Numa Numa

About

Numa Numa is a lip dub video created by New Jersey amateur videographer Gary Brolsma, performing the song “Dragostea din tei”^[1], by the Moldovan pop group O-Zone. Since its online debut on Newgrounds in December 2004, the video has gained significant fame both online and offline for its parodies and re-enactment videos.

Origin

Dragostea din Tei

“Dragostea din tei” (roughly translated as “Love in the Linden Tree”) is a 2003 hit dance single by the Moldovan pop trio O-Zone. Its nickname “Numa Numa” comes from the song’s Romanian lyrics “nu mă, nu mă iei,” which translates as “you don’t want, don’t want to take me.”^[2] Upon its release across Europe in 2004, the song topped the single charts of nearly a dozen European countries as well as Japan’s Oricon album charts in 2005.

Lyrics

On Newgrounds

Gary posted his Numa Numa lib dub video on the flash animation site Newgrounds^[3] on December 6th, 2004. One of the video’s YouTube mirrors, uploaded on August 14th, 2006^[4], has accrued over 44 million views over seven years.

Spread

Although Gary initially created the video for his friends only, the Newgrounds link was forwarded and passed around. With the rise of YouTube in 2005, the Numa Numa video soon reached the popular video-sharing community, where viewers responded with hundreds of parodies and response videos.^[5]

Gary went on to do interviews with several mainstream media outlets including the New York Times^[6], CNN, VH1’s Best Week Ever^[8], and the Today Show.^[7] Because O-Zone’s original single never took off on the U.S. Billboard Charts, Gary’s lib dub cover played a vital role in introducing the catchy pop song to the larger mainstream audience in America. In late 2008, “Dragostea din tei” was used as the main sample in the hit single “Live Your Life” by T.I. and Rihanna, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 on November 8, 2008.

Notable Examples

Parodies and remixes of the original Numa Numa videos began appearing in 2006.

Follow-up Videos

In September 2006, Gary recorded a heavily-produced follow up video entitled New Numa: The Return of Gary Brolsma^[9] that would get over 16 million views over the next five years, but wouldn’t have the same cultural impact as the first video. In November 2007, Gary recorded Numa Three – Crazy Loop!^[10], returning to the casual webcam format, which only accrued a little over 1 million views by December 2011. In March 2009, Gary collaborated with Geico Insurance to make a fourth Numa video.^[11] He has appeared in several music videos and ads^[14], runs a homepage called Numa Network^[13] and maintains a YouTube channel, NewNuma^[12], which was created on August 24th, 2006 and receives 28,880 views a day.

Search Interest

Search for Numa Numa began growing in December 2004 when Brolsma uploaded his video to Newgrounds and peaked in April 2005, a few months after the major news coverage took place.

External References