Mentors come up with promising discoveries on ‘Protégé’

“PROTÉGÉ” host Ogie Alcasid with one of the talent tilt’s aspirants

The first telecast of “Protégé,” GMA 7’s new talent tilt, was interesting because the nationwide “mentorship”-boosted search produced quite a number of standouts from the provinces.

For instance, mentor Jay R “discovered” Kenneth Monico, a looker from Cabanatuan City who sang really well; other early standouts were Via Samantha from Batangas and Lirah Bermudez from Roxas City.

The tilt’s 10 celebrity mentors could choose three finalists each and are now tasked to train them for competition in Manila. The mentorship concept isn’t new, having been initiated by the US singing tilt “The Voice.” But its local application is still a viable idea – especially since star mentors like Claire de la Fuente and Aiza Seguerra appear to be really determined to help their “discoveries” shine!

Less on the up-and-up was the show’s effort to milk the standouts’ back stories for tears and melodrama to the max.

For instance, a singer made it to the audition venue just in the nick of time after recovering from dengue. Another buried a brother just a few days before the competition.

A third had a sibling with an incurable brain tumor. A fourth was looking for his black American dad. And others were shown to be dirt-poor and joined the tilt to drastically improve their families’ impoverished lives.

While the personal or human element is part of a future star’s connection with viewers, we feel that the show’s focus on their travails is excessive, and distracts from their main capital and reason for being discovered – namely, their exceptional singing talent.

So, after those lugubrious first salvos, we hope that the tilt focuses much more on the chosen finalists’ talents and charisma, and leaves the emotional blackmail to the soggy, sappy TV soaps and sudsy teleseryes – where they more properly belong.

Despite these cautionary notes, however, our sense is that “Protégé” will indeed produce some singing stars of tomorrow. We’ve had many other TV talent tilts, but some of this new show’s early products seem to be more promising than usual.

We guess that we can credit that key advantage to the program’s 10 celebrity mentors, many of whom appear to have used their expertise and experience to choose wisely and well.

We could end up being dead wrong, but that positive impression persists. So hopes are high that, with their mentors’ inputs and insistent coaching, at least some of the raw talents will indeed sequentially bloom into genuine singing luminaries before our very eyes, as the show progresses.

True, they’ve chosen a number of the usual birit-oriented screamers, but they’ve also discovered some truly unique voices, with a character and texture all their own.

We believe that it’s these unique voices that will stand out for the long term, because they offer listeners more than just vocal range and ear-shattering volume.

Listen to iconic singers such as Zsazsa Padilla, Kuh Ledesma, Rico J. Puno, Dulce, Robert Seña and the like, and you’ll realize that each has his own unique timbre and signature sound.  That’s what new singers have to develop in themselves. Stop trying to sound like everybody else!