Music / Salvatore Ganacci

SALVATORE GANACCI~!

Salvatore Ganacci (born Emir Kobilić, born 29 July 1986) is a Bosnian-Swedish DJ known for his bizarre music videos, live performances, and youtube skits.

Born in Sarajevo in what was then Yugoslavia, he moved to Sweden. The young Emir was nicknamed the Italian-sounding 'Salvatore Ganacci' for his 'Italian-style' football playing, and would later adopt it as his DJ name.

Salvatore first gained fame for his set at the Tomorrowland festival in 2018, which gained rave reviews from music journalists and went viral for his ridiculous dancing. After this, his equally odd performance at the same festival (he had the announcer insult him at length and declare his career over while announcing he was on ketamine, then the camera cut to Salvatore, in the audience, booing his own set on an empty stage, before proceeding to perform with a twin of himself) and music video for his single Horse in 2019 cemented his fame as a crazy awesome avant-garde DJ.

Salvatore regularly posts bizarre shorts on his youtube channel, none of which have anything to do with music. Their strange premises, logo design and ending name Jingle evoke nothing else but a series of really, ''really'' weird commercials, for products that don't exist.

Salvatore Ganacci's works provide examples of:

• Accidental Murder: Salvatore accidentally crushes his dance instructor to death in Your Mother after he falls on his back while the instructor was inside his backpack.
• all lowercase letters: The title of the skit f the police.
• An Arm and a Leg: The enormous hand in the Fight Dirty video has bandages wrapped around its stump, suggesting it was cut away from a giant of some kind.
• Anthropomorphic Food: A creepy anthromorphic carrot called 'Racist Carrot' is the central character of the short named after him.
• As Himself: Every time Salvatore's character is explicitly named, he's named 'Salvatore Ganacci' (although see the Decomposite Character example below for a possible exception).
• Animesque: The 'Fight Dirty' video is stylised like an anime, to the point of being in Japanese.
• Badass Finger Snap: Salvatore uses one of these to repel the giant hand in the Fight Dirty video.
• Bad Guy Bar: The apparent hangout of the Salvatore Gannaci Gang in Fight Dirty.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: The villains of Horse have this as their only real character trait.
• Batter Up!: The girl in the Fight Dirty uses a baseball bat as a weapon.
• Bears Are Bad News: One of the members of the Salvatore Ganacci Gang is an anthromorphic bear.
• Black Comedy: A staple of his works.
• Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The first part of the music video for Horse consists of hilariously over the top animal abuse.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The Racist Carrot:
  I will be equally racist tomorrow.
• Car Cushion: Salvatore's attempt at Grakour is ended ignobly by him falling from a roof onto a car.
• Character Title: Racist Carrot, Wooden Salvatore, ''Salvatore & Ganacci'.
• Cherry Blossoms: Fall around Salvatore at his shrine in the Fight Dirty video.
• Childish Tooth Gap: The protagonist of the Fight Dirty music video has one.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Cultivates an image as one of these.
• Combat Cue Stick: Used by one of the members of the Salvatore Ganacci Gang against the giant hand in the ''Fight Dirty' music video.
• Combo Platter Powers: Although it isn't really clear if the Salvatore across various videos is always supposed to be the same character, he displays such disparate abilities as levitation, Super-Strength, and understanding eagle cries.
• The Comically Serious: Salvatore's calm demeanor only makes his antics funnier.
• Cool Mask: Salvatore wears a horse mask as he rides back from exacting vengeance on the animal abusers in the Horse video. In a giant shoe.
• Cool Shades: Salvatore wears them as he sets out in the Horse music video, setting up the Glasses Pull joke described below.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The girl and hand working together absolutely demolish the Salvatore Ganacci Gang in the Fight Dirty music video.
• Cyberpunk: A clear stylistic influence on the city design in the Fight Dirty video.
• Dance Battler: Salvatore stops during his Mickey Moused fight with the animal abusers in the Horse music video to lay down some sick moves.
• Dance-Off: The two-part video for Sexy Narkoman and Your Mother has Salvatore challenge some local bullies to a dance-off, and getting trained by a Jaded Washout so he can win.
• Death Glare: Salvatore delivers an understated but still menacing one to the animal abusers in the Horse video.
• Decomposite Character: Salvatore & Ganacci features 'Ganacci' (an old bearded man) and 'Salvatore' (the actual Salvatore), riding a cabinet like a horse. It's implied, however, by Salvatore's apparent distaste for Ganacci, that this may not actually be true.
• Destination Defenestration: One of the Salvatore Ganacci Gang Mooks is hurled through the window over the door of their Bad Guy Bar.
• Disappeared Dad: Salvatore implicitly abandons his children with his American wife at the end of the Take Me To America video, returning to Bosnia.
• Disney Villain Death: Salvatore ends the Grakour video by falling to his death on top of a car.
