Phenomenon

A popular activity to do in English classes here is to do an English Song Festival where the kids pick songs to sing. Any English song festival would not be complete without the inclusion of one of the following: Rivers of Babylon, Eternal Flame, or anything by Air Supply. What most of us volunteers consider to be cheesey 80s music is still widely listened to here and I’ve almost gotten used to hearing Cindy Lauper on a semi-regular basis. And Air Supply recently performed a concert in Managua and the band stayed at the hotel where my friend Maria works so she managed to snag tickets to the concert and was super duper psyched.

So the 8th grade kids in my country school were performing their songs this week, there was Rivers of Babylon, Dust in the Wind, a song I didn’t know, and a reggaeton song that was totally inappropriate but since neither the students nor my counterpart understood the lyrics it was pretty much ok (if you don’t know what reggaeton sounds like, google Daddy Yankee or Wisin and Yandel). However, I was shocked to find that most of the students were really embarrassed to sing in front of everyone.

It might seem natural that high schoolers would be embarrassed to sing in front of their class, but I had generalized that all Nicaraguans love to sing, regardless of talent for the art, because I have seen so many people sing rather out of key in front of large groups of people and not blink an eye. My counterpart at that school never understands why I don’t feel comfortable jumping up and belting out the Star Spangled Banner all by myself. I’ve tried to explain to him that in the U.S. only people who sing really well sing in front of groups of people but he always shrugs and then belts out a couple lines from his favorite songs.

I think back to my friend Sarah’s wedding here, where one singer didn’t quite hit all the correct notes. The volunteers in attendance maintained composure but Sarah’s gringo guests who were new to Nicaragua were giving each other glances and even Sarah’s mom couldn’t keep a straight face. Meanwhile I’m sure the Nicaraguans were like “What’s wrong with the gringos?”

However, the person who takes the Singing Cake is one of my neighbors. This neighbor loves to sing at the very top of her lungs to the point that she’s yelling and not even singing, and completely out of tune. This clearly drives me perfectly insane on a nice Saturday afternoon when I’m reading in my hammock and find myself cringing every 10 seconds.

I don’t want this post to come off sounding judgmental and negative, I just generally find it amazing that people are able to get up and sing with abandon and not worry about what they sound like. Perhaps we gringos (or at least me gringa) are too uptight in expecting anyone who sings in public to be perfect and should learn to appreciate the sentiment behind song, rather than concentrate on each note.

Since I don’t have any pics from the singing this week, here’s the student who sang the inappropriate reggaeton song lip synching a different reggaeton song at a big presentation-type thing a couple months back:



And on a completely unrelated note, there have been some pretty major political developments recently. Major enough for the BBC to take notice at least.