How did I catch the 'Vitas Virus'?
It all started about two years ago when the light fog and spitting of rain dampened my mood and dashed my expectations of a mirthful spring season. As a result, I remained inside of my friend Alissa's dorm for a while and jotted down study notes to prepare for one of my first-year final exams. As I was doing this, I waited for the weather to subside since I badly wanted to escape a dorm that was so dimly lit and eerie that it was comparable to a debtor's prison. Her extremely narrow room and black walls prevented much light from penetrating through, and it was unlike the colour of the hospital room I visited months before with its white sheets, white walls, and my dad’s pale white face.
When my eyes began to droop and my mind exhausted itself from cramming oodles of information at the last minute, my friend Alissa, a mild-mannered psychology major with straight brunette hair reaching past her shoulders, suggested that we should earn ourselves a study break and watch some YouTube videos to catch up with the latest #memes, the bonding tape of our friendship.
With her earthy-toned brown eyes glowing in excitement, Alissa eagerly asked me if I was familiar with #Vitas, the 'weird #Russian singer'. I responded that I did not have a clue who this Vitas fellow was, yet I was curious to find out what classified him as 'weird' according to social media platforms like Reddit and Tumblr. Without skipping a beat, Alissa swiveled in her computer chair and typed in Vitas's name into the YouTube search bar then clicked on a live performance video of him singing "The 7th Element."
Commencing with what sounded like raindrops pouring onto steel drums, "The 7th Element" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwzUs1IMdyQ) presented an energetic and new-age tone. Underlining this tone was a backup female singer singing a shamanistic chant that simultaneously belonged in the ancient past and in the distant future, circa year 3000. Once the hook kicked in with "bloo-loo-loo-ah-ah-ah," Vitas tossed vowels around playfully and acted as a preschooler experimenting with his verbal speech for the first time. While the beats raced as quick as comets flying across the sky, Vitas's "oh-whoa" swirled like molasses which sweetened my mood and had me glued to his body-rolling tune. Listening to this dynamic song jolted me into bobbing my head instantly as if in affirmation of Vitas's unconventional style of music. My friend saw this and said I was crazy.
Yeah, crazy in love with Vitas.
Throughout this live performance video, Vitas fashioned a robotic-looking costume, which he apparently designed himself along with many other eccentric stage outfits. He then proceeded in letting his tongue trills surprise and hypnotize an audience not accustomed to hearing such odd noises. His voice immediately casted me under his spell, a feat that had not been done since I first heard and clung to Adam Lambert, my other favourite tenor singer and famously known as the runner-up in season eight of American Idol.
I mean, Vitas's singularity and uncommonness attracted me to him like a moth to a chandelier. Unfortunately, not many people in the West knew this glamorous artist and his emotionally explosive Russian music. Such near-divine artistry either flew over many heads in the West or never once chirped in their ears before because Vitas's music mainly dispersed in the East and was therefore off-the-radar.
After the rain outside Alissa's dorm finally stopped pouring and both she and I had our fill of memes for the day, I stashed my notebook and stationary objects into my crocodile-green messenger bag and headed out. I was officially on a mission to gather a better idea of who this breathtaking Eastern bloc superstar was.
(What else will I discover about Vitas? And what has he done to earn his place in the Musical Marigold Hall of Fame? Find out on Tuesday, February 5th! For now, this is to be continued...)