• The Don: In the Fight Dirty video, Salvatore is the apparent head of a gang named after him, who reject the girl protagonist for being too weak to join them, and beat her up. When she returns riding a giant hand and turns the tables on them, they are seen reporting back to him at a peaceful shrine outside the city, where he decides to seek her out and fight her before she can find him first.
• Dramatic Thunder: Heard (for some reason) when the eagle wakes up Salvatore in the Horse music video.
• Dream-Crushing Handicap: The dance teacher in Sexy Narkoman / Your Mother used to be the greatest breakdancer in the world, before he lost both of his legs attempting to do "the impossible trick". Now he lives alone in a dingy run-down house.
• Driven to Suicide: In the Wooden Salvatore video, upon realising that the wooden Salvatore can never replace the real one, the old man drives the car off a bridge, killing everyone inside.
• Enemy Mine: Originally intending to kill her, Salvatore instead spares the protagonist and allies with her at the end of the Fight Dirty music video once he realises they're surrounded by police.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The basic plot of the Take Me To America video is Salvatore conducting a lengthy, years-long deception that culminates in him abandoning his American family...so he can get a better cable for his mom's television.
• Evil Mentor: A possible interpretation of what Salvatore was to the girl in the Fight Dirty video, given that he refers to her as his 'protege' and apparently ordered his gang to throw her out and beat her up because he judged her to be weak.
• Evil Old Folks: The two elderly animal abusers in the Horse music video.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Racist Carrot. A carrot that is racist.
• Family Portrait of Characterization: Used to show that the four animals being abused in the Horse video live together as a family.
• Fanfare: Fight Dirty makes prominent use of bombastic trumpets, matching the incredible visuals on show.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Salvatore's father in the Fight Dirty video does not approve of his manga drawing habit, and insists he work on his music instead.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Salvatore throws back the giant hand in the Fight Dirty video by snapping his fingers against it.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: Salvatore does this to a cup of tea in the Step-Grandma music video.
• Flat "What": Salvatore delivers an almost inaudible one of these in the Horse music video when his eagle informs him of what's been going on.
• Flash Step: Salvatore uses this against the girl in the Fight Dirty music video.
• Food as Bribe: Salvatore convinces the dance teacher in Sexy Narkoman to teach him by giving him a 2 litre of Pepsi.
• Foreshadowing: One of the members of the Salvatore Ganacci gang is seen cowering next to graffiti reading 'A storm is coming' in the Fight Dirty video; this sets up the climatic fight with Salvatore later.
• Giant Hands of Doom: The Fight Dirty video revolves around a girl living in a Cyberpunk-styled city befriending a giant, disembodied crawling hand that she uses to fight.
• Glasses Pull: Parodied in the music video for Horse; Salvatore pulls off his sunglasses once he arrives, and gives a Death Glare to the animal abusers; then he inexplicably pulls them off again, and repeats his death glare before starting his work.
• Glowing Eyes: Salvatore in his One-Winged Angel form in the Fight Dirty video.
• Good Wears White: Salvatore dons an all-white outfit for his Horse music video, where he plays a defender of animals.
• Gravity Is Only a Theory: Salvatore is able to fly in the 'f the police' skit because 'there are no cops around', suggesting gravity is a law in the legal sense, not the physical sense, at least to him.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Attempted by a member of the Salvatore Ganacci Gang against the giant hand in the Fight Dirty video. It doesn't work.
• Grin of Audacity: The girl in the Fight Dirty video before the giant hand she's just befriended smashes into the Salvatore Ganacci Gang; and then again, in response to Salvatore's Psychotic Smirk, before fighting the police at the end.
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: What it turns out the Fight Dirty video was; a pathetic version of Salvatore creating a manga portraying him as a cool anime character, much to his father's disapproval.
• Horseof A Different Colour: Salvatore & Ganacci ride a printer cabinet around a carpark like a horse in the eponymous skit.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Ganacci sniffs an unwilling Salvatore's hair while hugging him from behind like tandem horse riders, and declares 'we do everything together'.
• Hulking Out: After being sufficiently impressed by the girl's performance, Salvatore explosively transforms into a hugely muscular version of himself with glowing eyes.
• Inexplicably Awesome: In most of the skits and music videos, Salvatore has various superpowers of unclear origin.
• Jingle At the end of every skit he makes, his name.
• Kick the Dog:
  • The music video for Horse begins with a group of people comedically abusing animals in tune to the beat; a woman hitting a sheep's head in a car trunk; an old man slamming a horse's head in a door; a man repeatedly crushing a panda between his car and a tree; an old woman punching a lion. they get their comeuppance in the end.
