Numa Numa is
an Internet meme based on the Romanian techno
song "Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone.
"Numa Numa" specifically refers to a Flash-based
video of 19-year-old American Gary Brolsma lip-syncing
the song energetically on his webcam.
While Brolsma's version is undoubtedly the most popular, he
was not the first person to record himself lipsynching
to the song. A version with an unknown man came
out well before the now famous version by Brolsma.
It is easily identified because the man DJ Rotterdam
smashes a record over his head as he is singing
it. . There have also been many imitations and
parodies of Brolsma's Numa Numa video clip.
The phrase "Numa Numa" comes from the words from
a refrain of the song, "nu ma, nu ma iei,"
meaning roughly "(you) won't take, won't
take me."
Gary Brolsma first posted his "Numa Numa Dance" on Newgrounds on December 12, 2004. Since then it has had over 2,300,000 hits, popped up hundreds of websites and blogs, and made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, CNN, and VH1's Best Week Ever.
Brolsma is a teenager who lives in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Reportedly, he is not happy with his fame. According to The New York Times, Brolsma has become an "unwilling and embarrassed Web celebrity." Brolsma has stopped taking phone calls from the media; he canceled an appearance on NBC's Today Show on February 17, 2005, and he did not cooperate with The New York Times for their February 26 article about him.
New York Times article (February 26, 2005) about Gary Brolsma and the Numa Numa dance.There are a number of other videos using the song, including several Japanese cartoons based on 2ch Shift JIS art and a LEGO dancing video. One version even includes a sim from the computer game, "The Sims 2" dancing to the song. The 2ch version may seem completely random, but the images and text are a series of puns based on interpreting the lyrics of the song as English or Japanese words that they sound like (for instance, in the first line, Alo = Arrow, salut = saru [monkey], sunt eu = sugee [incredible], un = un [yes], haiduc = haidoku [to read], and si te rog = ji bero [tongue characters]). This style is in keeping with the original "Numa Numa" video, in which Gary super-imposed several pictures onto his dance routine, among them pictures of "feta cheese" during lyrics that would sound like such to an American listener and a LEGO representation of Picasso when the song mentions the artist by name.
Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa" video has arguably become one of the most famous online video clips since the birth of the World Wide Web. Even Gary Brolsma's own name has become known in many countries throughout the world, and his video clip is also responsible for popularizing many of O-Zone's songs, which were not well known outside Europe prior to Brolsma's "Numa Numa" video.
On Newgrounds.com, Brolsma commented on all of the publicity, saying, "You people are crazy!" Joi Ito has a post discussing this current and growing meme.
