Gud Ol’ Bisayan Songs
By: Vincent Eviota
PASAY CITY – “THERE’S NOTHING LIKE WAKING UP WITH A BIG COCK,” proclaims the dictum on a Crispa sando of a Leveriza stud as he ambles his lean, mean fighting machine into the arena. The cock eyes you sideways as if to say “Don’t miss with Texas.” It is a Sabbath, where cockers would go to the Pasay City Cock Pit Gallery and heed the invocations and incantations of the high priest: the kristo.
For aficionados of a lesser aural assault but similarly subliminal sensation, nothing is better than observing a religious ritual of waking up on a Sunday and choosing from a vast catalogue of compact discs, tapes and long-playing vinyl to create the perfect sound track for the most beautiful day of the week. And the beauty of such musical gamut lies in the ear of the beholder.
Somebody’s favorite skronk outjazz John Zorn is another’s krautrock experiment Stereolab to the other’s ethereal landscape of Egberto Gismonti to anybody’s Mark and the Mysterians. I know one who listens to nothing but the Missipi Delta blues on Sundays. I guess that’s his way of going to church. But I don’t think I can get past side of Charley Patton or T-Model Ford without going back to bed and burying my head inside the pillows. I need music that provides a sonic equivalent of a direct hit to the senses- caffeine, nicotine, vodka tonic, White Flower.
Sunday gospel music to me is guttural growls, cheep calls, marimbas, maracas, chicken-scrath guitar and idiosyncratic lyrics. In short, good mood music. Music that could get you up clasping hands like in an Alabama church house to “This is the day/This is the day/that the Lord has made/That the Lord has made” or clapping to “Kung ikaw ay masaya/Humalakhak/Kung ikaw ay masaya/Humalakhak/Kung ikaw ay masaya/Pumalakpak” in a remote barrio in Negros and singing to high heavens. That if you can’t get up to this music, you must be in a real deep funk and thereby have given up any form of religion.
Like Perez Prado and his Orchestra’s Dance Latino (RCA). Listen to “Patricia” and find your heartthrob, head hob to the beat. Then lose your limbs, shake those joints and break out into a dance across the living room Mambo.Rhumba. Cha-Cha. Or Polka if you’re white. Or Esquivell Slap on the disc See it in Sound (7N) and watch the sounds of the street sweep into your bungalow. Horses’ hooves on cobblestones, chirping birds, laughing children, honking cars, honky tonk women calling. Make coffee, play his stereophonic materpiece Latin-Esque (RCA) and watch the atoms in your mug ping-pong as “Solamente Una Vez” bounces in from speaker to speaker. Blissfully observe your morning prayers-smell the flowers, catch the worms-to this incredibly strange but wonderful music.
But these are just the first two readings. The gospel as it were, comes from the LIPS of the preacher, shaman, or mumbaki: our very own pop music deconstructionist/avant-garde/music savant Yoyoy Villame. And the gospel of the day is taken from the cassette tapes. The best of Yoyoy Volume 1 and 2 (Vicor Records, out of print, reissued into two cerebrally entitled compilations Butsekik and Magellan by the same recording label, Vicor 2001). For the Bisayan diaspora scattered like seeds across the various continents from the tundras of Lutheran Minnesota to the hallowed catholic grounds of Rome to the Islam bulwarks of Iran, we heed the calls of our very own kristo as calling the flock “Mag-exercise tayo tuwing umaga.”And our response would be “Tuwing umaga/Tuwing umaga.” “Hayop na Combo” invites the fellow domestic inhabitants to join the congregation. The purr of the pussies, the race of the cucarachas, gnawing and gnashing of the termites, the rambunctiousness of the rats, all join in seraphim unison. It forms one hell of a band. “Manok na nagigitara/Daga na nagbabaho/Palaka na sintonado/Ipis nagpaplaying trapeze/Ayos din ang aming disco/Sa tulong ng hayop na combo”. Take a bow, ladies and gentlemen and let Banana and Louie punctuate with their “Bow! Wow! Wows!”
