It’s the end of something, or the beginning of something; whatever the occasion is, it’s a cause for celebration, and at any celebration here there’s always singing.
This guy seems to be singing a love song, and from the looks on the girl’s faces, each one imagines he’s singing it only to her.
He’s singing well, it seems- but well or badly, in or out of tune, doesn’t really matter to him or to his listeners- the point is to do it, anyway you can. Karaoke in Dumaguete is very democratic.
Not only democratic, but ubiquitous. There are dozens of karaoke bars in the city, from elegant to sleazy to downright dangerous, each with its own particular clientele- businessmen and their dates, pedicab drivers and their buddies, or just the local group at the tables in front of the local store in their barangay.
And in all these places, the play list of available songs to sing is similar, even identical, and as new pop songs appear, they are added to the list. Any given karaoke bar will have over a thousand songs to choose from.
A few of these will be in Tagalog or Cebuano, but the vast majority will be English and American pop songs, from various periods in the last sixty years- Everything from 1950’s Everly Brothers to the latest hot rap group.
As the night goes on, more is drunk. And for sure, sooner or later, someone will sing “My Way” for the hundredth time. And there’s a superstition that singing it will cause a fight to break out- and fights do break out, but they sing it nonetheless. The song is inescapable.
And it’s an odd song to be so favored- in a town, in a country, where ordinary people spend their lives dancing to the commands of others- their lolas, their bosses, their wives, still they sing: “…but most of all, I did it My way!” They never did it their way. But maybe they don’t understand the words well enough to see the irony of what they sing.
But that’s a song sung late at night after many bottles of Red Horse.
This boy here isn’t singing “My Way”, or these girls wouldn’t be looking at him like this. It must be some American love song- probably from the Carpenters, like “Close to You”, or maybe “Top of the World”. Something like that.
