What else would Maria Aragon, who exploded into cyberspace as a viral music sensation, call her 2011? “My year was the bomb,” says the bubbly Winnipeg pre-teen. “Whenever I’m amazed I call it the bomb. It was just a blessed year.” In less than 12 months she has gone from typical, but anony­mous, Grade 5 student at Isaac Brock School to globe-trotting Filipina-Canadian songstress who sang the national anthem for the British Royal couple Kate and William in Ottawa on Cana­da Day, starred in the latest Gap commercial shot in Los Angeles in October, recorded her first al­bum in The Philippines in the summer and performed in Israel for Google in September.

And, oh yeah... her version of Lady Gaga’s anthem Born this Way has attracted 45 million views, the eighth most watched YouTube video in the world this year.
“Looking at the list of all the things I wanted to do in my life, I’ve already done them all,” Ma­ria says during an interview this week. “I told my fans on Twitter the other day I’ve been on 63 flights this year.”

Maria’s astounding emergence as one of the most consumed Canadian performers in 2011 has earned Aragon Winnipeg Enter­tainer of the Year as selected by the Free Press entertainment de­partment. Hers is a striking story about the power of new media to make instant stars.
“That’s awesome,” says Maria, who has been recovering from a cold that has curtailed her singing recently. “I never thought I would get things like this. It’s only my first year.”

Last February the Aragons watched Lady Gaga debut her latest single Born This Way. Ma­ria, who turned 11 in July, loved the empowerment single, learned it in a couple of days and then had her 20-year-old sister Ro­juane videotape her performance at her keyboard and posted it on YouTube, just as she had done about 70 times before launching her on-line hobby with her version of Taylor Swift’s Teardrops on My Guitar three years earlier. None of those videos had attracted more than 45,000 views.

The following day Gaga tweet­ed to her eight million followers, “Can’t stop crying watching this. This is why I make music. She is the future.” Suddenly Maria’s cover was a must -see.
“I remember us joking about getting 10,000 views in a week but never expected a million views in nine days,” Rojuane says.
Gaga was so gaga over Ma­ria that she invited her to join on stage at a sold-out Toronto concert in March where they per­formed a duet of Born This Way.
“The neatest thing of all (this year) I have to say is getting to perform with Lady Gaga,” says Maria, who shows off her ivory fe­dora autographed by among oth­ers Lady Gaga, Stephen Harper, Cindy Klassen and Lea Salonga. “It’s probably the highlight of my year. That’s how it all started for me and the op­portunities start­ed coming to me.”

Those of­fers have come from all over the world, from ap­pearing on TV’s The Ellen DeGe­neres Show to singing the Phil­ippine national anthem at Man­ny Pacquiao’s WBO welterweight title defence at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November. Pacquiao is a national icon and when they met last sum­mer he asked her to sing at his next fight.

“In the Philippines it’s every singer’s dream to sing at one of his fights,” says the Canadian-born Maria, whose family came to this country 14 years ago. “That fight was a real big deal for me.”
All her travelling this year meant she missed a lot of classroom time, so this fall she began home schooling. She is also be­ginning to write her own songs and takes piano lessons. She has few complaints on her coming-out in 2011.

“Everything has been really fun,” she says. “We don’t do any­thing that’s too tiring. The worst part of doing this stuff is going on a plane. All the other stuff is so amazing.”
-Winnipeg Free Press

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