Philip Mwaniki
21 November 2004
opinion
Nairobi — Have you ever come from a concert thinking that the band or musician sounded exactly the same as the record you had heard before? Chances are that it is because you were listening to the record and not them although they were on the stage. Eminem, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Milli Vanilli, Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, Tupac Shakur, 50 Cent, among others, have all done it and many more are falling into the trap of lip-synching, much to the dismay of their fans.
But perhaps the greatest fake of all time was the Europe-based duo of Milli Vanilli, who for years pretended to be singing and even won awards for the non-effort.
For 20-year-old Ashlee Simpson, it seems she will forever bear the scarlet "L" for lip-synching. The "singer" has been lampooned and shamed, held up as an example of today's style-over-substance culture - all because of one lip-sync gone famously awry.
Just one week after he lip-synched, Eminem was also caught just yapping away and occasionally pausing as the track went on.
"He was 'rapping' his latest track Mosh and you could tell he was lip-synching," said a critic, adding that "the track was just a bit ahead of his lips and he put the mike down at one point but the track kept going."
Eminem's representatives explained that he was merely trying to "duplicate the sound on his album". They insisted that "he had a vocal track on for a double vocal effect on the first song, to make it more powerful. Lots of hip-hop artists do that. Tupac Shakur did it".
And according to an earlier report, perhaps the only moments when Britney Spears did not lip-synch during her recent concert tour was when she said "hello" and "goodbye" to the audience.
Michael Jackson mouthed part of his superstar-making moment on the Motown 25 TV show in 1983. Whitney Houston's spine-chilling rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at the 1991 Super Bowl was prerecorded.
But even as the world's renowned artistes continue to give "Live Shows" a bad name, this is not a preserve of the Western world because even here in Kenya, several musicians lip-synch.
This is made easy because the artistes do not perform "live" as mentioned in their flyers but use play-back CDs.
Do not think that every time you pay to see your favourite artiste sing you get what you pay for because there are many cases where artistes merely move their lips and fool you that they are singing.
In Kenya, this bad habit is more evident in music videos. There are many videos where the track and the musician are not n'sync and even looking at them you can tell that the only thing they do is move their lips.
It is simple, just watch the video keenly, mostly the artiste's mouth and then listen to the song, many times the words uttered will come three seconds after the track.
Sheba Hirst, musician Eric Wainaina's business partner and fiancee, says criticising the artistes when they lip-synch is being too harsh on them. She says that they are not to blame because their style of music is what influences how they perform on stage.
"The dance-oriented kind of music is very hard to do live because the artistes have to sing and dance at the same time and that is why they have to lip-synch so that they can dance and keep the crowd on their feet," she says.
But top disc jokey Pinye (Peter Chuani) says the practice is rampant. "Many of our artistes lip-sync and this really angers the fans, but it is not peculiar to them as it is something done worldwide," he says.
DJ Pinye says that if an artiste lip-synchs then there is no reason why the fans had to pay to see him or her. People go to concerts because they want to hear and see the artistes perform live. "If you give them a song straight from a CD, they would rather have stayed at home and play the track," says Pinye. Controversial rapper Nonini (Hubert Nakitare) of the We Kamu and Keroro hit songs fame, who admits that he has on several occasions only moved his mouth, says that he was forced to do so because the sound system was bad.
"If the sound is bad, I have to lip-sync but I will let the organisers know. Otherwise I just love to sing."
He says the artistes who often lip-sync are cowards or not talented enough. The only reason they sound good on records is because their voices are computer enhanced, he says.
Ragga sensation Redsan (Mohamed Swabir) also admits having had to let the record play while his mouth does nothing but move up and down, something he, too, blames on poor sound systems.
"I went for a concert in Nanyuki and the sound was so terrible that if I had tried to sing live, it would have been disastrous. I told the organisers that I had to just lip-sync."
We have come a long way from the days of the legendary musicians Daudi Kabaka and Fadhili William, of the Helule Lule and Malaika and Taxi Driver hit songs fame, respectively, whose trademark in the 1960s was the ability to sing. Today, our so-called artistes sing or rap and then leave the work of providing the beat and enhancing the vocals to the producers who themselves do not play instruments but rely on computers to generate the beats.
In multi-track studios, one can re-record vocals until even the most average of vocalists can achieve technical perfection. But there is one particularly sinister invention, which according to music critics, has been putting extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s. It is a piece of software called Autotune. Essentially, it takes a poorly sung note and makes it better.
And Autotune is universal, so widely misused that musician Alison Moore's recent album included the proud disclaimer: "No Autotune was used during the making of this record."
So if someone is spinning on their head, executing back-flips and other energetic manoeuvres, while "singing" their hearts out, you might as well stay at home and listen to the records period!
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