I’m a fan of original Pinoy music, always have been, and I grew with a Kuya who spent good money on cassette tapes of The Dawn and Neo Colours, Gary V. and Randy Santiago, Ogie Alcasid and Francis Magalona. I was enamoured with Smokey Mountain, loved “Ryan Ryan Musikahan,” and thought the world of Ryan Cayabyab. When Kuya left for Holland, he’d come home to buy every local CD he could get, rip them and leave most of them with me, and here I found that I owe it to Kuya really this breadth and scope of music that I have the capacity to appreciate, and the value given to talent: he’d buy these acoustic CDs and his appreciation would be contagious – hello, Nyoy Volante and Christian Bautista. And more recently Julianne. Of course on this recent visit we listened to Cathy Go’s CD until I memorized it, and we were still on listening to Peryodiko, as we did Gloc-9’s MKNM.

But also there is my Tatay, from da orig rakenrol of the 60s, with bands like Bawal Umihi Dito and Birth of the Cool (yeah), which Tita Mitch Valdes would affectionately call The Birds of the Cool. In one of the first stagings, if not the first one, of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 1971 the Tatay played Pontius Pilate if I’m not mistaken Simon of Cyrene, with Boy Camara as Jesus.

In high school I would happen upon local rakenrol, and I mean the Juan dela Cruz band on cassette – Kuya wasn’t going to have any of that, and the Tatay would shake his head.

Meanwhile, in the past two decades or so, I’ve found that when it comes to culture in general, music in particular, I will give everything a chance. It’s a lot of money put out on local music and culture, but knowing the landscape, to me at least, is the only way to even talk about anything that is painfully complex and dangerously diverse. Here, some wishful thinking for Pinoy music, in memory of the kind of non-scholarly but absolutely grounded love for Pinoy cinema that was in the practice of Alexis Tioseco. (more…)