I HAVE KEPT the Sabbath holy this way since growing up with my brothers and sisters in the northeastern tip of Mindanao that is Surigao. Yes, that part of the country where the largest crocodile was found only to be abducted by Mitra, where the Third Reich and other Caucasian races have conquered the wave of General Luna, where an island is aptly named Dinagat, where the Barbers have built their own political kingdom of a White Castle. The blaring trumpet of Perez Prado’s “Cieligi Rosa” would herald as our parents call to get out of bed and into breakfast. If that is not successful, then incendiary Yoyoy Villame song “Granada” is sure to light a fire underneath our lazy asses. The family that eats together then would gather together in the living room in front of the of the Technics turntable and the Akai amplifier from the United Arab Emmirates to pay witness to the heliocentric sounds of Reverend Yoyoy’s Sunday homilies. Discourses and dissertations on “Magellan”, “Philippine Geography” and Diklamasyon” would follow to right on down to “In every afternoon, 3 o’ clock/ I read your letter a-hay/ Sa may bintana a-hay/ Saba yang luha” of “Nasaan ka Darling?”.
And every evening would be spent, until way past midnight, by pouring on pure, unadulterated Gigaquit rhum while ruminating on Bisayan dirges like “Carmela.” We would sing along: “Carmela/Dungga kining nagsamti/Kay dad-un ko ikaw sa kinahamayon” and feel the rum wash on down and tear through the inner core of our being. The karaoke or videoke was not yet invented, so our voices were more primal and more visceral than could ever be delivered in the beerhouses of today. “Daw Dahon Laya,” “Balud,” “Gimingaw ako.” These are great, timeless songs, which sound like the aorta of every Bisayan’s heart breaking.
THE NAMES, FACES AND VOICES are ubiquitous in the capital of the Philip-Pines. Dodong, Palang, Poloy, Doydoy, Takya which reflect an amalgation of the Bisayan’s pecularities: an innate ear for music, a term of endearment, or a self-deprecating humor. They come from some of the baddest parts in the country. Like typhoon-torn Samar, magical realist cauldron Aklan, butt-punishing highways (!) of Agusan, and the highlands in Bukidnon. They all come to Manila, lured by the bright harbor lights in Roxas Boulevard and the glamour and glitter of ABS-CBN. “Uy ang laki talaga ng Mah-nela!” “Pasyal tayo sa Luneta. Baka Makita natin si aaayyyy-dol!” If you’ve ever been in the economy section of the Superferry 12 from Dabaw, you would literally see the lights blinking in those eyes.
You see them now in the pier working as stevedores, kargador or cab callers. Selling ready-to-wear clothing in Divisoria, Baclaran. Slaving in the sweat shops and factories of Laguna and Kalookan. Plying the routes of Pasong Tamo-Buendia and vice-versa. They are easy to pick out because of their heavy, thick accents: “Dugay na sa kezun Sey-ti, ga-hi pa gihapon an dila.”And the way that they would subvert this by trying to speak in a different tongue.
So that if you go the beerhouses in Quiapo, the waitress would come up to you and ask, “Berrr, ser?” You would nod and say “Oo, miss, isang beer.” And they would serve you a brrr-cold Pilsen. But nobody minds the speech impediments here because every one in this place knows he or she is surrounded by provincemates and regionmates coming off work and also ordering San Miguel Berrrs. That Manila is in Luzon is a place which only exists in the imagination when there are thousands of Bisayan teeming all over. Here in the heart of Quiapo or Escolta are boisterous, vicarious celebrations of the Kadayawan, Sinulog, Maskara, or Marajaw Karajaw. Every night is also a birthday of a father, a christening of a nephew, a circumcision of a son, a graduation of a daughter. Or the weekend baylehan in the munisipyo.
