“We live life like Sultans/ Like Suleiman we sprawl/ How wonderful our life passes,/ We have no worries at all,” sings Adrian Minune on his track, “We Live Like Sultans”. Rising to fame as Adrian Copilul Minune (or Adrian the Wonder Child, because he started his career as a child singer), Minune is a star of Romanian manele: a Balkan beat genre with Roma roots.

Characterised by Turkish and Arabic influences and infamous for its connections with the gangsta underworld, manele paints an aspirational, money-making world where heroes get rich quick on their streetwise smarts, to be loved by women and envied by their enemies. “Gypsies from the gypsy-hood are jealous I’ve got money,” Minune sings in another hit.

Minune might be a star, but both him and other manele singers are navigating choppy cultural seas. Once one of Romania’s most widely-loved musical genres, manele is now quietly blacklisted from major TV and radio stations. Appearances of manele at major festivals or nightclubs has fractured Romanian society into several fronts. At its heart is a Romania coming to terms with itself and its identity.