5.24.07 kulturnatib

From Yoyoy to Budoy

Like most people now, the first order of my day is to check my email box. More than from the newspapers – I should be ashamed to admit this, as I do write for this newspaper -- I get most of my news from or through my email box.

So, the other day, I get mail from one of the numerous electronic groups (egroups) that I have signed up with entitling me to get whatever mail these groups send out regularly. To be sure, many of these get thrown away soon after only their headings are read.

The other day I get email from an artists egroup. It was news from yet another artists subgroup; the filmmakers, whose mail routinely ends up in the trash or recycle bin. Not that I'm not interested in filmmaking but often, their news is too particular or personal – as with most egroups -- and hardly ever intersects with my interest in the kind of filmmaking news that I will read.

Not this time though. The heading just grabbed my attention, even if it was only peripherally related to filmmaking. It said, Yoyoy Villame succumbs to heart attack. Along with the brief news article was a picture of Yoyoy Villame with a palor, sagging jowls and a wide neck common among men and some women who, as they age, get to be more and more like the young Michelin man.

I have never met Roman 'Yoyoy' Villame in person. I would have wanted to. There are many things about him and his music I wanted to know that only a personal encounter or close observation could provide.

Yet, by the time my writing had veered towards cultural reporting or reflecting Yoyoy was off the charts and he himself had moved away from the haunts where he first made his mark; the bus terminals in Bohol through which his buses plied and when they stopped would echo with his songs entertaining fellow drivers, assorted passengers, terminal denizens and, soon, the whole country.

He had moved to Las Piñas City where he got into local politics. He became a city councilor. He served in that capacity for 10 years then ran for vice-mayor in 1995, but lost.

I am not familiar with his discography but it would be a reasonable guess that some of the 40 albums he made in his career he would wax after this move. I would only recently know that he did, in fact, star in some movies – reason enough why his death would be news for a filmmakers egroup to carry and post – some of which were said to be critically acclaimed. Perhaps the movies and not so much his roles.

His first song and album carrier, “Magellan,” was for me, his best. It wasn't so much a novelty song as a parody of historicism at the precise time when Marcos was to launch his grand vision of reshaping or revising Philippine history with himself playing the grandest role of all as the then present day Malakas of the bamboo birth myth of the Filipino leading the Philippines to her historically fated greatness as a country rebaptized as Maharlika.

Of course, at this time, I didn't realize it as such. I would mostly remember it as a song that two daughters of an American missionary would sing endlessly to the chagrin of their parents. This they admitted as being the first Filipino song they really liked enough to want to introduce it to their friends back in the States when they would go home on furlough.

They had no problems with the lyrics. They were in English. But what they really liked and liked to learn that got them into stitches every time was the inimitable way Yoyoy sang it. For this they asked our help.

Unknown to them and to us and decades before anybody has ever heard of call centers, we were already training for speaking English the way our mutha would be and is proud of. We were, to their frustration and, somehow, our triumph, no help.

Fast forward. Errol 'Budoy' Marabiles was beginning to make his mark in the local music scene. The press was beginning to notice him. I would be among those who would interview him. In these interviews and in informal conversations, even before his star was beginning to rise, Yoyoy was a name he always mentioned.

Yoyoy was Budoy's idol. Budoy realized that Yoyoy's enduring appeal was his mass appeal. Yoyoy was a man of the masses. For the music executives and critics Yoyoy's songs were novelty songs. Meaning, quite disparagingly, his songs were baduy.

Budoy knew that his songs should be more than that. His songs had to be more than baduy. They had to be Budoy. And, that's what they are.

Budoy still has a long way from 74 years old, 40 albums and a few movies. Yet, he is already there. Like Yoyoy, his songs might fade, his star might fall, but his music will remain. Like Yoyoy's, it has always been there.