The rise and rise of Charice Pempengco

Even with my eyes closed — by saying this I risk myself sounding like a braggart — I am a hundred percent sure I can write a thousand and one beautiful things about Charice Pempengco. After all, we were once neighbors in Gulod (a barrio in Cabuyao, Laguna) until fate brought her to places she herself had never imagined she would see, let alone perform at. But the 15-year-old singing sensation always had the conscious effort to look back. So recently, Charice and I sat down for an intimate dinner with her family and my friends. You guessed it right, the night was filled with singing and reminiscing. Her singing was electrifying. The reminiscing part was warm and touching.

She was only seven years old when I first saw her — looking all the more diminutive in her little skirt that she wore on the night of an amateur singing contest in Gulod. She sang “Dakilang Lahi” and won the grand prize, besting other seasoned contestants much older than her. I snaked my way to the backstage to congratulate the little girl in a ponytail. A voice in my head told me she would be big someday, as big as her voice. Perhaps bigger than that. I was not wrong.

Charice says she started singing when she was four. Her first piece was Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” She sang it at home, on top of a table, after cuing the Minus One she herself played on a karaoke stereo. She learned to sing by listening to her mom and her aunts who had a band before.

Barely two years after that amateur singing contest in Gulod, we saw each other again when Charice, her mother Raquel and younger brother Carl transferred to our neighborhood from Sta. Rosa, Laguna. Raquel’s kids were still very young when she separated from their father. Charice and Carl grew up with the strong yet loving presence of their mother.

One day, a thief entered their house and stole Raquel’s savings of P4,000. Charice’s instinct when she found out that their only “fortune” was missing was to search for an amateur singing contest. In the middle of the night, Raquel, Charice and Carl went to Calaca, Batangas where an amateur singing contest was being held. They traveled by bus, confident that they would be able to go home even if Raquel only had exact money for one-way fare. After three rounds of singing that lasted until four in the morning the following day, Charice won first prize with her final piece “Ako ang Nagwagi.” That song won for Charice P8,000.

Raquel eventually resigned from her job as a supervisor in an apparel factory to give support to her daughter’s growing penchant for joining singing contests all over the Philippines.

Indeed, God has been so good to Charice that doors to international fame have been opened up for her. Thanks also to modern technology, she has become a phenomenal singing sensation.

Charice admits the turning point of her career as a singer happened when someone uploaded her video on YouTube. She was able to do a recording in Sweden in June 2007 because she was discovered via Internet. It was also through YouTube that she became a guest in the talent search “Star King” in South Korea in October 2007. In December 2007, she hit it big time when she guested on Ellen DeGeneres show. Early this month, Charice made Filipinos proud again when she made it to the Paul O’Grady Show in London. And this coming May 12, as Charice reveals, her guesting on Oprah will be shown in the Philippines. 

Charice is tight-lipped about the songs she sang on Oprah. “When I was singing, I could see Oprah, almost teary-eyed. She hugged me tight after I sang and asked: ‘Where are you from?’ I simply said I was from the Philippines,” she recalls.

“I owe all my international guestings to ‘false voice.’ We didn’t know each other before but he was the reason why I’m now known even abroad,” Charice humbly says in the vernacular, giving due recognition to the person who uploaded her videos on YouTube.

The “false voice” Charice is talking about is Dave Dueñas, a 22-year-old BS Nursing graduate from Bacoor, Cavite. He called his YouTube account “false voce” because “it is the other term for falsetto. I am a music lover that’s why I named it that way.”

Dave, he confesses, got challenged when he saw how many people viewed the YouTube videos of Bianca Ryan, a young singer made famous by the talent search “America’s Got Talent.”

“I really thought hard who I could match with Bianca Ryan. Then I remembered the ‘I Will Always Love You’ performance of Charice in a TV show. I uploaded it on YouTube. That started it,” Dave says.

“I first noticed Charice in 2005 in Little Big Star (a singing contest on ABS-CBN where Charice won third prize) as a wild card entry. But I believe I really first saw her when she won in Magandang Tanghali Bayan’s Junior Star Quest when she was only eight years old,” Dave tells me in a separate interview, adding that he is indeed a proud fan of Charice. 

Charice and Dave are now the best of friends, calling each other “sfexial,” to denote how special truly they are for each other. They are so close that Charice put everything aside when she recently attended Dave’s graduation in Cavite. “She even gave me a laptop as a graduation gift,” Dave happily shares.

Dave says he will continue to upload videos of Charice on YouTube as he believes more things are in store for his newfound friend.

From their simple apartment in Gulod, Charice (who now goes to a home study program with her brother Carl) has gone a long way. She now has her upcoming album under Star Records. She also relishes on the fact that she has her own dressing room now every time she has TV guestings on ABS-CBN.  (She says she used to change clothes in the toilet with other budding singers).

With all the international guestings Charice engages herself in, the mark of David Foster — the Canadian musician and producer who has worked with the likes of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand — is felt and seen. Truth is, Foster flew Charice to Las Vegas last December to watch the farewell concert of Celine Dion. The bigshot producer also went around with Charice in tow, introducing her as “my newest baby” which also means, according to industry observers, “my newest talent.”

Charice is indeed one young gun who, with her singing prowess, never fails to blow us away. And she’s just starting.

“Kilala nyo ako, (You know me) Tito Büm,” she says, “kahit paano nakita nyo kung paano ako lumaki, saan ako nanggaling. Siguro yung achievements ko ngayon ay bigay ng Diyos sa maraming hirap na sinapit namin noon (You know where I came from and you have somehow seen me grow. My achievements now are rewards from God  for the hardships my family and I have been through),” says Charice, who will be sweet 16 on May 10.

Charice says her past experiences have made her stronger. And they will continue to inspire her to better her craft. She will keep on dreaming, she says, “for dreams really do come true.”

And like the lyrics of the first song Charice mastered when she was only four years old, her heart will go on.

(Find out more on Charice Pempengco in the April issue of People Asia. For your new beginnings, please email me at bumbaki@yahoo.com.

Have a blessed Sunday.)