Thankfully, Ara Mina, Marissa Sanchez, and Jessa Zaragoza, real-life and long-time friends, are not going to break their friendship anytime soon; nor would we hope for that to happen. Together they are a formidable entertainment trio, each an individual and one another’s complement.
Soul Sisters: Nxt Lvl, their recent two-night engagement at the Music Museum, reunites them on the concert stage. (The three had before staged Soul Sisters Act at the Metrobar and the Café Lupe.) This time the theme was friendship, music and soul.
By and large, the show succeeded in living up to the title and from the audience’s reaction, to the expectations generated by the ladies’ previous show. Soul Sisters included songs from such legends as Shirley Bassey, Donna Summer, and the Supremes, and covered the range of soul music from blues to Gospel to Motown to more contemporary incarnations of the tradition (in the last the three singers were aided by Groove Manila). In between are patters on sisterhood, the word friend intermittently tossed about. That it was difficult to tell how much of the spiels was rehearsed was a plus. The "friendship songs" performed included That’s What Friends Are For, You’ve Got a Friend and We Are Family.
Of course, there were some omissions. Missing was Friends, theme of one of Sharon Cuneta’s movies back in the ‘80s – and that, despite Ara Mina being a dead ringer for Sharon in her youth. As for the soul component, the recognized "queen of soul," Aretha Franklin, was not represented. Even then, credit must be given to musical director Jimmy Antiporda for arranging medleys of some of the most memorable songs in the tradition and for making sure each lady gets a chance to shine.
Shine each did in her own way. Jessa Zaragoza reminded one of Taylor Dayne. True, her lips are less rubbery, but she possesses the latter’s better assets – of tone and bosom a fullness enviable. In her Shirley Bassey medley, she was electric as her original was epileptic. Even the bobbing of her head and the quivering of her lips as she held certain notes were all of a piece. Marissa Sanchez provided comic relief, making capital of her weight (she drips mantika, she said, not pawis.). She handled serious numbers with as much aplomb as with tongue in cheek. Singing the climax of Love Moves in Mysterious Ways, for example, she reminded one of the excesses of Jennifer Holliday, but like her Broadway counterpart, she pulled it off.
Ara Mina was not as vocally impressive. Alone, she proved that she is a siren in more than one way, but with the other two her voice tended to get overpowered. Perhaps she belongs to another music tradition (the Julie London variety of jazz comes to mind). She certainly has the figure to do torch: imagine her sprawled on the piano and wearing a red sequined gown. Her mode of attack, though, would be (oxymoronically) to coo and caress. Belting ought not be the sole mode of singing, although it seems to be the standard today where women are concerned. (If Ella Fitzgerald or Karen Carpenter were alive, neither would win at a talent show.)
If one must have some things to pick apart about Soul Sisters, these would include the Abba and Carpenters medleys. Generically speaking, Abba and Carpenter do not belong to the soul tradition. It may be said, however, that the artistic intention in the case of the Carpenter medley at least was to underscore the friendship theme; so it covers one half of the show’s "big idea"; hence, Yesterday Once More, I Won’t Last a Day Without You, and so on. But The Winner Takes It All?
What was more unsettling, however, was the impersonation segment. While the three ladies did credible imitations, the segment unwittingly validated the sexist stereotype that when women get together they become vicious backstabbers of other women. At that moment, the three assumed the role of the wicked stepsisters of many a fairy tale, and poor Vina Morales, Donna Cruz, and Zsa Zsa Padilla were their Cinderella. By definition, parodies work by exaggerating the worst aspects of the object being parodied. They can be useful politically as well as morally corrective, but they also run the risk of sending questionable messages, as, for instance, "Sisterhood for us, but not for you."
Equally suspect was the segment when logos of the concert’s sponsors were flashed on a screen as the ladies sang a medley of friendship-related songs. There is something about the yoking together of images of profit-making and profuse professions of friendship that smells of patronage and the commercialism of spiritual values.
Ideological questions aside, however, Soul Sisters: Nxt Lvl was enjoyable entertainment. Whether singly or collectively, the soul sisters Ara Mina, Marissa and Jessa were as exhilarating as performers could get. It is only to be hoped that their next offering would effect yet another, higher, level of sisterhood.