Manele Music and the Discourse of Balkanism in Romania

摘要

The Roma (or Gypsy) populations of Europe have historically been subject to discrimina-tion, the most recent news about Roma expulsions from Italy and France testifying to the persistence of their plight. This article attends to discourses in public culture that constitute the status of the Roma, taking as a case study Romania, where the largest Roma population resides. It examines rhetoric by public intellectuals condemning the Roma-dominated music genre of Manele and illustrates how they conflate music and their performers with a stigmatized view of the Balkans understood as ominously hybrid. By positioning Romanian culture outside of the map of Eastern stigmatization, public intellectuals render both the Roma minority and the Romania's neighbors as foreign Others.