As the novelty ballader Max Surban would exhort, “BAYLE!…tibuok kalibutan.” Where a dance is held in the multi-purpose town hall which serves as a basketball court, wedding ballroom, or an open-air theatre-all under the sway of a gigantic mirror ball, banderitas, and humongous speakers set to the Who-like eardrum-destroyer decibels.
But here, everyone would take his turn on the center stage, grasp the microphone and render a glass-shattering version of “Ocean Depp” or Air Supply’s immortal “Tu Lis Lonely People in the Werld.” Beware if they’re already past the bucketful of beers at their feet, for that’s when they really start to think that they are back in the sleazy holi-in-the-walls of Colon and Fuente Osmena in Cebu and belt out the Bisayan standards. Brace yourself for bottle-hurling lamentations of “Usahay” and “Matud Nila.” Or in pure chivalric gestures, offers serenades to their baleleng of waitresses via Yoyoy Villame’s own “Kaming mga Waiter”: “You are a waitress my dear/And I’m a waiter/If you have a secret/We can secret together. “As an encore, a down-on-the-knees-am-begging-you-please rendition of Max Surban’s “Mutya ka baleleng/Sa katahum.”The bisayan are a schizophrenic lot. Their humor seizes them through life’s horribles and terribles, their. Think Juan Pusong, The Bisayan Juan Tamad who constantly overcomes trials through strokes of foolishness.
St. Felimon, the simpleton who would just exchange his days catch at the Mercado for a gallon of tuba. These are not purely mythological characters but could be found in every kanto where there is an inuman (“Dandansoy, inum tuba laloy/Dili ako inum/Tuba pait, aslum”) and a chosen one serves the triple role of “gunner”: bartender, storyteller and guachinango (court jester). And all would be engaged in rounds of drinks and one-uppance (as Max Surban articulated in his song “Kontis sa Hambog”: Sa hinambogay/magdaog ta/Ako’y Waray Ilonggo ka ug Cebuano pud siya”). Pity the Inday who is both the source and subject of seemingly endless order of drinks and bottomless well of inspiration. Op kurs, a constant presence is the Cebuano Lumanog gitara or the round-bodied Bohol sinista. Believe you me, every Bisayan is born singer and Django Reinhardt rolled into one. Dili ka Bisaya kun dili ka kamao mukanta ug gitara. Kasabot? Mababaw lang kaligayahan ng Bisaya.Hayahay lang. Throw him lemons, he’ll make kalamansi dyus. Betterer, give him a Coke and he’ll turn it into a Rhum-kuks concoction. Life’s improvisers. Jazzers all. Ergo, Yoyoy Villame.
YOYOY VILLA-ME once found himself stuck in Binondo when his car broke down. But instead of cursing his fate and hurling invectives into the air, what he did was list down all the names of the various billboards found in Tsinoylandia: Ma Mon Lok, Go Teng Kok, Yuen Biao, Tsing Tsong Tsai, Gong Xiao Bin- these are just examples of Chinese names but really reside in different neon lights. Anyway, he listed them all down and in pure Bisayan guachinango form, played around.
Arranged them backwards, forward, inverse, reverse and came up with a word chopsuey of his own which would become the immortal, incomprehensible but thoroughly adorable “Butsekik.” Henyu. It’s even said that esteemed Music Prof. Felipe De Leon in a lecture somewhere in Europe, called Yoyoy one of the most original Filipino composers.
