OPRAH.COM – I want to end this year with a Big Bang. At least, with a Big Voice. It´s true. Oprah.com itself reported that on the Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago, USA 17-year old international singing sensation Charice of the Philippines made Oprah history exactly on 02 November 2009. That´s the date I´m reading from the URL that has this as part of the entry: 20091102, the time when Oprah´s someone uploaded the story series “Oprah.com Series & Specials: Best of 2009.” It can´t get any better than that.

The history-setting news item was noticed by Filipino reporters only more than a month later, the first one to notice being ANN (author not named, 17 December, “Charice tops Oprah´s best musical performance poll,” abs-cbnnews.com). Let me make a note to all: Nobody was paying attention as this little girl was making big history? I myself didn´t know there was such an award. All Souls Day: We Filipinos were busy minding the dead to mind the living.

That day in November, Oprah.com came out with this report:

Best of 2009: Best Oprah Show Musical Performance - Charice
A whopping 70 percent of you voted for the 17-year-old singing sensation’s performance of her first single, “Note to God.” The Black Eyed Peas kickoff party performance came in second with only 9 percent of the vote. Charice had a big year in 2009, recording her first album, performing on tour with David Foster & Friends and appearing in her first film, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

When the news hit the newspapers, Charice didn´t waste a note singing praises to the Chasters, a group of her fans in the Philippines, crediting them for her Oprah award (Reyma Buan Deveza, 18 December 2009, abs-cbnnews.com). (I understand Charice invented the name Chasters, implying Charice´s friendsters.) That is to say, the Chasters´ vote campaign resulted in giving their idol the unbelievable 61% lead over her closest rival. Charice had debuted her first single Note to God at Oprah´s show on the 18th of May this year.

Not only were we not paying attention to history being made in Oprah´s show by Charice with her Note to God; we were also not paying attention to the story being told on that particular history being made. Deveza wrote:

Teen singing sensation Charice thanked her fan base Chasters after she edged global singing stars in the “Best Oprah Show Musical Performance” award.

Those global singing stars referred to were Whitney Houston, James Taylor, Michael Bublé, Journey, Rascal Flatts, Jennifer Hudson, and the Black Eyed Peas. All stars in the firmament of entertainment. Note to the good: #1 is 70% and #2 is 09% and you use the plain word edged to describe the big news? By the way, the correct idiom is edged out. Ricardo F Lo got the idiom right, “edging out” (philstar.com), but not the vocabulary. Now the idiom is correct but it´s still the wrong word used – to edge out means to defeat by a small margin (American Heritage Dictionary). A 61% difference is by no stretch of imagination small – Charice is small but not her achievement.

This Chaster cannot allow this slight on his idol to pass. Any of the entries in this vocabulary list would have been better: Triumphed, beat, bested, shone over, lorded over, trounced, whipped, trashed, licked, or defeated. I would not have settled for won over. Wysiwyg: What you see is what you give. My experience of more than 50 years has shown me that vocabulary is 50% or more of the best reporting or writing. I know professors in schools of journalism or institutes of communication in the Philippines don´t emphasize vocabulary enough, and I suspect they are not convinced it´s that important. They should try and become outstanding writers themselves. Any of the opinion makers in the country should be Exhibit A, but none is. So I´m not surprised we don´t have a slew of award-winning reporters in the international scene, or many an erudite columnist or host in the mass media. With Charice, I´m not worried about the quality of the next generation of Filipino singers, but I´m worried about the next generation of Filipino reporters. And to think that the National Hero of the Philippines, Jose Rizal said the youth are the fair hope of the fatherland. Fair to middling.

Charice is too important to be left to the mercy of reporters not minding their English. It´s impossible for me to write straight news, but I would have written this bit of Charice news this way, with equal emphasis on the “international” part:

International singing sensation Charice thanked her fan base Chasters after she blew all the stars out of the Milky Way with her voice, catching the star award “Best Oprah Show Musical Performance” for 2009.

