Dampened spirits on the Bucharest concert circuit

Newsroom 04/06/2015 | 11:04

One of the things we foreigners love most about Bucharest (apart from the low cost of living, obviously) is the music scene. Not maybe the manele (though even that has its foot-tapping charms), but the array of accessible classical, jazz and pop concerts and festivals.

From the affordable productions at the handsome opera house, to the regular programs at Sala Radio and the Athenaeum, Bucharest offers high culture at low prices, and it’s probably happening much nearer to where you live than it would be back home.

For jazz lovers, there are quirky bars like Green Hours and Jazzbook. And pop pickers can’t complain about the caliber of the stars who’ve performed here in recent years, from Madonna and Kylie to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Next up is Robbie Williams.

Okay, we’re still waiting for U2, and some world and European tours do leave Bucharest off the list. But with prices still much lower than back home, and with the special atmosphere generated by the local crowd – concerts still seem to mean more to fans here, with the country having been closed for so long, whereas Westerners have always taken it for granted that they’d get to see their favorite acts play live sooner or later – it’s a great experience.

But while we love the concert circuit, the feeling doesn’t appear to be mutual: some venues seem to do their best to deter the foreign visitor. It’s not solely targeted at us – sometimes the organizers are equal opportunities unhelpful. Running out of water at summer stadium gigs (this has also happened at the opera), overheated venues, late starts and huge queues because the powers-that-be decide not use all the doors at their disposal are annoying for Romanians and non-Romanians alike.

But newcomers also have to contend with unsigned layouts and box offices that the managers seem to want to hide from the public. Enter a major concert hall brandishing your ticket for, say, section J, row 16, and you might hope to see a sign pointing you to section J. Unlikely. The ticketless may be keen to find out the location of the box office. Can be tricky.

My thoughts turned to this as I slid down a muddy bank while trying to flee the deluge before the Roxette concert in May.

Now, it’s not the concert organizers’ fault that it rained heavily, nor that the Romanian Arena (a beautiful, old amphitheater) has only one entrance and is in a park. Maybe it’s expensive to put in proper steps to cater to the several thousand arriving, rather than leave them to teeter down a narrow, rickety old flight of steps you might expect to find at a medieval castle. But they could at least prune the overhanging branches that force fans to stoop to go up or down.

And they could also have a better plan in place to deal with the crowd surge that built up as concertgoers rushed to take shelter from the downpour than to tell them (falsely) that the show had been cancelled.

Anyway, once we’d returned home, changed into dry clothes and returned just in time for the second song of the night, it was a super show at a lovely venue with an appreciative audience and I was a fan of Bucharest’s music scene once again.

Julio hoopla

A storm of a different sort accompanied another performer in Bucharest for a show: Julio Iglesias’s son (no, not Enrique, he has others). On an Antena 3 talk show to promote the forthcoming concert at Sala Palatului at which he will support his father, a presenter tricked JI Jr into saying, “Jos Basescu”, giving the impression it was a Romanian-language pleasantry.

Ignoring the fact that Traian Basescu exited Romania’s political stage months ago, and so the cheap trick was utterly pointless, what an underhand, unprofessional and childish thing to do.

Will the presenter do the decent thing and resign after such a high-profile lapse in journalistic integrity? With another presenter still in her juror’s chair on a TV talent show despite ignorantly comparing gay people to terrorists last month, don’t hold your breath.

Around the same time as the woman’s homophobic rant caused controversy in Romania, Northern Ireland’s health minister made similarly bigoted comments linking gay couples to child abuse. Within days he had stepped down. Maybe one day we’ll see similar accountability among public figures here.

In out, in out

The major news in UK politics was of course May’s general election with its shock outright win for the Conservative Party. There had been fears of another hung Parliament, requiring a coalition (common in Romania and in much of Europe but rare in the UK until recently owing to its first-past-the-post voting system).

UKIP, the anti-Europe party whose leader, Nigel Farage, attracted widespread condemnation after commenting “Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door,” had been tipped to do well.

In the end, the party had only one Member of Parliament elected. However, this was again due to the workings of the British system – the party won almost 4 million votes. This will help fuel the UK’s Euro-skeptics as the Conservatives press ahead with their pledge to hold an in-out referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

When I first moved to Bucharest in 2002, all the talk was of whether Romania would be in or out of the EU. Ironic that now I’m worried about whether the UK will be.

Butt out

One area where I wish Romania was a bit more like Britain is in its smoke-free legislation. It’s not new for expats (and increasing numbers of locals) to complain that we return from nights out coughing and stinking of ashtrays.

But I sense change in the air (rather than just fumes). Over the past year or so, three new splendid cafes have opened up in my neighborhood (Black Eye Coffee, Coffee Factory and Origo). All have opted to go non-smoking. A sign of things to come? Maybe so, maybe not, but definitely a breath of fresh air.

Debbie Stowe

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