Eternal Essence
WITH A LIFETIME SPENT IN THE SPOTLIGHT, PILITA CORRALES TALKS TO ABBY TAN ABOUT HER LATEST INCARNATION AS "MAMITA" TO A NEW GENERATION OF SINGERS
After nearly 50 years singing and entertaining, the seemingly eternal Pilita Corrales flashes a familiar mega-watt smile that must be the secret to her longevity. “I am a happy person,” she declares. “I do not envy anyone. I have no enemies.”
Her happy disposition might be the reason she was chosen to be one of the three judges on Philippine Idol, the local version of the hit American Idol TV talent search. Since the show began in July 2006, Filipino TV audiences have noticed that the Pilita style bears an uncanny similarity to American Idol’s Paula Abdul, who gives nurturing, uplifting comments to nervous contestants subjected to brutal put-downs by co-judge Simon Cowell.
BOOSTING TALENT
Pilita says her role is to say something funny to calm the contestants. “No insults. Never!” she declares firmly, as that would be taboo in the Philippine culture. Though Pilita and the other judges – composer Ryan Cayabyab and rapper Francis Magalona – are all native Filipinos, they attended a workshop on how to handle Filipino sensitivities on camera.
Yet, this briefing and her years of stage experience did not prepare Pilita for the raw emotions displayed backstage. Contestants and their mothers begged, cried and wept buckets when they got eliminated in the first round.
Many joined the contest because of poverty, says Pilita. Poor Filipinos are desperate to find fame and fortune through this talent contest. To be eliminated early comes as a blow to both aspirants and their hopeful mothers.
“I didn’t know it would be so difficult (to be a judge),” confesses Pilita. “It is draining to see someone crying and begging. I feel so bad.”
There is a positive side to being a judge on Philippine Idol, however. “You feel so proud when you are able to help build careers for the contestants you chose,” she notes.
The veteran singer sees her role as providing motherly calm with humor on the set. “I try to pick up something from the contestant to make people laugh,” she says. So now, all the crew on the set of Philippine Idol, including the emcee, call her Mamita (Mother) both on air and off.
CAREER CHAMELEON
This newest on-screen role fits Pilita’s wish to be “a comedienne, singer and host”. She has been living out these roles in various venues. In a comedy sitcom Lagot Ka, Isusumbong Kita (Be Careful or I’ll Tell on You), she plays mom to three sons discovering the joys of girlfriends.
Her singing career has never paused, and she continues hosting TV shows and concerts. Even when her contemporaries are well into retirement and playing with grandchildren, Pilita dons her five-inch stilettos, paints her nails a fiery vermillion and, with flaming red bouffant hair and plunging necklines, she gets on stage to execute her signature bend – the gravity-defying act when she hits a high note.
“Everybody thinks it is a put-on!” she protests, explaining that when she bends back her torso as she sings, she can better reach the notes. “Maybe my lungs expand. When I bend from left to right, it helps my singing.”
STREET TALK
Her music career began in late 1950s Manila. As a teenager, her voice was heard on a radio show called La Taverna where she played the guitar and sang songs in Spanish and Visayan, the native dialect of Cebu where she was born. After her Spanish father’s premature death disrupted her studies in Madrid, Pilita returned to the Philippines to help her impoverished family of six siblings by eking out a living as a singer.
When greener pastures beckoned, the family migrated to Australia. They were there for three years, but this short stint offered enough time and opportunity for Pilita to launch her musical career. A regular guest on Graham Kennedy’s Melbourne Tonight TV variety show, the Australian audience was enthralled by her constant change of beautiful gowns – three times a week – courtesy of her mother who sewed all her clothes.
Her first two albums were recorded in Australia. When her song “Come Closer to Me” became the biggest single hit in Australia, accolades started to pour in. The mayor of Melbourne offered her permanent residency and a street was named after her. Pilita Street was “14 to 16 houses long,” muses the singer. “It’s a small little street, but it is mine!”
HOMECOMING
With a street and a name made in Australia, her re-entry back into the Philippines’ music world was easier. She was immediately invited to join a big group of Filipino performers to showcase local culture and music in the Philippine Festival show for six months in Las Vegas. The festival was produced by Steve Parker, then the husband of Hollywood actress Shirley MacLaine.
This launched Pilita into a long enduring relationship with the Filipino communities overseas who loved her sentimental songs about home. Now, with a grand total of 140 albums to her name, even children come up to her after a concert to ask for her autograph, and best of all, to remind her that they learned about her from their parents’ collection of Pilita Corrales’ old favorite songs in English, Spanish and Visayan.
In 1963, she re-connected with Manila with her own TV show An Evening with Pilita, which ran for 11 years until martial law in 1972 closed down all privately-owned broadcast networks.
The highlight of her career is still, she says, her three-week guest performance with the late Sammy Davis, Jr. in Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, in the early 1980s. By then, Pilita had won the 1978 Tokyo Music Festival competition – and was the first Philippine contestant to win an international song contest.
The Japanese press dubbed her “Asia’s Queen of Songs” – and the moniker has conveniently stuck. No wonder too, considering she has appeared three times each at Carnegie Hall in New York, the Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, both in Washington DC.
PERSONAL HIGHS
The real highlights for the star are her two children, though – daughter Jackie Lou Blanco, now 43, with her first husband, a Spanish pelota player; and son Ramon Christopher, born during a relationship with well-known Filipino movie actor Eddie Gutierrez.
But while Pilita’s professional star soared, she scored poorly in matters of the heart. Her private life was scarred by many failed relationships. Six years ago, she married a second time, to an Australian businessman Carlos Lopez, originally from Paraguay.
Now she thinks she is second-time lucky. She says without reservation, “With Carlos, I am very happy. My children and (seven) grandchildren are very happy for me.” The couple manage a restaurant in the Greenhills suburbs of the capital, called – what else – Pilita’s, where she often chats with customers in between servings of pasta and chops.
Despite her crooning about unrequited love and unfulfilled dreams, she believes “there is Something for everybody,” she says. Above all, she is happiest doing concerts. As if born to showbiz, Pilita has endured as an artist because she keeps up with the times and singing new songs. While her contemporaries have retired or moved on, she has never stopped performing.
She misses the TV variety shows that she used to host, though. Higher costs have relegated these productions to history and in their place are the cheaper reality shows that are now offered as entertainment.
PERSONAL TOUCHES
Filipinos’ tastes in music seems to be influenced by their tendency to get too up close and too personal with the singer. Pilita observes that audiences in other countries listen to the song and look less at the singer. In the Philippines, however, it is the singer, not the song.
She explains, “They want to know if you’re a nice person offstage. They know if you are singing well or not. Abroad, as long as you sound good, they wouldn’t know if you don’t feel well.”
She is discovering that these rules apply to Philippine Idol’s audience too. It seems like the show has become less of a talent contest and more of a popularity contest. The Filipino audience wants to see good looks and a little sexiness. If contestants have sob stories, so much the better. Filipinos like to vote for the underdog.
DAYDREAM BELIEVER
As the medium of music changes, Pilita is still learning new things. That’s why she says she has not yet peaked.
“I still have one more dream – to record an album of Tagalog (Filipino) songs translated into Spanish, for the 21 Spanish-speaking countries in the world,” she says.
And not to mention continuing with Philippine Idol and the sitcom, and “to keep doing what I’m doing; to be with my husband, children, grandchildren; to help as many people as I can, especially in the music industry; and to be in good health.”
Just as her enduring legacy of music, it seems like Pilita Corrales has a wish to be eternal, and she certainly works hard at it.
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