culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

DANIELA ŞORCARU
with TV stations on various projects. In 2006, they provided the soundtrack for a
National Television project, entitled Mari Români (“Great Romanian
Personalities”), with a song bearing the same name, and which tries to focus the
attention of the public on the real Romanian values, of the past and of the
present, and trying to project them into the future.
The last Paraziţii album, released in 2007, Slalom printre cretini (“Slalom
Among Imbecils”), besides the usual social and political criticism which is their
trademark, the album opens with Mesaj pentru Europa (“A Message for
Europe”), urging the whole of Europe to make the difference between Romanian
gypsies and Romanians as a nation, with an attitude imperatively demanding
mutual respect and equality, as Romanians have always been and will always be
here, with or without acceptance from other nations. The same Paraziţii that
condemn our internal corruption and ignorance, show their true intentions, of
protecting the Romanian spirit and national integrity, and putting this before any
international musical recognition, in lyrics such as “Suntem ruda săracă, deci nu
putem fi fraţi / Mesaj pentru Europa... cred că ne confundaţi!” (“We are the poor
European relative, so we cannot be brothers / A message for Europe... you must
be mistaking us for someone else!”). Perhaps this is only a taste of the albums to
come.
After hosting a show of their own, Pimp My Bedroom, Paraziţii are
currently preparing another collaboration with the same TV station, providing
the OST for a new Romanian mini-series, 17, about the hard time a 17-year-old
has staying away from drugs and bad influences.
Fourteen years after their emergence as a musical group, Paraziţii have
certainly had an interesting ascension, until becoming the phenomenon accepted
nation-wide that they are today. Starting off from the somehow inhospitable
back streets of Bucharest, they were – at first sight, at least – no different from
all the other kids with street knowledge trying to rap their way towards the
musical scene. Yet, street knowledge wasn’t the only one helping them out.
University graduates, they have been fully aware from the very beginning of the
possible impact of words used properly at the right moment. Their education
allowed them to choose their way of getting their message across to the world,
and they chose hip-hop, an unrestrictive environment, with no strict rules or
boundaries, benefiting from the freedom of speech granted by democracy, and –
most importantly – a young and fresh environment, as it was 14 years ago.
What should be noted is that, being the second hip-hop group to release an
official album in Romania, they also got to choose their favourite topics and
tendencies, and they made it clear from their very first song that they would rise
against social, political or cultural issues, and that they would do it in an
unorthodox, uncensored manner: street language, slang and practically pure fowl
language, but with a twist. Possessing a vocabulary allowing them to practically
toy with terms ranging from frozen, official language, and down to the most
fowl curses ever used in Romanian mass-media, and employing a (probably)
innate affinity for semantic puns or multiple-meaning words, one way or the
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