But for all the musical ingenuity of Yoyoy (“tsismis” which is his finest pop song revision of perhaps the finest pop song from the eighties Trio’s” “Da da da (I don’t love you, you don’t love me)” or “Bungalow” or “Piyesta ng mga Isda” or his lyrical craftiness. Sample his “Tion” “Ang tao’y naga addition/Kung minsay nag multiplication/Di na magkasya sa subdivision.” And there is his ballad that slays the soul of his particular Bisayan. Entitled “ Nasalisihan”, It tells of a man left by a woman flying to a different place for better prospects and perhaps, a better man. “ Lumuha/Ako’y lumuha/Pagkat wala na akong magagawa.” It’s this writer’s favorite particularly because this time, stripped of mischief and his patented humor, Yoyoy sings with earnest and heartfelt emotion. You think he’s really the one sending off a loved one at the airport only to turn around and see she’s with somebody else. For anybody who has been left behind by a grrrl, this sets off memories which are better left unleashed, (Spoken: ‘lang. ‘ga pa rin kita.), things better left undone, words better left un…
CALL IT SADO-MASOCHISM, self-flagellation or downright perverseness, but every Sunday night, you would end up with a recording that has continually made you cry and smile at the same time. It has also comforted and soothed you in your most vulnerable moments while alternately torturing you with thought of long lost loves and lusts. Max Surban’s Harana (Star Records 1997) is a back-to-the-roots recording of classic Bisayan ballads such as the aforementioned “Carmela,” “Daw Dahon Laya” and “Balud.”
If Brian Wilson made Pet Sounds (capitol) as music that would make somebody feel loved, then Harana is music to feel love. “Daw Dahon Laya/Gianod/Napadpad” traces a person long scarred and withered. That the habitual pounding of the elements of time and life has left one’s heart and soul on the verge of collapsing.
For dili-Bisayan, Max Surban is merely a novelty artist, lumped alongside similarly underrated comic trios Tito, Vic and Joey, Tatlong Itlog, D’Big 3 Sullivans. But for the Bisayan, Max Surban is a god. And in Harana, no other recording comes close to delivering more succinctly the voice of a thousand Bisayan hearts in Manila breaking. Shards littering the greasy floors of the beerhouses of Avenida and Recto, the shady sidestreets of Quezon Avenue, the maid quarters of every household in Dasmarinas Village, Makati. So that as the opening lines of “Gimingaw ako..” stream in, the notes take on a higher aural and emotional resonance.
And by this time you get to the third song, “Bu-lan/Pagkatahum mo/Ang maga sud-ong kanimo ay way kaguol,” all pretense of defense is shattered. The dam breaks and out pours a well of emotions-anger, disappointment, regret, and loss all to be encapsulated into tiny crystals of tears. That when the song ends, what’ left is nada. Finito. And there’s more request for one last song…”Apan/Wala/Na/Ang/Akong/Pinangga.” And there’s no recourse but to curse-pastilan! Curse faith and fate. And all the other keepers of destiny:” Busa/bulan/gi-sud-ong/ko ikaw.”
There lies the schizophrenic sensibilities of the Bisayan. That after you peel off the calloused skins of humor, mischief, nonsensical, the Redford White . . . lies a heart with the resiliency of glass.
SO YOU POUR whiskey, brandy,tequila, vodka, gin, rum and any other diablo’s brew you could conjure up into your glass partly because alcohol gets you as close to heaven as temporal living would allow. But tonight it’s more because you would like to sentence your senses to oblivion for as long as until the light of a new day breaks in.
It’s already 3 a.m. Last call for alcohol has long past. The lights have been turned off. The final refrains of “Busa…/Bulan…/Gi sud-ong ko…ikaw…” have faded. Inday the maid is slumberly enconsced in a magical dream in her native Siquijor. Compay the butler is muttering mantras in his sleep about a potential lay next door. The cucarachas are now roaming about for carcasses from the previous days. You are staring blankly into the now-silent compact disc player-but still with the ever-effervescent HELLO disco lights-a probable premonition of the daily exigencies of traffic in EDSA, semi-retarded showbiz denizens, cynical public officials. You shut it off. You get up off your seat and think of wiping the tears off your eyes. You don’t and leave them to turn into mutes in the morning. As you get to bed, you cushion yourself with one last happy thought:
You will always have Yoyoy on Sunday morning.
(When not dissecting Pinoy pop culture the music of the world over rounds of beer, Surigao-born Vincent Eviota teaches English at an exclusive women’s school in Quezon City. Vincent’s mother is from Gigaquit.)
For comments on this article, please email Vincent at contact-us@gigaquitonline.com.
