Coldplay booed in Romania due to a special guest

One of the characteristics of the Music of the Spheres World Tour (read the report on the Athens date of last June 8th here), in addition to sustainability in the production, is the presence of “local” guests on stage: it happened in New Jersey with none other than Bruce Springsteen, with Kelly Jones of Stereophonics in Cardiff and with Bryan Adams in Vancouver. It was logical, therefore, that Chris Martin and his associates also had a surprise in store for the public in Bucharest, where last Wednesday the first of the two dates in the Romanian capital scheduled in the calendar took place.

The audience's response, however, was not what Coldplay expected: as soon as he set foot on stage the special guest of the evening was literally overwhelmed by boos. The one who was vehemently contested was Babasha, a twenty-two-year-old star of manele, a hybrid genre that mixes contemporary pop and urban sounds with those of the Roma tradition.

Similar to Serbian turboflok but with an even deeper tradition behind it (which dates back, in its classical form, to the end of the 18th century), manele is a decidedly divisive genre for the Romanian public: as reported by Euronews, part of local public opinion criticizes the artists who dedicate themselves to texts that are too superficial, ungrammatical and crude, with misogynistic and sexist references, often centered on violent or criminal lifestyles. The intolerance of part of the audience towards the manele was even reflected in the resolutions of the local administrations: already in 2010 the municipality of Cluj-Napoca, the main urban center of Transylvania, was notable for issuing an ordinance that prohibited to taxis in service to spread manele on board the vehicles.

“I expected to divide the public, but not to this extent,” he explained in a clip posted on his official TikTok account Babasha”: “For those who aren't aware, the manele has a bad reputation only because of racism, not because of the music itself. Despite the boos, I would have accepted Coldplay's invitation anyway, because these are opportunities that come along just once in a lifetime. I'm just a 22 year old boy who works day and night to make a dream come true: it doesn't matter that I sing manele.”