VIVA LAS DIVAS!

There’s a good chance Aretha Franklin will sing „Respect“ during Tuesday night’s Celine, Arethe, Gloria, Shania and Mariah: Divas Live special on VH1, but even if she doesn’t, the live concert, originating from New York’s Beacon Theater, confirms that pop women of the ‘90s are getting plenty of r-e-s-p-e-c-t. The all star Divas Live lineup – Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan and Franklin – reflects a wide world of music, from pop and country to Latin and rhythm & blues.

These superstars will come together to sing their hits – solo and in a variety of pairings – to support a good cause: VH1 Save the Music, a public-service initiative designed to encourage music education in an era of increasingly tight school budgets. These vocal divas say they have good reason to lend their voices to this cause: All got an early musical start. In fact, thanks to music lessons offered in their own schools, they could have formed their own instrumental combo. Estefan took her first trip out of Miami with her grade-school band, in which she played the clarinet. Dion studied the flute and Franklin played the tuba, while Twain blew the cornet and credits music classes with giving her a grounding in the music theory that is essential to songwriting.

Carey, the daughter of an opera singer, is said to have sung along with her mother’s rehearsals of “Rigoletto” when she was just 2 ½ years old.

Estefan explains that she settled on the clarinet because “all the guys got the saxophones.” Estefan’s now the mother of two, and her 17-year-old son, Nayib, who plays guitar and drums, plans to study film with a minor in music in college.

Frankling says she wanted to play flute or piccolo, “but everybody signed up before me. I couldn’t have been more than 7, and tuba is all that was left. I didn’t have any solos, but I’d blow a not here and there.”

Twain started singing in the school choir at the age of 6. “I was socially most happy in school when I was involved in music,” says Twain, who also sang with country and rock bands as a young girl. “Since I was always a professional singer, I didn’t have much of a chance to feel like a kid. I was vey average horn player, but being part of the band let me feel like part of the team.”

Divas being divas, of course, no one what’s planned for the big night, but producers hope all five will take the stage for a fantastic finale. By then, these women will have taught us a lesson about the importance of music not only in school, but in the soul.

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Many thanks for this magazine to Amanda Warnock!!! :-)

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