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HE was
from Bohol. He came to Manila and became a jeepney
driver. For some reason—economics, perhaps, or he was
missing his family—he went back, this time to Cebu, and
became a bus driver. People who knew him back then said
he was already singing those tunes that we now call
“novelty” songs. Again, some of those who knew him then
said he was humming those outrageously original,
sublimely and funnily derivative lyrics as a bus driver.
Still, others say he was a favorite entertainer during
fiestas and weddings in Bohol and Cebu. There are so
many stories about his human personal geography that
even Wikipedia carries items about him.
Not bad,
not bad at all for someone who constructed for us what
historians and folklorists and nationalists have been
drafting and redrafting—the “discovery” of the
Philippines by Magellan. Deal with this, guys: When
Magellan landed in Cebu City/Rajah Humabon met him, they
were very happy/All people were baptized and built the
church of Christ/And that’s the beginning of our
Catholic life.”
And what
about this description of the battle of Mactan: “Then
the battle began at dawn/Bolos and spears versus guns
and cannons/When Magellan was hit on his neck/He
stumbled down and cried and cried.” And on the dying
conquistador, our folksinger gives him this lines: “Oh,
mother, mother, I am sick/Call the doctor very
quick/Doctor, doctor, shall I die?/Tell my mama do not
cry/Tell my mama do not cry/Tell my mama do not cry.”
The
melody is fun, the rhythm is relentless as each beat
falls on the intended syllable in perfect match. When
Yoyoy writes it, it’s as if he is recalling the nursery
rhymes that he was asked to memorize by teachers who
learned about the English language in the right way.
Yoyoy made us laugh the way Chiquito or even Pugo
earlier and Dolphy at present could not make us laugh.
The comedians mentioned—Chiquito and Dolphy, in
particular—always poked fun at the human conditions: a
bumbling lover with a face only a mother could love, or
a poor man who could dance wickedly and outsmart his
richer rivals.
The
street-smart individual with a heart of pure gold,
sentimental and romantic, was the core of our male
comedians. Yoyoy did not belong to this mold. When he
burst onto the scene, Dolphy and Chiquito were lording
it over with their own antics and celebrity. No one
could make sense of what Yoyoy was doing. Even if he
also appeared on television and the big screen, it was
his songs that touched everyone’s heart or, at least,
tickled everyone’s heart.
“Magellan” would go on to be his biggest hit. He would
follow it with works that challenge further our own
sense of rhythm and our idea of how words could be
employed to entertain. Think “Butsekik,” that song that
just goes on and on until the mind gives up and the
tongue gets a life of its own. Or his “Hayop na Combo,”
which begins with a band composed of human players with
their own disabilities and later on replaced by animals:
dogs, cats, even lizards.
Yoyoy’s
songs are not hemmed in by grammar or the lack of
knowledge of it. His songs, in fact, celebrate the
breakdown of language, and our revelry about a language,
which is English, imposed upon us by way of nursery
rhymes. There is something endearing in the innocence of
Yoyoy using a language that is not his own. It is a
usage that is never pretentious. It is a usage that is a
mighty fodder for political scientists to gobble and
masticate for us.
And yet,
Yoyoy would perhaps be the first person to laugh at how
he has developed an audience for his songs and the words
in them that conceal or reveal what we are as people
caught in two or three worlds, lost in two or three
languages. But there goes a clown, a funny Everyman, and
we remain in our world that is a shade darker, a society
that is a bit poorer without him.
Healing
theater
IN
another dimension, Sunday brought us back to the Sinag-Arts
Studio for a special presentation of a show by Grace
Nono. The event invited the friends and artists who have
shared the life of Shoko Matsumoto’s art domain. This
time, it was a prelude to the concert, dubbed Tinig,
to be staged on June 2 at the Sinag-Arts Studio in
Mandaluyong.
She
entered the studio from the rear, with the votive
candles, white and lustrous, guiding her into the main
stage where waited musicians of various forms, ethnicity
and color. Even before we saw her, we could hear not a
song but, for lack of a better term, a low wail circling
and convoluting. This would be the color of her voice as
prayers from mystics and shamans whose images flowed
from the draped sheet were heard.
That
night was also the culmination of the international
workshop conducted by Shoko Matsumoto. Scholars and
artists from
Asia were providing the lights and soundscape for the event,
which was already doubling as a plea for harmony and
peace.
In
between the chants and songs of Nono, dancers would come
in not to illustrate her words but to join in a
community of prayer. Given the ethnolinguistic
background of the singer, Mindanao cultural communities
are represented. A Kalinga musician also performed. With
due respect to the spellbinding dancer from
Mindanao, I give Nono credit for privileging the presence of the two
Subli dancers from Batangas. The female dancer of Subli,
in fact, reminds us that our dances—while labeled
Spanish in influence and lowland Christian, and danced
before the Cross, as in the dance from Batangas—has as
much the so-called exotic magic as those from
communities we feel we can never get to know.
The
promise of the show to be about praying and healing is
genuine. It is my prayer that sponsors will see the show
and, in the marriage of commerce and cause, stage it in
other places if only for the positive energy it brings
to the audience. |
