Singapore Night Live: Xiao Zar Bo: In other words "Crazy Women"

I’d like to start with a quote from a recent post by a well accomplished local musician, who is in my top ten list of musicians as well as in people. “Event organizers think those artists living abroad or foreign artists are better than Singaporean Artist”

For as much as I know the artist, I think he was more expressing his disappointment than ranting about a direct complaint. I responded to the post by stating that for an organizer good better best comes from popularity levels not mastering an instrument and/or voice. He knows that of course and I know he knows but in all honesty reading his post got me also frustrated with the issue, in the musicians' favor, I needed to let it out someway or another.

Often times event organizers will announce foreign stars as performing a magical show. There is more truth to it than they would want you to know. We all know that magicians are able to play their tricks on eyes and mind because of distractions.

In these "magical shows" it works the same: awesome dancers like my lovely (FB) friend Francesca, back up singers with vocal abilities many times over to those of the lead singer, pyrotechnics, they are all present to distract you from the mediocrity and “professionalism” of the main star. (In this context professionalism should be translated as lack of heart, going through the motions, doing a job).

One distraction on top of another, like make-up on the Mona Lisa covering up cracks in the paint, so it looks still pristine up close.

“Small time” local artists here cannot afford that. Because of that there should only be full recognition in how the local artists expose themselves on small stages like Sing Jazz club. They do not just play music they lay their emotions bare in front of you.

This was very much evident to me last Friday, at the performance called Xiao Zar Bo (Crazy Women), a small concert by 4 local female singers performing original compositions as well as covers.

-On a side note if they would have told me the covers were originals too, I would not have known, I had never heard these songs before in my life. It goes to show how unfamiliar I am with the genres they affiliate with. It was a learning curve and a steep one at that.-

It was a very interesting show, thanks to those emotions and maybe thanks to the fact that the styles of the different singers/musicians appeared to me to be very close. The main thing that seemed to be making a difference was what type of emotion, what part of themselves, they made most dominant during the show.

At the risk of being verbally attacked by performers and fans alike, I cannot help myself but putting them into categories. Please remember, this is what I recognized as the most dominant in the show and it does not describe the person. I don’t really know any of them.

Lisa Haryono: Balanced yet romantic