Music for You to Listen To

Azis. He’s a Bulgarian singer of ‘chalga’ or Gypsy and Turkish influenced Bulgarian popular/folk music. He’s quite stunning in appearance, yet also a big star there, and he even apparently has his own TV talk show. Here’s a picture of him:

Azis

So here’s the video to “Lud Me Pravish” (“You drive me crazy”). Watch it and think….

Okay, so big tough Vanko 1 comes after two days having left “poor” Azis all alone, with no money or anything to eat. Azis accuses Vanko 1 of having lost his mind, and having put them in this situation. Vanko 1 says that they wouldn’t be in the situation if it weren’t for Azis’s stupidity.

Okay so there’s a back story. Some sort of arrangement, right? Rather mutually supportive at the very least. Then Vanko 1, surrounded by half naked women sings of his successes at crime, rather crudely, and at how “you” hate yourself for helplessly crawling between his legs. He says “I’m bad. But in bed, I’m God.”

Azis vamps around singing that

“Without you I can’t hear and I can’t see the reason for my life / Without you I don’t have the strength to breath / Know that you are my life.”

Now the odd thing is that although there are all these girls prancing around, as Azis sings of his love, Vanko 1 answers him back. It’s as if Vanko 1 is trying to hide behind the curtain of lady flesh, but really can’t deny that he and Azis are lovers. Now that might be my read, not yours; if so let me know.

But beyond that, you have to love/be jealous of a culture where this can be mainstream pop music. Can you imagine a tough-guy American rapper singing back and forth with no irony to a bearded effeminate guy like this? And nobody batting an eye? If you can, let me know how!

In case you didn’t quite get the point, their publicity machine put out this shot for the partnership (musical). Remember, nobody thinks less of Vanko 1’s masculinity after this. Certainly not that he’s ‘gay.’

Vanko 1 isn’t quite kissing Azis

Could there be a survival of a pre-World War II/Great Depression view of male sexuality (not ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ but ‘normal’ or ‘fairy’) still in operation in Eastern Europe? Or just territories of the former Ottoman Empire? The old view didn’t die out here completely – it survives in ‘situational homosexuality’ where the butchest criminal can have a male lover in prison, but you’d best not call him a ‘faggot’ on the outside. It was killed off during the social panic caused by  the tension and upheaval caused by the Depression depriving men of their assured roles. I’ll try to develop this more in future posts.