Dan Bălan
Songwriter from Chișinău behind the worldwide hit Dragostea din tei
1979
Photo: Meneerke bloem, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Dan Bălan is a singer, songwriter and producer from Chișinău. He wrote and produced Dragostea din tei (2003), the Romanian-language O-Zone hit that reached number one in more than thirty countries. He went on to build a solo career with songs such as Chica Bomb.
Link with MoldovaDan Bălan was born in Chișinău in 1979 and founded the pop group O-Zone there in 1998, which broke through worldwide with the Romanian-language Dragostea din tei.
Bălan was born on 6 February 1979 in Chișinău, then the capital of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. His first group was Inferialis, a gothic doom metal band that played its first concert in 1995. In 1998 he founded O-Zone with Petru Jelihovschi; after Jelihovschi left, he formed a trio with Arsenie Todiraș and Radu Sîrbu.
In 2003 O-Zone released Dragostea din tei, written and produced by Bălan. The song, often known outside Moldova as the "Numa Numa" song, reached number one in more than thirty countries and is among the best-selling singles in pop history. The group announced in 2005 that it was splitting up, and in May 2017 it gave two reunion concerts.
The melody lived on. In 2008 Bălan became a co-writer of Live Your Life, the duet by T.I. and Rihanna that is built on the melody of Dragostea din tei. The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and earned him a Grammy nomination in 2009, the first for a Moldovan artist according to Wikipedia. As a solo artist he scored hits with Chica Bomb (2010), Freedom (2011) and Lendo Calendo (2013), among others.
The link with Moldova
O-Zone was a group from Chișinău that sang in Romanian; the title literally means "love from the linden trees". The fact that a Romanian-language pop song from Moldova topped the charts in more than thirty countries made it a piece of Moldovan pop history. In November 2009 the Moldovan state awarded Bălan the honorary title Maestru în Artă (Master of Arts).
Key facts
- 1979: born in Chișinău
- 1998: founding of O-Zone
- 2003: Dragostea din tei, number one in more than thirty countries
- 2009: Grammy nomination as co-writer of Live Your Life
- 2009: honorary title Maestru în Artă from the Moldovan state
