Viewfinder
Can’t bear the ‘birit’
By Nestor Torre
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:15:00 06/16/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Charice Pempengco’s extraordinary and precocious success in global entertainment is truly worth celebrating—except for its emphasis on birit (belting) singing.
When Charice hits those high notes with sharp, shrill, unerring accuracy that makes pooches go gaga (not to mention Oprah and Ellen and other rapt and astounded human fans), she reveals herself to be the conflicted beneficiary of the birit “tradition” that older homegrown “screaming divas” here have done to death through the years.
“Conflicted” because, while birit is aurally impressive from a “musical acrobatics” point of view, it ultimately leads to a dead-end street, artistically speaking.
Dismaying
Truth to tell, birit isn’t really singing, it’s vocal calisthenics, a prodigious display of physical musical prowess, and often sheer copycat imitation of a foreign belter’s amazing vocal pyrotechnics.
It’s high notes for high notes’ sake, and really quite shallow and dismaying. Trouble is, many people here are still blown away by sheer birit belting.
In fact, some birit divas complain, when they opt for greater subtlety and musical variety in their performances, fans feel cheated and demand that the divas quickly return to “screaming mode.”
So, the birit problem is bigger than you and I—especially because quite a number of us don’t think of it as a problem at all!
If even the relatively enlightened likes of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres are blown away by Charice’s birit vocal pyrotechnics, who can blame young Charice for pushing her physical musical “equipment” to, or past, its limits—never mind if her still developing singing voice suffers from it.
Fact is, however, we must all (and that includes Oprah and Ellen and all unwitting “enablers” in between) reevaluate this birit phenomenon, because it ultimately does injury not just to singers’ voices (and listeners’ eardrums!) but also to the mass audience’s notions about what good singing should be about.
There’s more
It definitely shouldn’t be mainly to display amazing vocal range and power, and to hit listeners on the head with it, to stun them into attention and rapt admiration.
If that was all there was to good singing, we would be placing good singers at the same level as Olympic record-holders in the high jump, weightlifting and synchronized swimming. The physical achievement is impressive, but there’s much more to good singing than sheer physical prowess.
What about artistic insight, interpretation, emotion, shading, contrast, subtlety, variety, musical “coloring” and singing from the heart rather than the solar plexus? Alas, in a birit-loving nation, those much more important factors are given short shrift by an uninformed or undemanding public.
So, we urge our divas to give birit a rest, and the listening public should be similarly open to less obviously stunning but ultimately more significant performing elements. And let’s hope that, despite her impressionable youth, Charice will also join us in intoning our new mantra: All together now: “Can’t bear the birit!”
Richard Poon at Italianni’s
Good-looking crooner Richard Poon will sing his way into the hearts of diners at Italianni’s in Greenbelt, Makati at 7 p.m. on June 28. His repertoire showcases the best loved standards from the ’50s to the ’70s. Poon’s debut album, “I’ll Take Care of You,” has introduced him to a wider audience, but it is an intimated live performances like his Italianni’s stint that he truly comes into his own as a standout balladeer.
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