Did You Know That Squatting Can Change Your Voice?!

Masters – aficionados in a particular subject teach a masterclass. Right? That’s exactly what happened at the MTN Foundation sponsored Masterclass for students of the Music Society of Nigeria (MUSON), many of whom are also beneficiaries of the Foundation’s music scholarship. Masters changed all we thought we knew about singing.

See, we listened to people sing their hearts out, and we marvelled at the enabler that could possibly live in their lungs propelling them to sing like that! They reached pitches we had never heard before.

Opera is a peculiar taste that takes some getting used to. We know. It’s not for everyone. We know. We were like you a month ago, but now we are fans after watching young people exhibit superhuman vocal chords at the masterclass held at the MUSON Centre, Onikan Lagos!

People sang and we were gobsmacked! “That was awesome”, someone whispered from behind us. We really thought it couldn’t get better than that. Well, all that changed the moment the ‘masters’ stepped on the stage.

Daniel Taylor, a countertenor and Ellen McAteer, a professor of voice at the University of Toronto and a two-time recipient of the Richard Bradshaw Graduate Fellowship in Opera, showed us the meaning of ‘master’. Kai!

And here comes a stunner. Daniel walked up to one of the performers who had blown us away and told her to squat when she sang a line. We raised our brows in question. Singing was now exercise? If only we had known. The next time the young woman opened her mouth, we simply stared. She sang better and everyone marvelled at a new revelation that was previously known only to the gods. It’s possible to sing better just by squatting!

So now, before we sing we do some form of exercise ooo! We know better now