  • The Salvatore Ganacci Gang in the Fight Dirty beat up the young girl protagonist and throw her out on the street for trying to join them, dismissing her as 'weak'.
  • Salvatore himself does this in the Step-Grandma video, taking advantage of an old woman and driving away her grandchildren in order to steal food.
• The Klan: The rival dance group in Your Mother arrive in white hoods and are called the Kool Kids Klub. Naturally, this isn't mentioned by anyone in-universe. Also, one of the kids is black.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Salvatore afflicts the exact same punishments on the group of animal abusers as they were performing at the start of the Horse video.
  • After beating up the protagonist at the start of Fight Dirty, the Salvatore Ganacci gang get exactly what they dished out back from her, with the help of her new giant hand companion.
  • Salvatore throws a punch at the racist carrot, startling it, before slowly moving in to apparently attack it as it screams.
• Le Parkour: Salvatore's goal in Grakour is to create a version of this which fuses it with graffiti tagging. He succeeds; at first.
• Long Game: In the Take Me To America music video, Salvatore moves to the US, studies English, marries an American woman, and has children...all so he can steal a power cable and bring it back to Bosnia to power his mother's TV.
• Mad Scientist: Salvatore in Grakour.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The bodyguards flanking Salvatore's shrine in the Fight Dirty music video.
• Maneki Neko: A building in the ''Fight Dirty' music video is stylised after one of these; it first appears in the background as the girl is running over the rooftops, and is then the arena for her fight with Salvatore, being destroyed in their battle.
• Mickey Mousing: All of the blows in the Horse music video synch to the beat.
• Mind Screw: Everything he has ever done. He is the Andy Kaufman of EDM.
• Mooks: The Salvatore Ganacci Gang.
• Molotov Cocktail: Salvatore uses one to drive away the old lady's real grandchildren in the ''Step-Grandma'' video.
• Murder-Suicide: The conclusion of the 'Wooden Salvatore' skit.
• Nested Story Reveal: The Animesque portions of the Fight Dirty video turns out to just be a fantasy of a manga-drawing loser version of Salvatore.
• Never Mess with Granny: Although the old lady in Step-Grandma initially seems helpless, she pulls a gun on Salvatore when she realises who he really is... only for him to flip over her couch, defeating her easily.
• Noble Bird of Prey: Salvatore has an eagle in the Horse video that reports to him on the animal abusers; it appears again at his shrine in the Fight Dirty video.
• No Name Given: To any of the characters in Salvatore's music videos or shorts other than himself (assuming he's always playing himself).
• Non-Human Sidekick: Salvatore's eagle in the Horse and Fight Dirty music videos; his squirrel in the Step-Grandma music video.
• Non Sequitur: Salvatore's response to being told the girl in the Fight Dirty video who used a giant hand to beat up his entire gang is coming for him, too?
  Sometimes I cry when I'm alone.
  • Even his eagle is confused.
• No Sense of Direction: Played for Laughs in the Horse video; Salvatore gets lost while driving his shoe to the animal abusers.
• One-Winged Angel: Using his bracelets, Salvatore transforms with a huge shockwave into an enormously muscular version of himself with Volcanic Veins and Glowing Eyes in the Fight Dirty video.
• Perpetual Frowner: Salvatore in his music videos and skits almost never smiles, and usually looks pretty much exactly like he does in the above photo.
• Power Floats: In the Balloon skit, Salvatore is able to make a balloon carriage fly without any actual balloon attached to it.
• Power Glows: Salvatore's transformation into his stronger form in the Fight Dirty video is accompanied by a huge beam of light; his eyes and lines across his body then glow.
• Punched Across the Room: The opening shot of Fight Dirty is the girl being punched so hard by a member of the Salvatore Ganacci gang that she's thrown several feet out into the road.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Salvatore is the leader of the gang named after him, and he's an incredibly powerful fighter who's able to hold his own against a protagonist who effortlessly curbstomped all his men.
• Reality Warper: Salvatore can ride a shoe like a car, pull two trees apart to widen a gap, and cause a balloon carriage to float on its own.
• Riding into the Sunset: It's dusk as Salvatore rides away in his shoe at the end of the Horse video.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Salvatore in the Horse music video, on behalf of four badly abused animals.
• Roof Hopping: The girl and hand in the Fight Dirty music video, which leads to:
• Rooftop Confrontation: Salvatore and the girl's battle takes place on top of a building stylised after a Maneki Neko.
• Replacement Goldfish: In the 'Wooden Salvatore' short, a group of people in a car - a man driving, a woman, and an old woman - have replaced Salvatore, who's either dead or absent somehow, with a wooden copy. The driver initially tries to insist that 'Wooden Salvatore' 'is just as good as the real one'; he eventually realises it's not, and kills himself and everyone in the car by driving them off the bridge.
