Karaoke culture
For the thousands of Filipinos working in Cyprus, singing is part of their culture. A growing number of Karaoke bars in Nicosia are catering to their demands
‘Do You Believe in Love?’ asks the poster – not even a poster, but a simple advertisement taped to the door of Carla’s in Old Nicosia. “If is yes [sic]: come to search with us for Mr. and Ms. Valentine”. The time is today, starting at 1pm. The place is Omorfos Kosmos, also in Old Nicosia. The event is a “party for love”, starting with a beauty pageant, developing into a first-class shindig with contests and prizes. “Together with the hottest dance group of Filipina Pazaway Girls,” promises the advert, adding tantalisingly: “With the special participation of Shane and Gemma.”
Who’s Shane? Who’s Gemma? What are Pazaway Girls? It’s an undisputed fact that Nicosia’s Old Town transforms into a rowdy, exotic, unrecognisable place on Sundays – and a sad corollary that most Cypriots prefer to stay away, missing out not only on the Shanes and Gemmas but also on a cosmopolitan brew of Russian, Arabic, Urdu and Tagalog, to name just four of the languages wafting and colliding in the winter sunshine. All these people are “foreigners” to your average Cyp, but in fact not only are they – obviously – quite different, they also seem to take their Sunday fun in different ways.
I can only speak from limited experience – a Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon spent in the boisterous streets near the Green Line – but a few conclusions present themselves. Those in the Arab community like to drive around, it seems – or at least, if you come across a car blaring loud music, that music is likely to be Arabic. Eastern Europeans prefer to walk, young men travelling in packs. Sri Lankans don’t seem to congregate in the Old Town at all (I believe they prefer the area near the Municipal Garden).
And the Filipinos? That’s an easy one: they sing karaoke.
There are five karaoke bars in Old Nicosia, catering mainly to Filipinos, three of which have opened in the last few months. Some only open on Sundays, others all week long. Almost all offer food and drink in addition to the songbook and karaoke machine. The exception is Omorfos Kosmos – where today’s party is taking place – which is mostly a dance club, coming to life on Saturday nights, which also has a front room for karaoke; the subtle distinction is that this is almost exclusively Chinese karaoke, catering mostly for Chinese students. The club, on the other hand, gets a varied crowd, changing the music every few minutes to please all nationalities – “though of course it’s mostly English,” adds owner Solonas Solomonides.
Solonas is young and sharp-eyed, looking businesslike and by no means shady (one somehow expects these club-owners to have a touch of the underworld; something about the rundown buildings and general air of dilapidation). He’s the manager of a Chinese restaurant in addition to Omorfos Kosmos, which used to be a taverna before getting reinvented for the weekend-disco market. We meet in another of the karaoke bars, the newly-opened Amigos, where he’s come to bring a batch of posters for the “party of love”.
Amigos is another type of place entirely – not a club but a kind of karaoke restaurant, located in the Filipino district west of Ledra Street (Omorfos Kosmos is near the Archbishopric), run by Imad Hamdan, a Jordanian who calls himself “Alex”. Alex is a shambling, burly man with a face full of stubble and a loose, welcoming air radiating laid-back contentment; he seems permanently on the point of putting an arm round your shoulders. The place is small, about 10 tables, and Alex works the room relentlessly, shuttling from the tables to the counter where he murmurs instructions to a bevy of Filipino girls. I approach one at random: Donna from Baguio City. She’s been in Cyprus for 12 years, and works as a housemaid. Why stay here, so far from home? She giggles: “Because I have work!”
The place doesn’t really have a karaoke vibe. There’s a screen, and a mike gets passed around from table to table, but it’s all a bit muted. Maybe it’s because it’s only just opened, Alex having moved on from PhilCy up the road. (PhilCy – i.e. Philippines/Cyprus – is another karaoke place, and both proprietors put on an expression of affected nonchalance when talking of the other.) Maybe it’s because it’s Saturday evening, not the best time for karaoke.
The song on the screen is ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You’. The singer is a Filipino woman in her late thirties, smartly decked out in a checked red-and-black dress – but she fluffs the verse, only singing the chorus (it’s not the easiest song to karaoke, truth be told). I order a whisky for €3 – cheap! – and check out the food counter. Amigos concentrates on food more than its rivals, and Alex proudly guides me through the selection. Beef roll with a spicy sauce. ‘Tocino’, a kind of fried pork. Beef liver with cauliflower. Filipino dumplings called ‘bermini’.
I have the beef roll and a bermini (bermino?), feeling fairly pleased with my quest for weekend exotica. On the one hand, this could be any bar in town; on the other, there are unexpected touches. The music turns to 80s disco staple ‘Boys Boys Boys’, then ‘Like a Virgin’ which apparently is something of an anthem at these karaoke places. A young Filipina gets up and starts to shimmy, wearing cut-off shorts over her trousers; they look like a tight blue ribbon tied around her midriff, bulging with buttocks. There’s a TV with the sound off, tuned to a Philippines channel. I can see a political debate, a young woman speaking above a caption in English: “This House Believes That Government Agencies Should Be Mandated to Employ Displaced OFWs.” OFWs?
It’s sad, in a way, that there aren’t any Cypriots. I also asked Solonas – when he turned up later with the “party of love” posters – if they got any Cypriots at Omorfos Kosmos. A few, he replied, but mostly older people, often married to foreigners; hardly any youngsters. Is there any racism? Of course, he shrugs: “When we [i.e. Cypriots] see a Chinese woman, we automatically say she’s a whore”. He’s sometimes witnessed locals attacking foreigners, claiming “the blacks” harassed them. Solonas rolls his eyes in disbelief. “If I go to India,” he asks rhetorically, “am I likely to start harassing Indians?”
