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Kings of Cool

“What's cooler than being cool?” sings Hip Hop megastar “André 3000” in the single “Hey Ya!” The track was described by Lou Reed, a veritable godfather of cool himself, as “the perfect Rock and Roll song”. And when a miserablist like Lou Reed lavishes praise like that, you'd better sit up and listen.

What is cooler than being cool? Not much. Certainly not in the West, anyway. Saturated, as the West is, with rampant consumerism, actually being able to buy lots of things no longer makes you a better, more important person. So what if you've got a sports car at 17 if all the other kids in the suburb have one? What matters in youth culture today is the all elusive, ephemeral attribute of “cool”. And, as André 3000 knows only too well, there's nothing cooler than Black Culture.

One of strangest sights that I saw during my recent trip to Tokyo weren't the computerized toilets with a built in “wash and blow dry” function; nor the sight of girls out shopping dressed in full-sized fluffy bunny-rabbit costumes. None of this compared to watching two Japanese teenagers with long, matted dreadlocks singing in Jamaican accents about their love for the Rastafarian god ‘Jah', whiles dancing in front of a picture of Ethiopian emperor and spiritual leader of the Rastafari movement, Haile Selassie. It appears that there isn't a corner of the world where Black Culture isn't being passionately emulated by young people of every race. If you don't believe me, take a walk to Piata Romana and check out what half the kids are wearing.

The reason for the phenomenal global success of Black music and culture has nothing to do with over-simplistic, pseudo-eugenicistic theories about innate rhythm and dancing ability. It has everything to do with black history - and the concept of cool.

‘Cool' is an attribute that attaches itself to the Underdog; the no-hoper; the kid that the world turned its back on. The nihilistic, “nothing to loose” attitude that we associate with ‘cool' is drawn from those who lived fast and died young because they had nothing - and thus had nothing to loose. Take, for example, one of the first ever icons of cool – Elvis. The whole point about The King was that he was plucked from not only obscurity, but also grinding rural poverty. If he'd grown up the son of two bankers, no matter how much he wiggled those hips, no-one would have been interested. Our modern concept of ‘Cool' is inextricably linked to struggle and deprivation. Elvis saw both.

Having suffered hundreds of years of oppression at the hands of white colonial slave owners, every successful black person carries with them a sense of having made it against the odds; of having come from the bottom and made it to the top. No matter how many zeros black rappers like Nelly or Jay-Z have in their bank accounts, no matter how middle class an upbringing producers like Kanye West or Felix Da Housecat might have had, they'll always leave a white audience with the impression of being the underdog. ‘Black cool' is the twenty-first century shadow cast by a dark colonial past.

Back to Romania , and it's the gypsies who get the unenviable prize for ‘most oppressed minority'. Forget the mythologized wealth of the gypsies; from School exclusion to unemployment to illiteracy, there's hardly an index of deprivation that the gypsies aren't at the top of. From the UK to Bulgaria , the Gypsies represent nothing less than a Europe-wide underclass.

As with Black culture, this deprivation has contributed to the development of a vibrant culture of soul music. In fact, its the Roma's musical heritage that is fuelling one of the most exciting musical projects to come out of Romania – the “Shukar Collective”.

“I'd still classify it as electronic music,” explains Matze in his Bucharest studio, “but what we do is to work with two seemingly opposed genres - electronic music and traditional gypsy music. One of them is futuristic and forwards looking, the other steeped in history and tradition. However, the end result sits comfortably alongside electronic genres like Hip Hop or Trip Hop, but has taken onboard a strong gypsy influence.” The group, which includes six established musicians from the Romanian underground, is based around three gypsy performers – their ages ranging between 24 and 62 - singing in Rromani. Together they've just recently launched their debut album, entitled “ Taves Bahtalo!”, a heady mixture of beats and haunting Roma melodies. “And it wont be long before it gets its UK release,” Matze nods, detailing the interest from outside Romania that the group has generated – they've already performed in Belgium, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands...

If 2004 belonged to Bollywood, with Hindi-strings and beats making their way TV adverts, club hits and Britney Spears number ones, then 2005 could very well be the year of the gypsy. Don't be surprised if you start hearing people using the word ‘gypsy' and ‘cool' in the same sentence.