Iuliana Kornazheva, BNR, 16 May 2025
And now, since quite a lot has already been said about this song, we will offer you not just a little, but a very different point of view. Our colleague Vladimir Mitev (from the Romanian editorial office of Radio Bulgaria – ed.) spoke with Florin Dumitrescu, writer and anthropologist, lecturer at the Transylvania University in Brașov, about the various musical intertwining (in our region – ed.). Their conversation started, of course, with this song ‘Baba Vanga’.
I think this musician (F Charm – translator’s note) is from the Republic of Moldova. I don’t know him very well. But from what he says, I would describe him as a Romanian with a certain connection to the music scene in Bessarabia.
Personally, I would place him in the same wave of musicians from the Republic of Moldova, which includes, for example, the rock band Zdob și Zdub. They too are very skilled at finding these cultural elements of another identity and speculating with them.
‘Baba Vanga’ was chosen simply because it sounds good. It is used, perhaps because it is related to the Bulgarian folk song they use.
The song says ‘close your eyes like Baba Vanga’. I think it’s because Baba Vanga had her eyes closed, and Romanians know her as something like Teresius, a prophet with closed eyes.
She was a prophetess who looked inside, she was not bothered by the outside world. And that is why she has the gift of prophecy.
I don’t know anything else. There is no other explanation for the connection. It’s a love song that says ‘people don’t want us to be together, but we will be together,’ no matter what happens, somehow. And that’s where Grandma Vanga appears with her eyes closed. That’s about it.
If you remember, it was a big hit a few years ago – Dragostea din Tei by O-zone. They were literally singing nonsense. They sang ‘I am Picasso and I am soldier’. Picasso had nothing to do with the rest of the lyrics. There was no depth in the use of Grandma Vanga’s name either.
Dragostea din Tei was a big hit in Bulgaria, and I would like to ask you something in this context, given that Romanian disco artists such as Morandi, Activ, and more recently Dan Balan, etc. are very popular. How do you explain the success of these bands in this genre of music?
These are people who have honed their skills with the times. They are music producers who train themselves. In Morandi’s case, I know that the key person is Marius Moga, who writes music for American bands.
He did half of Maroon 5’s last album, or one of their last albums.
So there are very skilled people who have learned their craft because they work all over the world and are in contact with international showbiz.
But what is happening in Moldova? We are such an open market for Moldovan musicians and producers. You probably associate them with Romanians, with the others across the Prut River, but we see the difference between us and them.
There is a wave of very well-produced, very well-promoted musicians who get on the radio and on big public broadcasts. Sometimes they don’t have any music. Musically, they don’t offer anything very rich. Their songs are not true masterpieces. But they make music that you like, music that evokes emotion. And that lasts for a season.
We hum them for a summer and then we forget them. I think it will be the same with this song about Baba Vanga.
There is a specific genre of Romanian rock from the socialist period called folk rock or haiducesc rock. What is characteristic of this genre?
I tried to do some research of this kind, anthropological research, sociology of music, sociology of the musical phenomenon in relation to haiducesc folk rock. What I wanted to say in defining popular haiducesc rock is that this genre during the communist period was the result of negotiations. On the one hand, there were young musicians of that period who were negotiating to make music, rock music, folk music, both in Romania and in the West. On the other side of the negotiations were the authorities, who were very attentive to what was being sung and how it was being sung in the so-called subcultures.
The negotiations went as follows: we sing songs, those haiduc songs, adapted in a popular style from folklore, the old haiduc ballads, and we talk about the figure of the haiduc, who is the hero of the class struggle, who takes wealth from the rich and distributes it to the poor. This hero was somewhat in line with communist doctrine. And in return, you allow us to sing freely, to wear moustaches, to put on the shows we want, there is a certain freedom of expression.
So that was, let’s say, the more or less tacit, implicit, unsigned agreement. And anyway, it was all part of a cultural movement that revived the figure of the crook. At that time, there were films about outlaws and lots of songs about outlaws – how they ran through the forests, how they hid, how they lived a lonely life.
The band Phoenix was the most important in this genre. But there were other important performers too – Mircea Florian, Dorin-Liviu Zacharia and the band Olympic 64. Valeriu Sterian. And many others. Mircea Bodolan, even Tudor Gheorghe. In his youth, Tudor Gheorghe had songs from this repertoire taken from folklore. He was much closer to folklore than the others. And that allowed for all kinds of folkloric reworkings.
If we stick to the socio-political aspect of music, we notice that a lot of politicians in Romania over the last 35 years claim that not only are they good music lovers, but they also know how to make music. For example, Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu, former prime minister and former director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, plays the bass guitar. Or the former leader of the Social Democratic Party, Liviu Dragnea, is a drummer.
What does this desire of politicians to become musicians and bearers of creativity through music reveal?
Yes. It’s a fad among those who are now 50 years old and who lived in a time when listening to rock music was considered an act of rebellion. As students, they probably played in bands, participated in all kinds of student cultural programmes, and then went into politics.
The younger generation of politicians wanted to differentiate themselves from the old communists by saying, ‘Look, we have a Western spirit.’ We were rockers, we played in high school or college, we played in bands.
In a demonstration of this, former Prime Minister or Foreign Minister Mihai-Răzvan Ungureanu appeared on stage with the band Bere Gratis. Apart from Liviu Dragnea, who recalled his student years when he was a drummer, Prime Minister Florin Cîțu appeared dressed in a metal T-shirt or whatever it was, one of those black band T-shirts, thus presenting himself as a neo-non-conformist and a rebel.
‘We’re rockers, aren’t we?’ So, politicians wanted to show openness towards the West, that they are young at heart, open-minded people within a kind of rebellious conformism.
To what extent does this association with freedom really catch on with people and to what extent does it turn politicians into a kind of caricature?
(laughter)
I don’t know. Lately, I’ve noticed that they’ve given up playing this role.
Just now, I saw that in his election campaign, Nicușor Dan showed himself entering a vinyl shop. Vinyl is fashionable now, and he went in to buy some vinyl records.
One of the vinyls he bought was by the band or musical project Subcarpați, which introduced a specific genre of music inspired by folklore – a kind of trap, rap, how can I describe it? I don’t know how to define their style. Something like disco music, but with very distinct rhythms and a folkloric texture. I would put them in the same basket as this DJ Charm, or whatever his name is, who did the song about Baba Vanga.
Except that there have been Subcarpați concerts, perhaps isolated ones, where nationalist, even fascist elements have appeared. And that raised the question for me of why Nicușor Dan, who is obviously the pro-European version of a politician, bought this CD. He probably wanted to win over the young people from the other camp, Simion’s camp, who listen to Subcarpați.
And now we’re listening to Ergen Dedo, whom the Bulgarians recognised in the Romanian hit.
Photo: Screenshot from the video clip of the Baba Vanga song (source: YouTube)
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