Actually, there is one other Cypriot at Amigos – a middle-aged man sitting at my table, silently sipping his whisky. He’s reserved and a little doleful, with a silvery beard, and looks so out-of-place that I try to draw him out. Is he a regular? “I know him,” he replies vaguely, indicating Alex who’s still shuttling and schmoozing. “He’s a friend. He’s a good guy”. He says nothing else, and we both get back to our drinks.
That’s the strange wrinkle in the whole situation, the smattering of Cypriots in these karaoke bars – because of course the Old Town was always inhabited, and there’s still a bedrock of old inhabitants (the few who haven’t fled) among the newcomers. Carla, owner of the aforementioned Carla’s, was born in Modena but she’s lived here for 38 years, having met her husband in Italy and come back with him. I visit her place on Sunday, which is clearly the time for karaoke.
The streets are buzzing. PhilCy – run by Wilma Jocson, who’s lived 27 years in Cyprus – is packed, and a couple are dancing in the middle of the room, singing along with ‘Fame’ (“I’m gonna live forever”). Carla’s, near Faneromeni Church, was the first of the weekend karaoke places, claims its owner. This is definitely the real thing! An old house with a large antechamber – the kids’ area, where the offspring of Cypriot-Filipino marriages play while their parents sing and dance – then a large L-shaped room
with a food counter at one end and tables everywhere. Décor is functional. On the wall is the karaoke screen, flashing generic images – of sunsets, sailboats, Venetian canals – while the music plays. The room is full, the long tables giving it the air of a wedding reception. The music isn’t loud, but the laughter and revelry make it almost impossible to hear what anyone is saying.
Carla owns the house (which used to be a kind of antique-slash-junk shop), but Gema runs the karaoke bar; she’s a Filipina, been in Cyprus for 11 years, previously worked as a cleaner at the Sky Hotel. Karaoke is part of the culture, she confirms; it’s “one of the Filipinos’ favourite ways of having fun”.
This is not like Western karaoke. The singers don’t ‘perform’ as such; they usually stand up to sing, but they don’t walk to a stage – just stay where they are – and the rest of the crowd doesn’t necessarily watch them. The singing is like Muzak or wallpaper, a constant background; the microphone gets passed around without ceremony, and it makes no difference if you’re good or bad. Gema confirms it’s usually the same people from weekend to weekend. “Even if I don’t have money, I need to come here!” laughs Glen, a sushi chef whose favourite song (for karaoke purposes) is ‘Killing Me Softly’. Why not go to a Cypriot taverna instead, I ask? “I don’t like taverna,” he laughs again, slightly embarrassed; “I prefer to come here”. “This is our enjoyment,” adds Remy, who works as a housemaid (she likes ‘Just Once’ by James Ingram). “And tomorrow, once again back to work!”
Carla herself sits in the other room – diminutive, irrepressible. She’s 74 years old, resplendent in a purple jacket; she has thick glasses, and a mole on her forehead. The walls feature posters of cats and Pomeranians; on the front door hang rather eccentric signs urging “A Sound Mind in a Healthy Body” and “As You Wish”. Carla seems to know everything about everyone, and gossips freely and volubly.
See that girl over there? She’s got six kids back in the Philippines, and one more with her Cypriot husband. “One day, when the kids are grown, she’ll say bye-bye!” See that man who’s just coming in? He’s a millionaire! Did I notice the 60-something men in the karaoke room? (My mind flashes briefly to the middle-aged gentleman in Amigos the night before.) They come here to find women, she says, shaking her head sadly; but it’s not that kind of place. “The girls come here to eat and drink, then they go home”. Still, there’s an undercurrent. A lot of these Cypriot senior citizens are rich and divorced or never-married (says Carla); a lot of these Filipino girls are looking for “papers”, presumably Cypriot nationality. Sometimes they marry – but it’s never for love, and it always ends in tears.
We can hear the music from the karaoke room, melancholy ballads reflecting the romantic sob-stories potentially unfolding between the customers. A small woman in a red dress is singing Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. She sways, making up in heart what she lacks in technique. “Every now and then I fall apart”, she sings – and her friend, sitting beside her, impulsively puts an arm round her waist.
I try talking to a nearby girl, but my timing is unfortunate: ‘Like a Virgin’ starts up and she dashes off with a squeal, trying to snatch the mike like a woman possessed. (That song is REALLY popular.) I wander back to the other room, where a chain-smoking Carla starts to talk about the neighbourhood. It’s changed, of course. She doesn’t dare go for a walk at night, for fear of getting mugged, and the houses around her – many of them old warehouses – have been turned into seedy flats where foreign workers are crammed in like sardines, 10 at a time, “one’s feet here, the other’s head there”. Sometimes, when she wakes up at dawn, she sees them bring the buckets they use for chamber-pots down to the street. “Isn’t it too bad?”
It is indeed – and the blame lies squarely with Cypriots, who’ve abandoned the Old Town and headed off to live the so-called Good Life in the suburbs. Karaoke culture was fun to discover, but it might’ve been more fun without the rather oppressive feeling of entering a ghetto.
Still, a ray of hope does exist: a new karaoke spot – aptly called Wow! Karaoke – is venturing (just) beyond the borders of the Old Town, opening two doors down from Zoo, moneyed bastion of the cool and trendy. That was supposed to be my last stop – but it turned out to be closed (hopefully not permanently), so it looks like weekend karaoke hasn’t moved beyond the Filipino quarter, at least not yet. Give it time, though. Give it time.
