A Rising Star wannabe sings her heart out at the Rising Stars auditions held at Brooks Park, Mandeville last weekend.
MANY OF the 515 people who turned out to see if it was their turn to shine in the Rising Stars 2005 competition turned to established musicians to make their talent shine. The fourth in the series of auditions took place on the football field at Brooks Park, last Saturday.
It was the largest gathering so far and featured some persons who had been following the competition since its second week in Montego Bay. Before noon, the line of those waiting to be registered had already curved in on itself with registration well past the 200-person mark.
Those who chose to deliver popular songs to show their skill often made the judges' job easier to spot when they hit a note sideways or missed it all together. In truth, with some contestants, talent was so clearly lacking that their tone-deaf state could have been discovered had they merely chosen to hum.
Interestingly, those who delved into the repertoire of popular songs seemed to have been sorting from the same bag. Between the Ocho Rios auditions last week and Mandeville, Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly, was performed sufficient times to drive Flack herself insane. While some renditions were good, renditions of songs by Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys and Celine Dion were often brutally massacred.
Of course, several contestants also attempted to earn their ticket to stardom with original pieces. This segment produced revelations of the good, the bad and far too many of the lyrically lame. The outrageous also made a good showing. One young woman who was about to dive into a sexual foray had to be stopped immediately, as soon as she hit upon the word "dead".
Incursions on the female body, however, were many and not very varied. Often they were at best strange and at worst mind boggling. With lyrics such as, "Mammee, Mammee, Mammee wine your body for me/ Mammee, Mammee, Mammee, love me desperately," one could only hope that it was not a strange celebration of incest, but instead was a bad adaptation of the Latin-American use of 'Mammy'.
In attempting to describe the physical attributes of the object of his lust, one man certainly pushed the limits of the imagination as he chanted of a woman who was "roun' like a apple" and "shape like a pine". Though it is hard to imagine exactly how such a woman would look, she must at least be fascinating.
Tanya Batson-Savage
