ODD 62

mixed media presentation. 

A Rokolectiv Festival event.

participant: Paradaiz

Beginning of the 90s, on the background of the fall of the communist regime and the start of an obsessive transition, a new music scene exploded in Romania. One that was completely neglected and even rejected by the mainstream media – so it never made into pop – which built its own systems of production and distribution, functioning as a counter-culture. The Romanian 90s came with the explosion of a new generation (the so called “Albatros” generation) producing a genre that was observational and deeply rooted in the mundane, speaking, just like authentic hip hop, the language of the street. This music was a metaphor of the Romanian transition, transgressing the boundaries of the mono-ethnic discourse cultivated by the media and rapidly swallowing various influences, from mainly Balkan folklore, gipsy and Oriental rhythms to, sometimes, tropical sounds, which made it highly appreciated at weddings or in restaurants. These were the first musicians to travel freely in the neighboring countries and feed a young generation obsessed with Turkish jeans and tapes with a music that rapidly compressed the “East-West and back to the East” cultural axis. A whole grey market and exchange of cassettes flourished, together with micro recording studios and a system of distribution in a peculiar DIY spirit. Though neglected by the main labels and with a short life – from 1990 to 1996 - the “Albatros” generation of musicians built a special landscape in the post-revolutionary music Big-Bang. It appealed proletarians all over the country and brought the sounds of cheap synthesizers to the masses, as every second town/village had its own such band with at least one Roland E-500 or Casio CTK that came with Arabic preset sounds. 

PARADAIZ TAPE MAȘINA is a project born to preserve, archive and analyze this very poorly studied and almost forgotten, yet fairly exotic scene of Romania in its transition years.