Karaoke on the streets!

So yesterday was the Día de Amor y Amistad, and to celebrate such a day, the town held a Karaoke night. One street was entirely closed off, and they set up this big projection screen along with lots of big speakers. The result, a loud but popular celebration of song.

Beth somehow convinced Dylan and me to perform, and so we sang Dancing Queen by Abba. For some reason it was under the category of “Cancións de Amor.” We competed against Beth and Mercedes' duet, our host mother Doña Aracely, and some other local performers. They determined the winner via applause-o-meter. Doña Aracely won, and it was unclear the rest of the placements, but Dylan and I got a 3 liter bottle of Coca-Cola with a plush heart (looks like a car window decoration, with a suction cup and everything). Beth and Mercedes got this glass dish filled with Hersey's Kisses (Carmel and Almond filled).
Now, for some fun-filled videos and photos.

Before the Karaoke began, this local band of youths played multiple Rancheros. They were equipped with 5-6 recorders, 3 guitars, a bass, a keyboard, electronic drums, and an accordion. The recorders were shrill, but an overall commendable performance.

This is Doña Aracely's performance, a love-song dedicated to her husband, Don Agustin.

A photo of Beth and Mercedes' performance. They sang a Cuban love-song, that I guess has double meanings of a criticism of the government. Ezra was really trying to sabotage their performance, including pulling on his mother's microphone cord. This photo captures his evil doings (/eyes).


We finally tricked Ezra to come to us (by telling him we couldn't hear him and he had to come closer, when Dylan grabbed him for the last 30 seconds of the song). Don't be fooled by the smile, he was actually trying very hard to escape.


One of the disks for Karaoke had this ridiculous title menu of a dancing hippo who would slap his bum, and perform other interesting dance moves.


Something surprising for me, was the number of boys and men who performed. My experience in the US, is that once boys hit puberty, they just do not sing songs, especially loves songs, and especially not in front of an audience. Well, that is very untrue here.

Here is a photo of two young teenage boys who sang a love song together.


A video of two young men singing a love song, that they had memorized, therefore the screen was a montage of weird cartoons and random showings of the lyrics.

My final picture in this set is of this middle aged man singing a Ranchero during transition time (between the blocks).


Our host sister (more like niece, but whatever) Lissania was the youngest performer, and she sang alone (the girls closest to her age sang in a group of three, so it was a commendable accomplishment for Lissania). She is quite the little performer, she even has her dance moves down. She won first place in the Youth category.

As a surprise, our host sister Jullissa sang a duet with a young man who was helping to run the show. They sung “Prohibited Love” in Spanish. Take a look at the movie!

Finally, for your mocking pleasure, dancing queen, as filmed by Jullissa

I'm having technical difficulties posting the videos right now, I will get back to this and hopefully have them all up for you all to view! Thanks for reading.