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Numa Numa is an Internet meme based on the Moldovan Romanian
pop song "Dragostea Din Tei" by O-Zone. Specifically, it refers to a
Flash-based video of 19-year-old American Gary Brolsma (born July 7,
1986) lip-synching the song energetically on his webcam.
The phrase "Numa Numa" comes from the words from a refrain of the song,
"nu mă, nu mă iei", meaning, roughly, "(you) won't take, won't take me".
Gary Brolsma first published his "Numa Numa Dance" on the Newgrounds
site on December 12, 2004. Since then it has popped up on hundreds of
other websites and blogs, and he has made appearances on ABC's Good
Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show and VH1's Best Week Ever.
Brolsma lives in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. Reportedly, he was not happy
with his fame, although he happily created tweaked versions of the video
after it became popular (see below). 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 2channel Shift JIS art and
a LEGO dancing video but none have ever come close to the international
cult-like following of Gary Brolsma's. One version even includes a sim
from the computer game The Sims 2 dancing to the song.
The Japanese 2channel version actually preceded Gary Brolsma's video. It
was one of, if not the original. In an interview, in answer to the
question "What is the song in the video?" Gary responds: "The song was
pretty random, I found it in another (I believe it was Japanese) flash
animation with cartoon cats or something." The 2channel 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 (or
Hello), salut = saru [monkey], sunt eu = sugee [incredible], un = un
[yes], haiduc = haidoku [to read], şi te rog = ji bero [tongue
characters]), and "fericirea" = panchira (upskirt). Gary Brolsma
continues this style of word-play in his "Numa Numa" video, in which
someone 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 Bob Ross during the
singer's words: "sunt eu Picasso" ("it's me, Picasso"). It is very
popular even with many teenagers and is often sung by children at
schools.
More Numa Numa Below:
The Return of Numa Numa 
Numa
on American Idol
Numa
Gone Wild
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