Let’s talk about keks

Kitchen caper
“Keks” may be a parody of pop, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a hit in poet and copywriter Konstantin Trendafilov’s native Bulgaria. Despite a music video that resembles a “Callanetics” exercise routine from the 1980s and features two women dressed in spandex singlets, the song is full of sexual innuendo. It takes a seemingly mundane kitchen chore – baking a cake – and presents it in a suggestive way. Moreover, the whole concept of the song is based on a pun. Keks, a kind of Bundt cake, sounds very similar to the Bulgarian word seks. In the video Trendafilov’s alter ego, Papi Hans (above), lists a number of misfortunes – a neighbour scratched his car, his bike has been stolen and he’s had a pay cut – but he’s undeterred by his bad luck because “last night he made keks”. Since it was released last November, Trendafilov’s song has been viewed more than 6m times on YouTube. One line, “Vsichko e tochno” (Everything is just fine), has taken on a life of its own.

Song of woe
Saccharine ballads about love and loss are always popular in Uzbekistan, where an easy-listening style called estrada rules the pop scene. A mournful ode by crooner Sardor Mamadaliyev recently captured the mood of a nation in mourning. It is an elegy to 52 Uzbek labour migrants – all men – who perished when the bus taking them to Russia exploded in a ball of fire while they were travelling through Kazakhstan earlier this year. Called simply “In Memory of 52 Countrymen”, the song, delivered in a dolorous baritone, urges Uzbekistan to mourn its dead sons. As President Shavkat Mirziyoyev acknowledged, they were only on the bus because there weren’t enough jobs at home. The rate at which Uzbeks are leaving their country to find jobs elsewhere is more than twice the global average.