I'm in Bucha-fucking-rest! Awesome!

I know, I know, these things are supposed to be announced on the blog before hand, but now I'm here and loving it.

As you may know, I'm doing my master's thesis on Romanian manele music, one of my favourite genres of contemporary Balkan music, and I'm super-excited to finally be down doing field research in the awesome metropolis of Bucharest, the megalomaniac new Rome imagined and executed by this guy. So far it's been going great - in fact one of my contacts just texted me saying I might be getting an interview with the biggest producer in the business, which would be awesome. Other than that I've talked a bit to fans and to fellow ethno-/musicologists, including the awesome Marin Marian-Balasa, whose own research and outlook perfectly complements a lot of the stuff I was hoping to get out of the trip.

I've got masses of great stuff already spinning around my head, and I'll start dropping the cooler angles and anecdotes on this blog as I go along. Meanwhile, to demonstrate that manele really does take inspiration from EVERYWHERE - it' standout feature to me and the focus of my research - here's a manele track that copies... Fitness craze Zumba!?