The concert had already began when my uncle, aunt and I arrived at the Holy Rosary Agusan Parish. I've just returned from Ozamiz to have a final interview with a prospective employer and my cousin asked me to attend their concert.
The dancers in black leotards with white billowing cloth around their necks and chests were already flailing about in their interpretation of The Prayer. There was only one male dancer, who looked like a karate student in his costume. It seemed that the choreographer did not do research about the song. The English lines in the song are not the translation of the Italian lines as is commonly mistaken. There are actually two prayers in the song by a mother for her daughter, who was going to war.Unaware of the true meaning of the song,the dancers just twirled around in a circle and occasionally clasped their hands together because, hey, it's a prayer. I suppressed a smile and tried to look pious.
After the invocation, the national anthem and the opening salvo, the XUHS Glee club sang first. There was a solo done by a soprano called The Memorare. It is a song asking Mary to hear the singer's petition and to intercede for her. The performance was uninspiring. The singer was actually being coached by Jake, the trainor for the three choirs performing that night, while she sang.
However, I enjoyed the XUHS's rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Agongan Mindanao, the latter was performed with a hand drum. The two songs got the audience bobbing to the beat.
Next came the Holy Rosary Youth Choir. I looked at the programme and noted that Wowie(see my list of Friends),my cousin, was listed as the sole male of the Altos. The choir started to sing Come Again!Sweet Love Doth Now invite and a female dancer appeared at the far left of the altar. The dancer did some facial contortions to express her rapture in inviting Love. She also did some back bending and stag leaps. I didn't get to see more of her dance because my attention was riveted to the choir, which was in the far right of the altar.
"I can barely hear their Bass" I told my cousin, Mara.
"It's because all of them are gay" she replied.
It was the sopranos that held the full sound of the Holy Rosary Youth Choir together. The choir stuck to the standard choral renditions of the six songs on their repertoire. They were not as vocally adventurous as the XUHS Glee Club, but, they were louder because they had more members.
The last to perform was the XU College Glee Club. The choir was composed of XU alumni and I spotted a teacher of the School of Business and Management singing bass.
The college glee club had a mature voice because the members were already in their late twenty's or early thirty's. The audience and I started to get bored as they sang ten songs. As they progressed down their song list, I discerned that the XU college Glee Club was monotonous. They employed the same singing techniques song after song. The sopranos and the altos sang off key in their rendition of Angels We Have Heard on High, which triggered the whispering and the occasional giggling of the audience. Jake, the trainor, did two solos.
I began to suspect that the trainor likes attention. He had this way of smiling at the audience after each song. My suspicion was confirmed when it was his turn to speak."Actually, I am the one who organized this event" and he waited for an applause. It took a few seconds for the audience to understand that he wanted them to put their hands together for him. A man behind me said "Oh, he just wants to be praised."
The numerous cardboard advent candles covered with Christmas lights on and around the altar finally made sense. They were phallic symbols! There is more than one way to masturbate. Aside from stroking your thing in the privacy of your bedroom or bathroom, you can also stroke your ego in public.
The concert was generally pleasant but it got a little sour when the trainor had just got to focus the spotlight on himself. True art is about the work and not about the artist.
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