Benga

May she take you?

She may take you, if you are a newborn and maybe cursed by a gypsy. At least that’s what the said in the past. These days you could be taken to her by one extremely sexy chica, if you are a sensitive/horny young man. More on that later. There is not much about her in the Romanian Mythology Dictionary. Just that she is a she-devil running around naked, hair loose, with her tits thrown back over her shoulders. Her name is interchangeable with the devil when one wants a basic curse but with a little exotic touch.

Not as exotic as the Ota Benga. He was in a cage at the Zoo.

She is just gypsy. A vintage import. An older wave from India around 1000 years ago brought us the Romani¹ people. They are quite peculiar as Mary Poppins might say. In their language Devel means the good aspect of god, bringer of light, protector of men. And the devil(s) are called Beng. The tempter of men².

So it’s not this one either. He made dubstep. Not tempting many. Anymore.

The word beng originally just meant “frog”. It has old Indo-European roots. It went east and came back like a boomerang. As we all know from many fairytales, frogs have been associated with liminal, chthonic, or dangerous supernatural forces, they lived by the water, the gate to the underworld, going in and out, of both realms. So following an established pattern, an uncanny creature on the edges gets semantically shifted to mean a supernatural evil as a people adopt new religious frameworks. So she’s (a) devil now.

And it doesn’t stop here. In the vernacular it went beyond curses and bad omens and these days Benga is related to sizzling hot girls. *That* kind of devil. As in “she is so beautiful she takes you to Benga” and also “Charming as the goddess Athena”. We get these type of slopified rhymes in the AI era. And we get this authentic guy here:

While we also have plenty of wiggers around our parts, maybe you would call this a wipsy

Ok, but what’s with all the Africans? They’re not Indo European. So it’s an entirely different strand of Benga over there. Besides the Bri’ish dubstep guy and the pygmy. And it’s also related to music. (Frogs also ‘sing’). Music that sounds a lot less exotic to be fair. Part of the westernization effort in Africa, I presume. Or due to our africanization. It was the name of a popular genre in the 60s and 70s in Africa, but doesn’t have a clear etymology in any known African language. It might have been the name of a popular skirt model, or a derivate from a Luo word signifying looseness, or something related to the tribe by the same name speaking the Benga language, a relative of the Bubi language from Equatorial Guinea on the west coast, for those familiar. But the genre hails from the east coast. It’s that kind of unsolvable thing. And ultimately it doesn’t matter for us. We have our own devils.

In Coliere V1, it’s Жила (Rupture) E(10,13) As in fault. Think San Andreas. Earth shattering. Quacking. Shaking. Grows organically, evolves unpredictably. You never know when. Beautiful and dangerous, just like California. But of the East. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… BENGA!

Ba-da-Bing! Ba-da-Boom! Ba-da-bi-Boom! (123! 123! 1234!)

or alternatively and more controversially

Ro-ma-ni! Ro-ma-ni! Ro-ma-ni-ah!

To make a long story short, we narrowed it down to she is the devil with the tits thrown over her shoulders. And then it was just two small steps from crazy to sexy to cool.

1. If we wouldn’t know better we would presuppose a link with Bengal. But apparently India is so big that the north has more in common with us here than with what’s down south. Bengal comes from the old kingdom of Vanga. No relation with the devil whatsoever. Or with a frog.

2. Fun fact that I didn’t bother to verify: Claude told me the Serpent name in Romani language is Sherkano. Like the the tiger voiced by Academic Agent, if he was italiano.