Summer's Child

by Calvin Murphy Neria
Mr. & Ms. Magazine
March 21, 2000

It's summer and just when people are hitting the beach or heading cooler climates, guess what Regine Velasquez is doing?

She's working. With her next big concert less than a month away, Regine - one of local music's a most workaholic artist - is busy rehearsing for the show she will not only be staring in, but also directing. The show is called R2K - The Concert after the double platinum album that she produced herself and released under Viva Records. By the time this article sees print, Regine will probably have her triple platinum award.

But Regine, for all her workaholic tendencies also knows how to have fun, especially during summer. She remembers with fondness the summers she spent as a kid growing up in her hometown of Balagtas, Bulacan. "I was such a tomboy. Kapag summer lagi akong nasa labas, that's why I was so dark," she laughs. Her favorite place to play was the house of a neighbor that had a big backyard with various kinds of fruit-bearing trees. She and her friends would run around and climb trees, "Kaya laging may sugat ang tuhod ko!"

Of course, the way she spent her summers started to change when she became famous. Being a diva brings fame and fortune, but that doesn't come without a price, and for Regine, that price is the loss of privacy. Right now, there is probably no place in the Philippines that she go without being recognized, whether it's down in Boracay or all the way up to Baguio, and that's one thing she misses about the summers she used to have when she could wallow in anonymity and enjoy summer. And these days, more often than not, she is usually busy with a concert, an album, interviews and pictorials that it leaves not me to just laze around, which is what people normally do during summer.

So Regine has learned to improvise by turning each work trip board into a vacation, especially when she finds herself travelling abroad during summer. In the 14 years that she's been in the business, Regine has been all over the world - to the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, even Europe. For instance, during the US tour of Power of Two to San Francisco and New York, Regine managed to relax between shows by going shopping. She and Kuh Ledesma wold scour flea markets, shopping malls and boutiques, enjoying the privacy that they could never have here.

Sometimes, Regine travels with her family. During one concert in Australia, she took her only brother Jojo - who had never been to Australia before - with her, getting work and vacation in at the same time. "I am glad that I can do things like this for my family," she says. "I think that one of my biggest achievements is that I have been able to provide a comfortable life for the people who matter the most to me - my family."

But make no mistake about it - Regine loves summer. In fact, she was born at the height of summer almost 30 years ago. Regine's birthday is on April 22, which makes her Taurus. Taurus is an earth sign whose number-one characteristic is the love for nature. Taureans love everything about nature: the sea, mountains, blazing sunsets and flowers blooming in colorful profusion. It always seems that they can never get enough of it, though. They also love the so-called "earth colors" - all shades of brown, green, blue and white.

Regine is no different. She used flowers and plants to decorate her townhouse in Sikatuna Village, Quezon City, and loves driving to their house in Bulacan when she can. Being in Bulacan brings her back to nature and lazy summers, and those are some of the most relaxing moments of her life.

And in Regine, you see the truth of the saying that you can 'take the girl out of the probinsya, but never the probinsyana out of the girl." She may have acquired an outward veneer of sophistication, but when it comes to her values and her love for nature and summer, you can see the small-town girl in her. And that small-town girl will always be there, come what may. All the fame and fortune in the world could change the person that Regina Encarnacion Velasquez is.

This is not to say though, that Regine does not love her career. She often tells journalists who interview her that "My career and my life are one." Regine started in the business she was just 16 years old - a dark, skinny probinsyana who didn't know a thing about fashion and whose only asset was her powerful voice that seemed too mature for someone her age.

After 14 years in the business she is about to celebrate her 14th anniversary in showbiz and her 30th birthday that are happening at the same time - Regine has learned to love what she does. Her career is now part of her. She is grateful because it gives her an opportunity to do what she does best, which is to sing. She has even developed a style all her own, whether it comes to fashion or the way she delivers her spiels onstage.

But it is the way she sings that has really touched the people. Her voice has matured considerably from her single, Urong Sulong to her latest recording, the album R2K Regine considers her latest album to be one of the highlights and milestones of her career.

"It's memorable for me, because it was my first time to produce an album and I lost a lot of weight because of it! says Regine. "Talo ang Bangkok pills!" Though she has recorded a lot of albums, doing R2K was different because as a producer, she was responsible for the whole project from beginning to end. She chose the song, whether it was acoustic jazzy or soft, and to top it all, she had to record each song. Regine's personal manager Patty Mayoralgo remembers how they would find themselves in the recording studio until 3 AM just working on the album!
On April 7 & 8, Regine's involvement in R2K: The Concert at the Araneta Coliseum. Believe it or not, Regine has never done a concert at the Big Dome before and kept putting it off because she was nervous and wondering whether she could actually fit Araneta Coliseum which has a seating capacity of 17,000 for a concert.

"I decided that finally, it's time - but that doesn't change anything, kasi kinakabahan pa rin ako," says Regine, and I reply with an incredulous look on my face. I ask her, "You? You still get frightened by things like this?"

The reply comes quickly, "Of course I still get frightened. I've done Folk Arts Theater, CCP before, but Araneta is the biggest venue I've ever done, tapos two-night concert pa! This will be the biggest concert I have ever done in terms of venue, the concert and production-wise," says Regine who has come up with a concept into four major segment, each dealing with a different aspect of her life and career.

As the concert date draws near Regine is starting to feel the pressure. Then we talk about summer and she wishes she could escape for a while go back to those easy, lazy days when she wasn't so busy and life wasn't so complicated. It is a wish that she just might fulfill one day - in the meantime, concert stardom awaits.