02.26.09 kulturnatib

Contemporganic

Too many things these days are not much better than just buzz words. Buzz words to begin with become so because they, at the very least, sound good. They create a buzz. Yet, in the end, they become many things for many people and not all of them meaning the same thing.

Organic is one of these words.

So, when the other weekend Joey Ayala came along as chairperson of the committee on music of the National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and organizing a four-venue national musical tour for the arts month called, 'Organik Musik,' I imagined not a few eyebrows going vertical.

Knowing Joey somewhat, I had an inkling what this was about.

Looking at the lineup of bands, performers and participants of the events in Baguio, Cebu, Davao and Manila confirmed my hunch that Joey was continuing on a much larger scale and wider scope his personal musical journey forwards and outwards by digging into his personal and cultural roots.

This in essence is what contemporary art is about; The bridging of the past and future in whatever media that presents a dynamic of form and content which speaks with immediacy in the present tense.

Thus did SM City Cebu Activity Center experience a rare hybrid of musical and literary genres seldom seen there, where, as can be imagined with one of the bulwarks of Philippine Malldom, kitsch rules and karaoke culture is king.

Here, as with the other cities in the tour, a band is the pivot of the program, presenting the idea of music as a distillation and inspiration of other artistic forms, notably literature both oral and written, and dance.

Errol 'Budoy' Marabiles and Junior Kilat were the inescapable choice for this role for the Visayan leg of this tour.

Not only has Budoy become immensely popular, he remains so. He has also achieved this with his artistic integrity intact and his uncompromising artistic vision shared, understood and appreciated by a generation for whom history would otherwise be just a bunch of dusty, tattered and, to add injury to insult, mistake filled textbooks.

Providing further depth to the event where the poetry of Bathalad, the dances of the UP Cebu Upstage, the sidays of the Warays and the balitaw of a family from Carcar – a couple, the two poetic protagonists and their son who played the guitar.

Understandably, the poetry numbers suffered from the struggle it continues to wage with an audience that is weaned on spectacle, on noise, on the 'star syndrome.' They had to compete with the ambient sounds that makes a mall one gigantic noise generating machine.

Also, they had to fight for attention from people who are there precisely to escape from having to pay close attention yet remain 'entertained' just the same for their non-effort.

Yet, Bathalad rose to the occasion. The 'Habal-habal' duet by Adonis Durado and Karla Quimsing were an exemplary hit. Rightly so, as habal-habal, in all its usage but especially so as a mode of transportation, is rife with layers and layers of meaning, context, drama, pathos and sheer Bisayan joie de vivre.

The sidays were the weak link here. Not for the lack of talent from their performers, but the simple minority of those present who understood waray.

Yet, Budoy is Waray, from Law-ang, Northern Samar. Here, he showed the extent to which he imbues 'Visayaness,' in that when he speaks or sings in Waray it doesn't matter that you don't understand exactly but you somehow feel you know what he means.

In the same manner, one does not know exactly what organic in the context of this series of connected cultural events mean. Yet, one feels that it is about you and me as a people in a nation, the same yet different in a world where homogeneity is supposed to be a virtue called globalization.

Another buzz word.