Numanuma maiyahi madness

By now you've probably seen or heard the "Numanuma" song. A dancy disco mix. It has been remixed so many times with so many videos of people dancing to it I have lost count. If you find more versions feel free to add them to the comments. In fact I encourage you to make your own. Joing the cross-cultural celebration.

An early flash remix and some english: maiyahi.swf

The most frighteningly widespread version, the one with the overweight guy on his computer cam: numanuma.swf

Original music video:

Another Japanese remix: maiyahi.swf

There is song called Dragostea Din Tei on the Disco-Zone CD by O-Zone. O-Zone was a little known Euro-dance act from Romania... until someone in Japan syched some flash to it. Then someone else. Here is the original music video. Then someone made a video. Suddenly, this CD is a hit and many of my friends are ordering it from Amazon. I bet they don't know what hit them.

This reminds me of the badger badger/potter potter meme and the Yatta meme. There is some peculiar element of certain songs that gets people's creative juices going. I think they have to be 1) silly, 2) in a foreign language, 3) have that "can't get it out of my head" element. It's the tip of the long tail wagging. Maybe artists should make synching rights available to encourage more of this creative behavior in a mainstream way... or maybe not. ;-P

From: Joi Ito's Web: O-Zone madness

The funny-looking name Numanuma is actually a repetition of two Romanian words, 'nu ma' (or, to be correct, 'nu m?') that are part of the lyrics of O-Zone's smash hit 'Dragostea din tei' ('Love in the lime-tree'). More precisely, they're part of 'nu m? iei', which translates into 'you don't take me [away with you]'. I know, I know, but I'm a namer and I'm obsessed with it :-)

From: Stefan's Branding Blog: The O-Zone Craze - Shedding Some Light