My good old Canadian friend Max Hamon (who’s been in Romania, and particularly in Cluj, more than once and who, inter alia, beats most Romanians I know in palinka drinking,- ave, Max, morituri te salutant! – after which he becomes, invariably, the lead singer for any Phoenix or Vama Veche songs) is sending me this message:
Yesterday was a landmark day in my lessons of Romanian. I spent a good hour searching and finding the latest, and hottest (according to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Romanian pop.
You ought be proud that your nation is making a name for itself with this stuff…. or maybe not, they call it music of greed, and associate it with bling bling. But then again you are economist prima donna!
Prima bella, mia draga.
It’s been so long since I heard Romanian, when am I coming back to your lovely country again, I need to visit again. Anyways it was fun to listen to this and think about Sebi and Cluj. As wicked as usually, Max, I am glad you didn’t change in that respect! If, in addition, your chess abilities improved, I might even pay you a visit in Canada soon :-). It goes without saying that Cluj is always going to warmly welcome you (and I promise you will not hear any Adi de Vito with me around).
The song Max mentions (and he dutifully attaches to his email) is “Diskoteka Boom” by Adi de Vito, ex ~ Copilul Minune (~Wunderkind), the uncrowned king of the genre. I will spare (most of) you from listening to it, hence I will not upload this anywhere (nonetheless the lyrics are here, if you really want to have an idea what this is about– I still hope you didn’t have to put up much with it…). If you’re nonetheless anxious to listen to the masterpiece, for less than a buck a months you can get it from here , together with many other superb pieces- I am sure de Vito will use his share to philanthropic ends.
Anyway, the idea here is the hint (challenge!) of Max that perhaps, because ‘I am an Economist’, I ought to be very much pleased that such songs sell well outside the country and- particularly!- that this seemingly works better than anything else as branding for Romanians and Romania. This is more or less also the viewpoint of Sorin Matei and others (Florin Dumitrescu however is merely unclear and confusing a few others over the matter, for he’s got a slighly different view, which is in perfect agreement with mine, indeed if you call “manele” what he calls manele than we’ve got another world), in many posts on pagini.com, where we had a few ‘fights’ concerning the topic. So where is the flaw– after all common wisdom would suggest that, economically speaking, one should indeed see this as a most welcome development? Unfortunately, much of Economics is not so much about common wisdom but appears rather counter intuitive to outsiders. So, certainly the flaw is not in the fact that such songs (‘manele’ or ‘bling bling’ in Canadian extrapolation :-), but also useless, redundant “pop” such as the Mihayee song -‘Miyahee of Romania’ as one frequent Vietnamese visitor to my blog refers to it) are popular and somehow they manage to spread rapidly in recent times and some current young generations (seemingly all around the Globe) seem to enjoy them, and so on and so forth. It is beyond my purpose to attempt an explanation for this right here, and I might even admit (reluctantly) that I was far too categorical on another occasion. Far from me also to argue for any interference with markets here (Free to Choose, remember?!). The flaw is different and appears when some argue that all this should have to do with more than ‘markets’, such as branding (or even more specific, country branding).
The argument is very simple and here I’ll give here just a glimpse of it, leaving for another time the intricacies. Notwithstanding your opinion on country brands per se, I am sure you would agree that a brand can’t just be a concept/a label, without substance, it can’t be something arbitrarily chosen or some choice based on considerations parallel to efficiency. Economically speaking, you gain the most if you choose to market (here, as brand) the most efficient feature of that country, the one trait that gives you a comparative advantage over (most) other countries (let’s keep this discussion solely aimed to country brands for now). Now, the proponents of ‘Romania, the country of the manele & co’ brand (Max is not a proponent, he is merely genetically predisposed to charades) believe they have a strong case by pointing out over and over how well these things market so far, both domestically and internationally (the very first mistake is right here since you ought to compare carefully with the full implications (efficiency) of other existing strategies first). They fail however to account for the fact that there’s a surge in demand for manele & co only in ‘transition states’ where the typical “customers” are high (Ada Milea is one far better alternative in that state; internationally I’d go for a Doors best of, for a change, though a postorgasmic chill a la Skunk Anansie might do as well), drunk (Spitalul de Urgenta, Pavel Stratan; Lou Reed’s Transformer, Bregovic- solves multiple problems…), utterly horny (Alexandru Andries, Paula Selling(?); try Die Walkirie; Goldfrapp for the less pretentious, Simon and Garfunkel for the weirdos…) or simply desperate (domestic alternatives include Alifantis or Vama Veche (before the Vama split); Deep Purple and my all time favourite: David Bowie) . Anyway, ignoring somewhat the ‘de gustibus in display’ above (next time I’ll go for more recent bands :-)), the point is that they fail to see that the demand for manele & co in the equilibrium, beyond transitory states, is negligible (of course one cannot but notice that these transition states are nowadays quite frequent; but then it would be far-fetched to believe that this frequency is what one should believe stable). In equilibrium, faced with a choice between good Romanian classical music (or jazz, or folk, or rock, or pop etc.) and “the best of” the manele genre, I conjecture that the average person would always choose the first alternative (there’s more to this, eg. one can show using a different rationale why this is going to be the dominant strategy).
Therefore I strongly doubt that Romania has any real comparative advantage in creating (and marketing, exporting etc. ) “manele” (which, as Dumitrescu and others in depth analysed by now, are not an original, but an
ill-adapted, inherited Arabic musical gene, which despite Sorin’s wishes I don’t think Romanians are able -or more able than others- to perfect…), that any strategy based on popularizing them is sustainable or even that there are any substantial short run gains from this (cost-benefit analysis: would you have people high 24/24 to listen and enjoy the Wunderkind’s masterpieces? by the way the causal link runs only in the direction mentioned here, although some subjects might arrive to similar consequences, such as a brusque desire to commit suicide, desire becoming
acute after listening to enough Diskoteka Boom & co). Most people simply fail thus to see that we are not observing an equilibrium, that the market is still transiting, adjusting. And what shall remain unaltered
in the core is neither “Diskoteka Boom” nor “Miyahee”; however
Alex Balanescu’s pieces might stand, for instance, a good chance.
P.S. Of course Max will become a regular contributor to articles on Romania seen from outside. Isnt’t it, my dear?
