Sing often

Last weekend, the Samraat Club Panaji organised its annual fellowship event – Deep Sandhya – the festival of lights being celebrated by the families of the members of the club. Glamour photographer and make-up artist, Sanjeev Salvi was orchestrated the entertainment using Karoake - a system of pre-recorded music accompaniment to songs whose words appear on a video screen.

Sanjeev was comfortable due to his competency to sing to the pre-recorded music. But the rest of us had inhibitions. We were not very comfortable syncing the words with the music that played. But as the evening progressed, the singing seemed liberated. Those who were scratchy during their first attempt seemed at ease while belting out a second song.

Very few children, who sing well in their childhood, retain their skill to sing, when they grow older. They stop singing for various reasons. Some lose the belief. Some lose the interest to develop the skill. Some sing in their minds. Some do not sing at all.

Many wrongly believe that singing is talent, when eventually it is a well honed skill that gets better by doing it again. Eventually it is to be seen whether all of us who discovered the potential of singing can develop it further by doing it often... After all, to be better at anything, we have to do it again and again!

There is an artist, a singer, a dancer, a story teller in all of us. But often our potential is unfairly condemned under our own expectation of its worthiness before an audience. It is foolish to compare ourselves with professionals. More importantly, the best of singers do not get better by comparing themselves with the singing greats. Rather they get inspired by their icons to keep singing.

to BE BETTER at the ability to sing…
doing it often is the right thing!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.