Life /
Differences between Irish, British, Polish, American and other nations culture, tradition, music - loose talk [241]
A. I lurves me some Eurovision (the weirder and more outlandish the better)
Now you're getting into my territory! I loved the madness of Eurovision last year (Romanian rap-yodelling? Croatian pop-opera? yes!), though one of my all time favourites was this piece of lunacy from Moldova in 2005 - youtube.com/watch?v=mVhtWfC7RF4 - and of course, a special mention to Lithuania's entry from 2006 - youtube.com/watch?v=DBAdOlQPbwg
B. No. There's actually a very rich tradition that's been (sadly) abandoned.
Yes, absolutely. Not only the Yugoslav New Wave (which was better than the Anglo stuff if you ask me), but also a lot more was quite original. Estonian music is actually well worth checking out if you're into more folk stuff, because one way that they kept their identity throughout the centuries was through song. They actually seem to have kept this alive, too.
If you listen to what they're producing now in ex-Yugoslavia countries, it's either awful Serbian music with terrible Turkish melodies, or it's hyper-nationalist Croatian music. Having said that, I discovered quite a rich tradition of nationalist songs during the wars there - this is a particularly ghastly Serb song, but there's so much more - youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-mYg5VDzQ&index=4&list=PLHyyETA5ebv94EwLTyDw1R8E8tYn8cKoS - the lyrics are hilariously arrogant, and the music just defies any explanation.