Summary

The volume Manele in Romania: Cultural Expression and Social Meaning in Balkan Popular Music is a collection of nine articles exploring and documenting, from social, political, musical, and textual perspectives, the manea — an immensely popular cultural phenomenon that has remained "in fashion" among lower- and middle-class inhabitants of Romania for decades yet has proved to be a matter of great controversy among more elite Romanians who view the genre as vulgar and "alien."

In 2011 several of the authors of this volume participated in a course taught at the National University of Music in Bucharest titled "The manele in the Romanian public debate: transition, democracy, the Romani minority, and the reconstruction of national identity," financed by the Erste Stiftung (Vienna) through its "Patterns" Lecture Project. The course was scrutinized intensely by the media, yet although contested by music professors at the university (because its topic was deemed inappropriate), student attendance and support were considerable. Because of the timely, relevant, but also controversial nature of the course, those involved in the teaching of it decided to transform the results of their research—along with that of three additional foreign colleagues: Anca Giurchescu, Margaret Beissinger, and Victor A. Stoichita—into a collective volume in English. Erste Stiftung supported this venture as well, providing a large part of the financial backing necessary for the production of the volume, and the co-editors (Margaret Beissinger, Anca Giurchescu, and Speranţa Rădulescu) thank them most warmly for their assistance.

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