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Meaning in Balkan Popular Music is recommended for scholars, students, and readers interested in music, history, ethnic, social, and political studies of Romania and the Balkans. The website [http://www.manele-in-romania.ro/] is a convenient source for both a classroom setting and personal use. * Slavic and East European Journal *
This extraordinary book has a high applicability both among scholars from various disciplines and the wider public of those who want to achieve a greater understanding of the turbulent social reality Southeastern countries are struggling with. * Folkloristika * The richness of grounded knowledge throughout Manele in Romania would distinguish a single-author work in popular and folk music studies, let alone an edited volume. * Slavic Review *
Author Information
Margaret Beissinger teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Her research and writing focuses on Balkan cultures and oral traditions, oral epic, and Romani traditional culture and music-making, with an emphasis on southern Romania, where she has undertaken extensive fieldwork both before and after the 1989 revolution, especially among Romani musicians. Speranţa Rădulescu is an ethnomusicologist at the Peasant Museum in Bucharest and associate professor at the National University of Music–Bucharest. A specialist on lăutar music, she is author of numerous books and articles and supervises the Ethnophonie series (twenty-five CDs so far) that features traditional musics of Romania. Anca Giurchescu was a dance researcher at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore, Bucharest, for 25 years, settling in Denmark and continuing her research with the Danish National Council for Humanities and the Danish Folklore Archives in Copenhagen. She founded the theory and method of structural analysis for traditional dance.
