it's not singing really

Yes, Veronica, Strategic Karaoke Song Selection (SKSS) for the out of tune singers. Forget about the long slow ballads! Gotta pick the upbeat swinging, disco dance fever kind of melodies that have 4 words repeated over and over to a fabulous beat.

I'm not much of a singer either. Though I know enough to play lots of different instruments (clarinet, saxophone, flute) and I can read single notes well enough, I'm not a good singer. Actually I learned I have a good memory for sound, so much so that when I learn a tune that starts on a specific note, that's the only way I remember it. It explains my lack of ability in kulintang. I can learn a song quite quickly, but only on the instrument I learned it on. Make me play the tune on a different set that sounds different (lower or higher tone) and it's all over. I can't change key.

And because of this, I never liked the sound of my voice either. But when I realized that my drunk uncles could get a 98, while my brother (who has extensive vocal training) scores a 72 and is told to try harder by the screen, that's when I knew karaoke is not about singing.

Then I went to Hawaii for a reunion of the tagalog abroad program I had done years ago. It was their 10th anniversary and the scholars were asked to come back. That evening we hit Waikiki and stopped at a hotel that had karaoke with a host. He was a sweet, encouraging man in a purple suit with some glitz on the lapel. I was too scared to go up, but a group of other women went up to sing Aretha Franklin's Respect.

There were four of them, none of them had really sung karaoke before. The fourth was doing it because the rest were doing it. She looked like she would just go up there and squeak by. Then the song played. Two of them shared each mic. Slowly as their eyes raced to catch up to the words on the screen, they start to feel the grove of the song. And then you see it in the 4th woman, the spark, as if the Pinoy karaoke gene that had lain dormant for so long had finally awakened. Her eyes grew large, the grip on the mic stronger, she pulled her lips closer to the foam cover.

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me! Ooooh a little respect!"

And she just pulls the mic away from the other woman and is belting out this tune as if the fever had struck her! As if this were Sunday, and the Lord had summoned her forth! She sang that song with soul! oh my god!

Don't get me wrong, she also sang it horribly out of tune and loud! But that didn't matter! Her enjoyment was so contagious that the host who couldn't drag anyone up there had a long list of folks waiting to jump on stage.

She came back to the table as if drugged out of her mind! With a grin from ear to ear she flipped through the song book to sing again. I was blown out of the water! I didn't know karaoke could be like this. It's not about being perfect or the opera superstar or the next Mariah Carey, cuz if that were true, who would sing on Filipino television?

Sometimes, it's about singing a song that speaks to you and belting it out like you don't care. Cuz, honey, sometimes you just have to go up there and sing like Aretha and get you some respect!

I have other karaoke moments too. Like when we watched Laurence Fishbourne reprise a bit of Ike Turner singing "Proud Mary" at a karaoke bar in S.F. or singing at this Pinoy Restaurant in SF that felt like a jeepney stop in Manila where everything had that fried grease feel, even the seats, where the old man frying behind the counter would harmonize for you if you couldn't carry the tune by yourself while cooking your bangus, and then there was the time also in Hawaii we went to a small karaoke bar run by this really sweet transgender Samoan couple, where the woman flashed her fake boobs she just got in Thailand (and yes you could touch them if you wanted to verify the quality job they had done) and where another woman celebrating her 21st birthday wanted to buy me a drink in exchange for singing her a song. (No, I couldn't quite get myself to down the whole drink, and yes, I did sing "brown eyed girl.")