ARTIST: A PERSON WHO DOES ART

According to the ever reliable (or not) Wikipedia, artist is defined as “person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and/or demonstrating an art”. The description is quite easy to understand, a PERSON who DOES ART. Meaning, a SINGER who SINGS, an ACTOR who ACTS, a DANCER who DANCES, a PAINTER who PAINTS, a SCULPTOR who SCULPTS, I could go on forever with this list but I would rather focus on the first two artists I mentioned: SINGERS who SING and ACTORS who ACT. This is of course, in the Philippine context.

A disclaimer, though. The definition of singers and actors in this blog is MY definition (since, hello, this is MY blog), so never bother contesting it. Like what I said on the previous paragraph, and I will repeat it and sound redundant, singers are those people who sing and actors are those people who act (of course, CAN being the operative word). Now, if you are the kind of person who believes otherwise and has the tendency of bashing people whose beliefs are different than yours, the return arrow in your browser is on your left-hand side, click it now, au revior! Now…

Alright. Fine. I guess it is acceptable for non-singers to have recording albums. It is their freedom and as long as there are producers who would spend for the album, then fine, I guess I cannot challenge their freedom. HOWEVER, I believe that non-singers, who quite proudly claim that they are indeed non-singers, should truly accept that they are non-singers. WHUT?! You might ask. What I simply mean is that as PROUD non-singers, they should show their audiences that they are indeed non-singers by singing live, which what singers, who proudly admit that they are singers, do (though not all). I mean, what is the purpose of doing a lip-sync singing when all of the audience members KNOW that you are a non-singer?

Another issue for me is the auto-tune recording studios do to the singing voices of non-singers. WHY ON EARTH DO THEY DO THAT WHEN THE MASSES KNOW IN THEIR GUTS THAT NON-SINGERS ARE, DUH, NON-SINGERS?! Auto-tune only makes people believe that non-singers can actually sing, when in reality, they cannot. Of course, many people would raise the argument that no one cannot not sing, which is of course a given fact. Everyone can sing Happy Birthday, but what I mean by people who CAN sing are those who can carry a tune (the RIGHT tune, I must emphasize), can go with the TRUE rhythm of the music, and hit the CORRECT note.

By this, I am not stopping non-singers to have recording albums. What I am just saying is that, as PROUD non-singers, they must show that they are indeed proud to be unable to sing as well as singers. Meaning to say, let these non-singers have albums of them singing out of tune or out of tone, not because I want them to be bashed for being non-singers, but because I want them to really show their non-singer-ness (if there is such a word) since they claim to be such. A classic example is Anne Curtis. Nuff said.

Now, lip-sync singing. I see no point in this, for both singers and non-singers. First, for non-singers, just like what I have said in the previous paragraph, everybody knows that they cannot sing well, so why should they make their fans believe that they can?

Actually, I even find it DISTURBING when non-singers (especially actors who are promoting their new show) would lip-sync a song that they did not even record. It is very much obvious because you would hear an actor speak and when s/he would sing, his/her voice would be different. I mean, can’t they just verbally promote their show? Do they REALLY HAVE to “sing”? There is actually a reason why a person is called an actor and not a singer/actor.

Now, for singers. YO, PEOPLE, YOU CAN SING!!! WHY ARE YOU DOING LIP-SYNCING?!?!!? Some would say that the singers were doing a lip-sync because they are sick and could not sing live. In the first place, why did you agree to sing if you are sick? Okay, fine, perhaps you were not sick yet when you agreed to sing, but you have to suffer the consequences of being sick, much like what the contestants of Your Face Sounds Familiar did when they were sick and they had performances. Another thing, say you were not sick when you agreed to sing, THEN YOU MUST HAVE THE DECENCY OF TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF AND PREVENTING YOURSELF FROM BEING SICK! SIMPLE!

Other people would say that lip-sync is a backup tool, in case there would be a technical problem during the performance. REALLY?!?!?! Come on, I have watched a handful of theater plays, some of them had technical problems such as lapel mics dying out on the performers or lapel mics disconnecting from the tech booth. A real performer would do his or her best to keep the show going even when his or her mic died. I even witnessed once when the actor’s mic died, he really louden his voice so that whatever he was saying would carry out to the audience. There was even a time when an actor’s mic died during a song AND dance number. The actor still sang with the help of his co-actors who offered him their lapel mic, of course inconspicuously.

Most of the time, fast paced songs are performed in duets or more. Say one singer’s mic died, the other singer should know how to catch the other singer. And it is just easy, s/he could simply hand the other singer his/her mic for the time being. Or the tech people could give a replacement mic to the dancers, who are ever present in fast paced songs, and hand it to the singer in distress. And for goodness sake, they are performing in an event, people must anticipate such difficulties, prevent them from happening, and have some backup plan, excluding the absurd lip-sync.

It is even much more impossible (yes, I deliberately exaggerated because the tendency is just very slim) to have dying mics during a mellow song. For one thing, the singer would not be dancing to the music because the song is slow. Another thing, the mic is not a lapel during a mellow number, that is why it is almost impossible for the mic to be disconnected.

And more importantly, isn’t there what we call a technical rehearsal? For those who are unfamiliar with the term, technical rehearsal is when all the technical aspects of a production are being rehearsed, like the lights, the music (minus one, duh!), the mics, the set changes (if there is any), and all other stuff like harness and others. During technical rehearsals, the mic carrier (usually the singer, or if the singer is unavailable, anyone could do this) would walk all over the stage and see whether wherever s/he goes, the mic would sound clearly.

SO THERE IS NO CREDIBLE REASON WHY LIP-SYNC SHOULD BE DONE! Even Mariah Carey risked being out of tune when she did a concert in an open field during the winter. If THE Mariah Carey could do that, everyone must have the decency to do live singing as well.

 

Okay, I would like to continue discussing about my opinion regarding actors in Philippine context, but then this blog would be even longer and you guys might get bored and stop reading. So, I will just discuss about actors on my next entry :D