Charice is this small; this small is this beautiful, so she´s this big. Vocabulary is small; small is beautiful, so it´s big.

Charice won the Oprah award with her performance of the song Note to God, which has a remarkable history. This was written by Diane Warren, a multiple Grammy Award-winning, very successful, and very popular songwriter. It was US teenage singing sensation JoJo who first recorded the song, in 2006, for her album The High Road, and told Jodi Bryson & Karen Bokram about it (findarticles.com):

I have a song called “If I Wrote a Note to God”- it’s deep. Everything is taken to the next level. It’s very classy.

After Charice, I say too deep and too classy for her. JoJo´s Note to God didn´t reach the deepest level of musical attention or the highest layer of fanatic adulation. Now, having said that, let me make a note to this effect: JoJo is no pushover. At 13, she became the youngest solo artist to score a #1 hit single on the Billboard charts (ANN, 2006, musicremedy.com).

She had recorded Note to God in a moment of passion so that “what listeners hear on the album is the raw and unedited end-result,” ANN said. I´m listening to her version again and I´m not impressed. The message to me is that the singer has trepidation about writing a note to God, that is, talking to Him. Charice´s version is bold, as it should be, even demanding at times, as I would wish, as God would understand – and always she is earnest, even passionate, gesturing bravely. That´s the girl!

Even so, I note that there are similarities in the lives of JoJo and Charice, who now both enjoy name recognition with just their nicknames. Bryson & Bokram said:

(JoJo) grew up poor. She had love and she had music, but that´s about it. She and her mom lived in a rundown, one-bedroom apartment. JoJo´s mother cleaned houses for a living. When JoJo dreamt about her future, those dreams included things like just being able to go out to eat. Expensive jeans, pink rhinestones, flip-phones, pocket cash – those were things other girls had, but not JoJo.

Lucky for her, singing doesn´t cost money. But growing up without luxuries is what gave her the intense desire to change her lifestyle.

Almost exactly like Charice. Charice grew up poor with her brother Carl and mother Raquel, whose earnings were not enough for the small family. Charice used her voice to join singing contests and win (never mind lose) so they could buy food. Charice dreams didn´t remain dreams – she drew them on her journal, her dream book. She must have been a good artist because today her dreams are coming true out of that dream journal. With a little help from fans, friends, admirers, and her fairy godmother.

After Charice´s phenomenal performance at Oprah, JoJo went down in the history of Note to God as the one who sang the world to sleep, while Charice went on to sing herself to stardom on the Billboard Top 50 on a revival.

Charlene said (Jellites, blogspot.com): “You have to admit Charice´s version blew it out of this world! Sorry, I love JoJo, too. But Charice´s Note to God was a whole new level.”

Charice and JoJo were singing from the same hymnbook, but she was belting it out her own way, and that made the difference. I say Charice gave it her modern Cinderella twist that is hard to describe, so I´m reproducing this from my own blog post (29 December, “Charice. My Singing Cinderella,” Pinoy Cinderella, blogspot.com):

Read full story: American Chronicle

As I write these lines, Charice just came back from a guest appearance at the Grand Finals of Singapore Idol, 27 December 2009, held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, where she sang her Bodyguard Medley, Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” and “I Will Always Love You” to the gasp of the crowd. Gurmit Singh, the show´s host, said:

What was that! That´s amazing. How did you do that? I want to tell you Singapore loves you! We heard so much about you, seen you on YouTube, and finally you are here.

She was asked for another song, and she sang, of course, “Note to God.” There was standing ovation. Singh said, “I tell you my jaw dropped, bounced, and dropped again.”

Also on Singapore Idol, Christopher Loh said (todayonline.com): “(Charice) agrees to sing one more song, something about a note to God. I don´t know. I´m still too stunned.”

Read full story: American Chronicle

By Frank A. Hilario

Posted by Schoen

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