Tuesday Traditions

Anybody watch 'The Voice'? It's an American singing competition where four judges, who are famous artists,  listen to contestants and chose from them people to be on their team based on their voice alone. (They are not allowed to see the contestants.) Then these teams are coached by the judges that chose them and compete against each other to earn the title of "The Voice." Anyway, Romania has it's own version of the show called Vocea Romaniei, and it became kind of a Tuesday night tradition for a few friends and I to get together and watch this show. 

We looked at it as kind of a cultural experiment to see if Americans and Romanians have different tastes in regard to music...they do. Our little group usually consisted of three to four Americans and one to two Romanians. We Americans often did not agree with what the judges deemed as good, while the Romanians usually did. 

At some point in the show I usually would end up laughing so hard I cried. It was either from the interesting outfits, or the strange back up dancers that also always seem to be wearing something ridiculous and doing some sort of choreography that had nothing to do with the style of the song. Unfortunately the show ended at Christmas so now we have to find another show to pick apart culturaly...or just laugh at.

I did catch an episode of the Turkish version of 'The Voice' and it was interesting to see that while Romanians usually sang popular American songs, the Turks sang mostly their own Turkish pop songs. 

Here is an excerpt of one of my favorite contestants on Vocea Romaniei. He made it pretty far into the show. You can decide whether he would have made it very far in the US. He was one of my favorites, mostly for the unique costumes, interesting facial expressions and the fact that you can never guess what note he will song next. But really, I could listen to him a lot ;)

One of the judges from Vocea Romaniei gave a free concert at the mall near my place at the beginning of December. Just like the show, the concert went on and on. This guy, Horia Branciu, has a lot of energy and really knew how to get the crowd excited. 

We never knew what was going to happen next, just like the show. This may be partly because we don't understand that much Romanian, but at one part of the concert, this happened. It was some kind of dance involving a giant hamster ball? We certainly weren't expecting that. 

In conclusion, Romania is never boring!