numa numa

Numa Numa (or "the Numa Numa Dance") is an Internet phenomenon based on amateur videos, particularly one by Gary Brolsma, made for the song "Dragostea din Tei" by Romanian pop band O-Zone.

The phrase "Numa Numa" comes from the chorus of the song, "nu mă, nu mă iei," meaning, roughly, "(you) won't take, won't take me."

Maiyahi by Ikari

The first video to gain widespread popularity^{citation needed]} was created by Japanese Internet user Ikari, and features animated images of cats resembling the fictional Mona from the Internet forum 2 Channel, and text based on a series of mondegreens derived from interpreting the lyrics as Japanese or English words which they resemble:

• Alo ("hello") becomes "arrow," "alone," and Arlong (a character from the popular manga One Piece)
• Salut ("greetings or hi") becomes saru (monkey)
• Sunt eu ("it's me") becomes sugee (incredible)
• Un ("an") becomes un (yes)
• Haiduc ("outlaw") (or "hero" or "knight" depending on variation of translation) becomes haidoku (to read something precious)
• Iubirea ("My love?") becomes ji bero ("tongue with characters on it")
• Fericirea ("your happiness") becomes panchira (upskirt). It can be also understood as very ecchida (very naughty.) (Note: it is common in Japanese-Pop music to mix up English and Kanji in the middle of the song.)
• The beep in the song seems to become beef.
• Nu ma, nu ma iei ("you don't want, you don't want to take me") becomes "noma, noma yay!" ("drink, drink, yay!")
• Chipul tau si became Keep Dhalsim (A character from Street Fighter) while dragostea din tei becomes ago [chin] Study Day

Some sites incorrectly assume that these were honest attempts at translating the lyrics that mistakenly resulted in Engrish. The assumption is proven wrong by the final section of the video which shows the correct lyrics. The video can be seen here.

An episode of Smap X Smap featured the band lip-synching "Dragostea din Tei" with the cast of period drama Ō-Oku, with all the performers loudly chanting "Noma, noma yay!" during the chorus.

Gary Brolsma

Main article: Gary Brolsma

A Flash-based video of American Gary Brolsma lip-synching the song energetically on his webcam brought the Numa Numa phenomenon to the US (video). Brolsma has stated that he first discovered the song in the Japanese flash animation [1].

Brolsma first published his "Numa Numa Dance" on the Newgrounds site on December 6, 2004, where it has since been seen more than 13 million times,[2] and copied onto hundreds of other websites and blogs. He has also received mainstream media coverage from ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show and VH1's Best Week Ever, and, according to The New York Times, was an "unwilling and embarrassed Web celebrity." He cancelled media appearances, but in September 2006, reappeared with a professionally produced New Numa video.

A story in The Believer (June/July 2006) explores the song's spread and global homogenization, while arguing that Brolsma's video "singlehandedly justifies the existence of webcams . . . It’s a movie of someone who is having the time of his life, wants to share his joy with everyone, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks."

One version of Brolsma's video also contains some puns, among them pictures of "feta cheese" during the lyric "fericirea" ("happiness") and a LEGO representation of Bob Ross during the singer's words: "sunt eu Picasso" ("it's me, Picasso").

UBC Numa Numa

On February 10, 2006, eight students from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada released a four-and-a-half minute video in which they lip-synch and dance to the song. The video has attained cult status on campus, and, since the video was linked on Collegehumor.com, rapidly increasing popularity on the internet, receiving over 200,000 hits in its first two days online.

The main creators of UBC Numa Numa are fourth-year marketing student Jorgen Kjono (Jørgen Kjønø) (who wears an orange construction helmet in the video) and recent graduate Tyson Miller. The video was filmed on the UBC campus, on Wreck Beach, and in Richmond, British Columbia at the airport, YVR, and features a pilot (Miller, wearing an authentic, borrowed pilot's uniform) who meets some UBC engineers and has fun with them. Cast in the video can be seen wearing UBC Engineering jackets and dancing next to the large concrete "E" which marks the Engineering department.

The students showed the video at the UBC Engineer's FilmfEUSt, an annual amateur film festival on the final day of E-Week. While the video was disqualified, as no one from the video is an engineering student, it received a standing ovation. [3].

Numa Numa: The Movie

A series of music videos were created by a group of Southern California film students under the name of Factor 11 Productions. These videos gained widespread acclaim on YouTube for their snappy editing, professional quality and cinematography. The first film in the series, Numa Numa: The Movie told the simple story of a Gary Brolsma-like character who rose to fame after submitting a clip of himself dancing to O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei". The sequel, NumaSquared was on a much larger scale with scenes shot on location in Downtown Los Angeles and a climactic desert shootout.

Both films can be seen here:

Numa Numa: The Movie: [4]

NumaSquared: [5]

Numa Numa Project

The Numa Numa project was created by Sailors onboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). The video was of several sailors goofing off inside their spaces to the now popluar O-Zone Song, Dragostea din Tei. The video was available on the web until it was found that classified equipment had been filmed.^{citation needed]} The video was then pulled off of hosting websites and the sailors involved went to mast.^{citation needed]}

Watch on youtube[6]

See also

Numa Numa-related

• New Numa
• Numa Numa parodies

Other

• Internet phenomenon
• Star Wars kid
• Dragostea din Tei
• Yatta
• Brooke Brodack
• mondegreen

References

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHw72X6AMDw : New Numa protest video on YouTube.

External links

O-Zone versions

1. Dragostea Din Tei live
2. The Dragostea din Tei music video (Real player needed)
3. New York Dan Balan and Lucas Prata performing the made-for-America version of Dragostea Din Tei (Ma Ya Hi) at Rockefeller Plaza in New York
4. Tokyo O-Zone performing Ma Ya Hi in Japan.

General

• Lyrics (Romanian and English translation)
• NumaNuma.net
• NewNuma.com - Gary Brolsma's new site for his new video
• Numa Numa Dance on Newgrounds - Numa Numa Dance where it was originally submitted
• Gary Brolsma Fan Site - Dedicated to the creator of the original Numa Numa
• Commanda Keena dance - featuring Commander Keen
• Numa Numa Trees
• Myspace profile - Gary Brolsma 's Myspace profile