Heard on the balcony

Last Saturday was a "Notte bianca" (white night) in Fidenza, meaning that the downtown stays open late and there's music or other entertainment in the streets. This time the theme was "Rock che passione!"--an expression of Italians' apparent devotion to American pop hits of yesteryear.

There were booths all over the piazza selling vinyls and CDs, and bars, stores, and gelaterie stayed open till 10, 11, or later. Each block in our immediate vicinity had a band or DJ playing "Proud Mary," "Heard It Through the Grapevine," or "Bohemian Rhapsody," and the music, if live, was, it must be said, really bad--amateur karaoke accompanied by equally unskilled instrumental playing. But everyone was having a great time, and the event drew a crowd.

At around midnight things were beginning to slow down, but the party was still going. I filmed a few moments of the uproar from our balcony. Due to the lousy sound-recording quality of my phone, you can't really hear the thumping music on the video the way you could in real life, just the overall roar.



Things didn't settle down for another hour or so.

On a normal night the bars shut down around 9 or 10 pm and things are pretty quiet. I made this video a few days later, also at around midnight.



The three people walking down the street were singing, not raucously, in Italian, which unfortunately also doesn't seem to come across. It was very sweet.