Nepali-language take on ‘American Idol’ to hold finale in Columbus
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Just as ¡Festival Latino! kicks off in Genoa Park this weekend, the Bhutanese-Nepali community will be holding their own major cultural event on the other side of the Scioto River.
Inside the Greater Columbus Convention Center, contestants will gather for a taping of the season finales of Mero Voice Cup USA and Mero Dance Cup USA, two reality shows in the vein of ‘American Idol’ and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ that have become household names for Nepali-speakers in the United States.
The event’s planners expect up to 5,000 people for the event, which will take place from 2 to 9 P.M. Saturday.
“Our mission is to preserve Nepali language, culture, song and the arts here in America by transferring them to the next generation,” Keshav Acharya, a spokesperson for Intra-National Welfare and Support Foundation, the event’s nonprofit organizer, told the Dispatch.
Mero Dance Cup began in 2016 and Mero Voice Cup in 2018. Previous finales were held in Akron as well as Atlanta. The shows are broadcast on Nepali TV, and episodes have gotten millions of views on the organizer’s YouTube channel.
Each of the reality shows feature performers from the Nepali-speaking community living in the U.S. and Canada.
Earlier in this year’s 14-episode season, contestants traveled to Nepal for the filming of several episodes. For some of the singers and dancers who came to the U.S. as young children, it was their first time traveling to Nepal as an adult.
“My old life and my new life in America are like two different worlds,” said contestant Karan Tamang, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in Nepali in one episode, filmed in Nepal. “But I still love Nepali music, and it’s that love that brought me back across the ocean, back here to Kathmandu.”
Tamang belongs to the Bhutanese-Nepali community, who were evicted by the Bhutanese government in the 1990s and lived in refugee camps in Nepal before resettling in the U.S. beginning in 2007. Around 40,000 Bhutanese Nepalis call Greater Columbus home.
The finalists competing in Mero Voice Cup are Tamang; Baba Khaling from Greensboro, North Carolina;Shital Sharma from Etna, Ohio; Lila Gajmer from Pittsburgh; and Prabin Badewa from Atlanta. The finalists in Mero Dance Cup are Ayusha Samal from Cleveland, Renuka Rai from Cincinnati, and Sumika Tamang from Akron.
Tickets are available online and cost between $50 and $100, but children below 10 and seniors over 65 are admitted for free.
Peter Gill covers immigration and new American communities for the Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You can support work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America here: bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Nepali-language take on ‘American Idol’ to hold finale in Columbus
