The Rroma Beauty Pageant |
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Last year, as our concert going habits were proliferating, one of us (not me but I'm not saying who) came up with the idea that we should also go to a concert where we could explore that all-too-present music genre called manele.
The principle states that no matter what you do you should try to do a good job doing it so we found out there are two big manele concerts throughout the year. We had to attend one of them. The months passed, we missed the one in autumn (Toamna Manelelor), so when the posters started showing up for the world-famous "Miss Piranda" we had to make good on our plan.
The amazing thing is that besides myself, Bogdan and Cipri we managed to talk 5 other people into joining us for the show. I'd like to congratulate everyone for their courage, endurance, stamina and resolve.
Getting back to the show, Miss Piranda, as you might guess, is a beauty pageant which doubles as a two-day concert bringing together the biggest names of the musical genre. We enjoyed the music of artists such as Babi Minune, Florinel Pustiul, Jean de la Craiova and Florin Salam. The experience was quite traumatic so I will be brief and I will limit myself to only a few notes about the show.
- The venue, Sala Polivalenta, was not heated. It usually is so I can only assume that heating is an option the organizers of an event can choose to pay for or not.
- The sound system was very poor quality and it seemed the only objective of the "sound engineer" was to make everything loud (and distorted).
- There were no lighting technicians. There were no projectors following the people on stage. Practically the dominant light that shined on the artists' faces came from two floor level projectors mounted on the front of the stage. These made everybody's noses cast shadows on the ceiling and made the general atmosphere resemble that of a "bodega de la gara" (EN: slum bar by the train station).
- We witnessed the worst playback performance in history when Romeo Fantasticul (manelistu' porno) started talking to somebody off-stage while his vocal track was still playing. Even when he was trying to follow the song his actual voice didn't match the one on the CD.
- I think some of the artists like Jean de la Craiova and Florin Salam are actually talented singers but I cannot say for sure as the sound system was too bad.
- To put the appraisal of the concert part to rest, I've been to kindergarten Christmas parties that were better organised.
- Most of the contestants in the beauty pageant were not of rroma origin.
- A few of the girls were absolutely stunning.
- Contestant number 9 weighed as much as any 3 other contestants put together. The announcers explained that she was there because she had been the girlfriend of one of the big stars. I guess we could give the event a few extra points based on the fact that they're not promoting extreme stereotypes of anorexic girls as role models. On the other hand the waves rippling through her body during the belly dancing trial were probably one of the things that traumatized us most.
- The only criterium that seemed to be used to determine which of the girls got eliminated after a specific trial was the opinion of a guy in a striped sweater with a big belly, I'm guessing the organiser.
- To my huge disappointment many of the people who bought tickets to attend the show were caucasian.
We only lasted about 3 hours. However, let none say we never gave a chance to exploring the culture of our co-inhabiting nationalities.
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