What an excellent way to send Romania's Fanfare Ciocarlia home, as they play their last North American date to a packed house at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last night, September 26th.

Kicking it all off was local big brass band, Brass Messengers. They were a really large band, and the crowd loved dancing to the big sound. Their most interesting song was a cover of Black Sabbath's "The Wizard," which was played shortly before their congo-style march into the audience to close out their set.

Speaking of large band, Fanfare Ciocarlia was even larger. They all wore the same red shirts, with the exception of two band members in black. I wondered about that, maybe they didn't have clean outfits… it was, after all, a long stint touring the country, with Minneapolis on their last stop.

After three songs in, with everyone still dancing in front, Fanfare Ciocarlia's band leader said, "Let's start the party," in his Romanian accent. True enough, they got the party started.

As you can see from the setlist, they had a lot of material to work with: from "Ciocarlia Si Suite" and "Lume, Lume" from 2000's Radio Pascani to "Caravan" 2005's Gili Garabdi to the cover of "Born to Be Wild" from 2007's Queens & Kings.

Most of their songs have no lyrics, so there won't be any language barrier. If you want to have a good time dancing, Fanfare Ciocarlia is a great band to experience live.