Zdob şi Zdub is a Moldovan band, whose work combines elements of hip-hop (especially sampling), hardcore punk, and comical lyrics, with traditional Romanian folk music. The name is onomatopoeic for the sound of a drum beat. In English the name is sometimes rendered Zdob shi Zdub, and this is how their work is catalogued at iTunes and elsewhere.
The band was formed in 1994 and has gone through various line-ups. The group's initial sound was rather hardcore, and the lyrics were mostly in Russian. They played at "10 Years After Chernobyl" Action in Chișinău and warmed up for Rage Against the Machine at the Learn to Swim II Festival in 1996. The recording of that festival includes their "В доме моем" ("V dome moiom", "In My House") in Russian and "Hardcore Moldovenesc" in Romanian.
Around 1998, their sound began to change, embracing traditional Romanian music and with lyrics entirely in Romanian.
On August 14, 1999, Zdob și Zdub played as part of the Russian MTV-Party, held on Red Square in Moscow, along with Russian bands "Gorky Park" and "IFK" and U.S. band Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The band has toured extensively, mostly in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, but also in Germany (1998) and the Netherlands (2000), and more recently in Serbia, Hungary, and Italy. On January 31, 2001, in Moscow, "Zdob și Zdub" performed with musician and film director Emir Kusturica and his "No Smoking Orchestra".
The video of their song "Bună Dimineaţa!" ("Good Morning"), a tongue-in-cheek evocation of the agro-romanticism of the Stalinist-era Soviet Union and its satellites was awarded Romanian video clip of the year (2001) at the "Televest" Festival in Timişoara, Romania. The following year they won the equivalent MTV Romania Video Music Award for "Ţiganii și OZN" ("The Gypsies and the UFO").
In 2003, the band's song "Everybody in the Case Mare" was featured over the opening and closing credits of the short film "Călătorie la oraş" ("A Trip to the City") by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu.
The band won a national pre-selection contest to claim the right to represent their home country in its debut at the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 in Kyiv, with their song Boonika Bate Doba. It finished 6th in the final, which at the time was Moldova's highest-placing entry. It remained that way until Sunstroke Project eclipsed it on their second attempt with a third-place finish in 2017.
They returned to the 2011 contest in Düsseldorf with the song So Lucky, performing on unicycles while wearing cone-shaped hats. It finished 12th in the grand final.
The group returned for a third time at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin with the song Trenuletul, teaming up with Fratii Advahov. They finished in 7th place in the final, placing runner-up in the televote.
Trivia[]
- They are the fifth Eurovision act to have participated 3 decades in a row after Carola (Sweden 1983, 1991 & 2006), Eiríkur Hauksson (Iceland/Norway 1986, 1991 & 2007), Tommy Seebach (Denmark 1979, 1981 & 1993) and Stoyan Yankoulov (Bulgaria 2007, 2013 and 2022) and the first group to do so.
- They are also the first act to qualify to the final in three different decades since the introduction of the semifinals.