Romanian Culture 101: Romania's Major Lazer

Of all the habits and baggage that one assimilates by moving to a new country, embracing Culture is the final threshold before 'going native'. Someone can learn a foreign language and still remain far removed its associated culture. It takes an amalgam of shared local experiences, relationships, and a daily dose of local customs before culture is assimilated - and incorporated. But I'm just scratching the surface here. There are countless other micro factors involved. And because we're dealing with a qualitative question, measuring the 'amount' of culture is at best subjective, and this preamble is, at best, casual.

Though born here, I've been gone so long that, very often, seemingly obvious cultural references go right over my head and I have to turn to my traditions consultant/girlfriend for guidance. This is especially the case where music is concerned. I confuse Enescu and Porumbescu, I have no idea what the lyrics are to the most popular campfire songs, nor what the countless wedding celebration traditions mean -and don't get me started on the region specific elements of Romanian culture.

You can therefore imagine my appreciation when I was introduced to a Romanian sound that was both new and still very familiar. Doubly familiar even...

I was never really able to identify with a musical genre - besides Classical - until I came across rap, sometime in the mid 90s when Snoop's first album came out. I remember that at some point, still in Elementary school, struggling with English and completely lost in the world of North American pop culture, one of my classmates asked who my favourite bands were. For some reason, probably because it was the first name that came to mind, I said I liked U2. But I wouldn't have been able to name any of their songs, it was just a name I'd heard and didn't want to sound like a Classical music nerd. Truth is, I wasn't able to appreciate any of the bands that were popular back then until a few years ago. For the entirety of my teenage years and beyond, I was hooked on hip-hop.

So what could be better, for a Romanian with my history, than the deep bass and rhythmic percussion of modern hip hop mixed in with the nostalgically wistful sounds of Romanian folk music. Sounds weird? Don't worry, before I heard it I don't think there's any way I could have imagined what it would sound like.

Which brings me to Major Lazer, a music phenom that's taken the world by storm over the last couple of years. The brainchild of DJ/Producer, Diplo, Major Lazer is an act that combines elements of Jamaican dancehall, reggae, and electronic music. To say it's blown up is an understatement. Fusion may not be for everyone, but when it's done right, there's something irresistible about it.

So is the case with Argatu, a 19 year old bedroom producer from Falticeni who wants to prove that Romanian folk music is still alive in a big way. Through a series of vignettes, over a couple of albums presented by Subcarpati, we hear the familiar notes of the caval and the cobsa and find ourselves transported to the Romanian pastoral scenery we know so well - except the shepherd isn't the stoic figure of Miorița fame, and the only grass he's smoking is yet to be legalized. The story gets better though. Andrei (Argatu) says he doesn't see himself pursuing a musical career (why? I don't know), but he wants to share his creations with other Romanians. It seems to me he's thinking too small - this is Major Lazer world music. And if he would just hang in there, he could eclipse our current musical exports; Inna, Edward Maya, or Alexandra Stan. Wishful thinking maybe, but thanks to Argatu I've gone native, so I'm allowed.

Now, I'm just going to leave these here...

By the way, you can download the albums here, because these are good guys who just want to share good music:

Not bad album art either. Designed by KITRA