Is Dimash Kudaibergen the greatest microphone singer of all time?

Yes, apparently this is what a whole lot of people think (the title of post was meant to be at least partially facetious)!  Why?  Well, it serves the purpose of the Youtube voice coaches who create “reaction” videos, which seem to generate a great deal more hits (and thus revenue) than their singing instruction and technique videos, which sometimes have no more than a few hundred hits.  But let’s take a look at the reality, starting with the kind of “reaction” video to which I’m referring:

Does this sound great to you?  He’s certainly using different techniques to produce sounds that are quite distinct, though his “big note” sounds clearly discordant.  But let’s reserve judgement for a moment.  This was my comment:

…I think it would be best to assess a performance that appears to have a lot less technological enhancement, such as:

And listening to this performance, the first thing I would say to an aspiring singer is that this guy is doing things that are simply outside the Western musical tradition, so of course it sounds “special” (and at one point it sounded to me like what would be called the witch’s cackle in the old Italian tradition, which would never be performed). I’m glad to see someone getting some credit for demonstrating the range of the adult male voice (his might be lighter than most, though), but let’s at least be honest about what we are listening to. He’s got excellent control, and I’d guess he put a lot of effort into doing this, but there’s nothing superhuman here. I’d classify him as a kind of “classical crossover” singer. If he becomes popular in the West I have no doubt we will see a bunch of “Dimash wannabees,”‘ and some of those might even do a better job of it, though I doubt by much, since he’s certainly quite good at this kind of thing.

When I wrote that comment this was the best video I could find that seemed more “real,” but then I found another (below) – take a listen:

Does this sound good to you?  It doesn’t to me, though it’s possible that this is a popular style in the East.   And he “shows passion,” I’d guess, to certain demographics, but it comes across to many Westerners as “showing off” without much in the way of musicality, I’d guess.  In any case, I certainly would like him to “succeed” in the West (with this unconventional approach), and there are a lot worse singers in the world who are “stars,” that’s for sure!  The reason is that people might become more critical of singing skills/technique (as well as the enhancements that are used).  However, I think he might get “called out” here in the USA for using auto-tune in an obvious way, for example (this is my guess as to at least how some of the sounds were generated).  Now I don’t know what standard, if any, he may be thinking about while doing this, or perhaps he wants to be a “trail blazer,” which, again, I find interesting if not compelling.

It’s clearly not of the Bel Canto tradition, but there seems to be an attempt to at least reference it, for whatever reason.  Turning to the second video above, his movements and physical exertion don’t seem consistent with this singing (unlike in the third video), suggesting at least partial lip syncing.  In any case, what I object to are claims that someone is on some sort of super-human level as a singer, with some of those making the claim not recognizing (or not mentioning) significant technological enhancement when it is so obviously present.  And whatever you think of this vocalist, do not try and imitate him until you learn the fundamentals of singing!  Instead, just keep listening to different singers (as “real” as possible – don’t just listen to studio recordings!) as you learn the fundamentals and you’ll start to be able to perceive what’s possible (without enhancement) and what’s not.

Now let’s say, hypothetically, that in the first video above his voice is only amplified, along with some amount of  reverb/echo type effect (which is almost always the case with microphone singing).  I would say that represents an interesting vocal performance, certainly not without some level of virtuosity, but it has no  context to me.  I perceive it as some sort of “oddball” classical crossover song.  So, I can’t say he’s a “great” singer or not, because I need to have a sense of the theme and genre of the song, and then I can consider if the singing is consistent with these.  I don’t really think much of classical crossover in general, because to me it’s like watching an auto race where the cars are slow – it just doesn’t make sense (because to me opera singing is to be done without amplification as well as other enhancements; there’s a tradition where you compare past “greats” with present ones, because they are trying to sing the same songs in the same way).  Now if a microphone singer wants to do something novel with opera, that may be worth listening to (at least once), but I would want the singer to be an excellent opera singer to begin with (and I don’t think Dimash is there yet, but again, I don’t even know if that’s what he’s going for!).