FB post dated November 30th - "Picking the winner"

How do you pick a winner in a singing competition?  An overall polished performance but safe, making less mistakes but pushing no further than being safe, versus a risk-taker in pushing one's boundaries and bringing the audience to the edges with raw emotions and heart, display fair amount of vulnerability and imperfections.  An ideal winner is of course a combination of both great skills and great emotions but when you have to pick one, how do you do it?

I learned something this morning, maybe not exactly something completely new to me but definitely something I should spend more time thinking about.  

Was on the panel of judges for 2013 World Children's Day Refugee Talent Competition, organized by UNHCR Malaysia. Six of us, three judges from the dance field (Cecilia Yong, Amar Singh and Gonzalo..didn't get his name proper) and three of us from the music field - Reza Salleh, Arif Akhir and myself. 

The children were being judged based on ability, stage presentation and audience appeal for their singing and dancing performance. There were only six finalists in each category and their age group vary from eight years of age to teenagers.  Being children and still fresh on stage, it wasn't hard recognizing who had the best singing technique and who did better in appealing to a live audience and performing on stage.  Choosing the winner at first seemed easy, the gap between the finalists was obvious - but the exchange of a few words with my fellow judges before I was ushered to hand in my final score - gave me new insights into the world of `judging a winning performance'.

We all agreed that deciding on a winner under this sort of circumstances is hard - the children's skills vary quite a bit, they obviously have very different background (though were all refugees in Malaysia), they all excel in different aspects of performance of singing.  

So when it came to time to put down the pens and choosing the one for top marks this morning, it was also time to decide what the judges were going to reward - do we pick the performance that showed us power of trusting, faith and soul, or do we pick the performance that displayed just adequate skills and flair?  

In my heart, really, despite the cliche we have all heard, all the kids were winners to me - they have all won because they had stepped out of their comfort zone, invested their time, resources, heart and soul into the project, braved the nerves, and faced the panel and audience, bared themselves `naked' and be the subject of judgement for 5 minutes.  That's how much (and more) artists and performers are willing to sacrifice for their craft, and art.  

Opss...I have digressed. Back to the crunch time of decision this morning - there were three of us on the singing panel.  The winner was the little 8-year old girl who went for her faith, sang with truck loads of gusto and heart, gave dynamics in her singing and basically, she bite the bullet.  Yes she still lack  finesse in her vocal control and technique.  But she has those other elements that would send her to a different place all together, when she acquire more technique later, if she doesn't stop singing after today.

For someone who is obsessed with the importance of training and technique, I am guilty of bringing my classroom and my singing teacher with me (inside my head) on stage.  But I love telling stories and connecting my live performance with the people in front of me, so it's usually a close fight between the heart and head.  I think the heart usually wins - that means I'd go back stage later, cursing and wishing I had more practice and that my pitching and production were more put-together.  But after this morning's experience, I am reminded of the meaning and spirit of a live performance - the bottom line should transcends learned skills and technique, and it should be about making a shared experience that aims to change something in the audience, move a few souls in the room, stir up imaginations or memories, taking people to places with the singing (dancing, acting..etc) - and sometimes it won't come from being the best in technique.  

I need to stress again, my point is that technique is VERY IMPORTANT in performing arts, but it won't be the sole deciding factor in a winning performance.  

So many factors make a performance special and memorable, so many things at stake when you're on stage, the performer is both powerful and vulnerable…guess that's part of the allure of this thing called performing arts huh?  

Thank you Reza Salleh for  your insightful thoughts and Ariff Akhir for letting me pick your brains :)