Nicolae Guță


Nicolae Guță manele singer.

Musical career

Guță started as a singer and accordionist in the late 1980s, playing lăutărească music. He released his debut album in 1992. Two years later, he released his first mainstream hit – "De când te iubesc pe tine", featured on his second long-play record. His first album for a foreign audience was released in France, in 1996; while Romanian musical critics hardly had any reaction towards his music, the journalists abroad would show their appreciation and dub his music a very modern fashion of Gypsy jazz.
Starting around 1998 Guță developed a growing interest in manele music, a club-friendly subgenre of Balkans folk music influenced by Turkish and Arab pop, similar to what is known in former Yuguslavia as turbo-folk and narodna and in Bulgaria as chalga. Guță had an important role in the advancement of manele and brought in influences from Western pop and hip hop music. Some of his songs are: "Aş renunţa", "Am greșit și eu", "Dacă vrei", and "Doar tu". In 2007, Guță released a cover version of Hari Mata Hari's "Lejla", the third-placed entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006, renaming it "Cine ești?".