Hai Nevasta mea

Narcisa has released new material: Hai Nevasta Mea from an upcoming album.


We see here one of the many words from Slavic in Romanian — nevastă (wife), derived from Old Slavic nevĕsta. (DEX)

I had the opportunity to exchange some emails with Narcisa. She was supportive of my liking for manele, while most other Romanians advise me to never ever listen to this music genre ("if it can be called music" said one person) in my right mind. Narcisa's manele have been the focus of various posts, some of which erupted in discussions, both public and private, about why manele are evil, and why I, as a foreigner who speaks Romanian, should stay away from them. I disagreed with that sentiment, and I started receiving emails with, let's say, rather unpleasant content in Romanian — being called a Gypsy activist was among the good sounding names. For reasons I've stated before, I enjoy manele and will continue to use them as reference in my writings as they relate to the Romanian culture and language when deemed appropriate.

Felicitări, Narcisa.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Din câte știu, „nevasta” din slavă înseamnă amantă sau cam așa ceva. :)

Filius Lunae said...

Eu nu vorbesc nicio limbă slavă; știu doar cuvinte din aceste limbi datorită limbii române. :)

clau2002 said...

You still don"t get it do you?Manele do not relate neither to Romanian culture nor to Romanian language.Gypsies in Turkey sing manele in Turkish not Romanian.In Bulgaria they sing them in Bulgarian.Nobody cares what kind of music or any other kind of kitch you enjoy.All those comments were triggered by your stubbornness in insisting to promote the false idea that this is Romanian music.It is not.Next you might be willing to post some Gypsy music sung in French or Italian(they are to be found there too)and say that that is French or Italian music.At best you will have some French cultural authority sue your ass for defamation and at worst some California based representative of "La famiglia" might pay you a visit to explain that offending other"s culture is not "honourable" and ask you to "pay" respect....
...La urma urmei,"fiul lunii"sau "fiul ploii"...tot o apa si-un pamant,...de unde nu e nici dumnezeu nu cere...singura scuza,ce sa zic? ...American!.Considering how deep is your understanding of the Romanian language and culture I have no doubt you know the exact meaning of the phrase I wrote in Romanian.

Belenos said...

Clau2002

I'm not keen on most manele myself, but to deny it's Romanian is pathetic nonsense.

From the Romanian wikipedia:

"Manelele (singular, manea) sau muzica de manele constituie un gen muzical, originar în comunitățile etnice de romi din România."

Looks pretty conclusively Romanian to me, unless you are saying that the ethnic Rom, Saxons, Slavs, Greeks, Turks and Maghiars aren't Romanians, in which case Romania should hand large chunks of its territory over to neighbouring countries.

If a foreigner told a Spaniard that cantijonda, rumba catalana or flamenco were Spanish music styles, they would puff their chests out with pride and say "pues hombre, claro!". You Romanians are really sick with this anti-gypsy racism, I've heard it's worse in Hungary and CR, but that is no excuse.

I've lost count of the number of times that I've had Romanians going to great pains to explain to me that I shouldn't think badly of them because they are not all Gypsies, and most of my foreign friends hve had the same experience. The irony is that we don't think badly of you because you are gypsies, we think badly of you because so many of you are racist against gypsies!

Post a Comment

Make sure your comments include a name or username. Anonymous comments are subject to deletion.