• Running Gag: The exact pronunciation of the nonexistent Italian name 'Salvatore' changes from video to video, apparently just to add to the weirdness.
• Sampling: 'Take Me to America' is built around a sample of the lyric 'I'm from Bosnia, take me to America' from the song U.S.A. by Dubioza Kolektiv.
• Say My Name: SALVATORE GANACCI~! at the end of every one of his skits.
  • The girl in the Fight Dirty video also yells 'SALVATORE!' when she first sees him.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: The only speaking member of the Salvatore Ganacci Gang in the Fight Dirty video has these.
• Scatter Brained Senior: The old woman in Step-Grandma has to use photographs of her grandchildren to remember what they look like. Salvatore is able to convince her that he is her grandson by replacing them with photographs of him.
• Scenery Porn: The city in the Fight Dirty video is beautifully animated; we get a lengthy segment showing the girl and the hand running joyously over the rooftops to show it off.
• Scenery Gorn: We then get to see numerous buildings being destroyed by the girl and Salvatore as they fight.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: The girl from Fight Dirty has a particularly messy example of this.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: The racist carrot when Salvatore threatens it.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Salvatore runs away at the end of the Step-Grandmamusic video once his scheme collapses.
• Sistine Steal: The girl in Fight Dirty touches her hand to one of the giant hand's fingers in a moment of understanding that mimics this painting.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Salvatore is able to understand his eagle's screeching in the Horse video.
• Stage Mom: Salvatore's (fictional) father in the Fight Dirty video.
• A Storm Is Coming: This exact phrase appears on graffiti early in the Fight Dirty video, presumably foreshadowing the arrival of Salvatore.
• String Theory: Salvatore assembles a pinboard like this while researching how to invent the titular extreme sport in Grakour, with a note saying 'How?' at the centre.
• Surreal Humour: His entire brand.
• Tae Kwon Door: The old man animal abuser repeatedly slams a horse's head in a door; later, Salvatore does the same to him.
• Take Our Word for It: The 'Racist Carrot' never actually does anything racist on camera, people just comment on how racist he was.
• Take That!: "One shoe can change your life" ends with Salvatore driving his shoe into a parking spot reserved for Chris Brown and running the sign over.
• Tea Is Classy: Salvatore is seen pouring tea when his gang comes to report to him in the Fight Dirty video; he suddenly stops pouring when they inform him that she's coming for him, too, in a gesture similar to a Dramatic Drop.
• Technicolor Science: 'Grakour' takes the form of some kind of blue potion in a flask.
• They Called Me Mad!: In the eponymous skit, Salvatore's friend insists that Grakour is not only morally wrong, but also impossible. Salvatore proves him wrong.
• There Was a Door: The old lady animal abuser locks her door so Salvatore can't find her, to no avail; he dance-smashes through her wall and attacks her.
• Title Drop: ''Take Me to America' is named after the sample that forms the main hook of the song.
• Took a Level in Badass: The girl in the Fight Dirty video becomes a much more capable fighter after gaining access to the use of a giant hand as a fighting companion.
• Transformation Trinket: Salvatore's bracelets in the Fight Dirty video.
• Troperrific: The Fight Dirty video gleefully uses as many shonen anime tropes as physically possible to cram into a barely 3 minute animation.
• Underestimating Badassery: Salvatore admits as much as in the Fight Dirty video:
  Salvatore: Ah, my young protege. Perhaps I misjudged you.
  Girl: Perhaps you did, old man. Perhaps you did!
• Undignified Death: Salvatore falls to his death in the Grakour video trying to do graffiti and parkour at the same time.
• Volcanic Veins: Salvatore in his more powerful form in the Fight Dirty video.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The 'wooden Salvatore' in the eponymous skit randomly throws up water at one point.
• Villain Respect: Salvatore to the girl in Fight Dirty:
  I must say, I'm impressed. But this ends now.
• Wicked Cultured: In the Fight Dirty video, Salvatore is the head of a gang of thugs who nonetheless takes time to participate in an ornate tea ceremony at a base stylised after a Shinto shrine.
• Would Harm a Senior: Salvatore in the Horse and Step-Grandma music videos; at least the former had it coming.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Salvatore Ganacci Gang in the Fight Dirty video happily beat up the young protagonist.
• Would Hit a Girl: Said protagonist is also a girl.
• Word Salad Humour: The short promo clip for the Step-Grandma music video is titled 'your friend is laying like this would you and from work to her sister with like this. Wyd?'
• World of Chaos: Most of his skits and music videos give off this vibe.
• You Say Tomato: In some videos, Salvatore is pronounced 'Sal-va-Tor'; in others, 'Sal-va-Tor-ay'.