Rediscovering the golden gift of innocence

Before “The Voice Kids 2” started telecasting last June 6, we fervently wished that the kiddie singing tilt had learned the right lessons from its first season, so it would turn out to be a much better show. Well, how has it fared in that regard?

The good news is that the contest is now more genuinely a kiddie competition, with contestants who are generally younger than last year’s batch, which had too many adolescents, tweens and downright teens for anybody’s good!

A few weeks ago, there was only one 13-year-old and an 11-year-old, while most of the other Blind Auditions hopefuls were 8 or 9 years old. We would prefer even younger and truly precociously gifted bets, but perhaps they will surface in the coming weeks.

Our preference for really young singers is due to our firm belief that child singers, if they’re young and innocent enough, can perform a rare but much-needed function in show biz and the arts—namely, to make us thrill to the pure promise of natural talent, as well as to help us remember the long-lost but still cherished time when we were very young and innocent, and had our whole future shining brightly in front of us!

Beautiful ideal

The minute the performer is no longer young and innocent and precociously gifted enough and porma and too much self-awareness and consciousness get into the picture, that rare and thus most precious and beautiful ideal is gone and can never be recaptured again!

This key point is not very well understood in these parts, because we just love it (I don’t know why) when our kiddie performers are porma and sassy and act like pint-sized adults. But we keep emphasizing its importance—because, in these cynical times, we need all of the actual and remembered innocence and precocious giftedness we can get!

COACH Lea Salonga sings impromptu duet with 11-year-old Reynan Del-anay.

Back to “The Voice Kids 2”: It’s also good to note that improvements have been made when it comes to the choice of age-appropriate songs for the child singers to interpret. Finally, no more “passionate” anthems about love found and lost, hearts broken to bits, faithless lovers—etc.! Some song choices are still a bit questionable, but the choices are generally more judicious now.

Let’s hope that improvements continue to be made in this regard, because innocence really is the key!

Other improvements can include better inputs from the young bets’ parents and handlers, some of whom come off as too competitive and pushy (even if their young wards aren’t).

Empathy

Also, the kids shouldn’t be coached to come up with “impressive” statements like “I’m joining to serve as an inspiration to (fill in the blank).” And there should be less use of “emotional” backstories to generate viewers’ sympathy and empathy!

Let the tilt be about talent, pure and simple, and the kids will be truly free to sing with untrammeled voices and hearts—and truly inspire us oldies to believe again in hope, pure talent, a “rechargeably” optimistic view of life—and all the good, sweet, beautiful and blessed things that child artists are supposed to gift us with!

Porma, sass, emotional backstories and “blackmail” and pint-sized-adult performances? Throw them into the “irrelevant garbage” heap—where they belong!