The Guerrilla Is Like a Poet and Other Songs
Review of the CD album Songs of Love and Struggle
Produced by Juliet de Lima
For distribution in the Philippines by IBON Foundation

Overall, Songs of Love and Struggle would be useful for educational and cultural exchange. It would show Filipino expatriates eager to discover their roots that protest songs can be rendered as classical music.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat

Who says classical music is only for the well heeled? Whoever says so may want to listen to Songs of Love and Struggle, a new compact disc album produced by Julie de Lima.

Produced for educational and cultural exchange, the 52-minute album is to be distributed in the Philippines by IBON Foundation.

Especially featured in Songs of Love and Struggle are six poems by NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison, set to music by activist musicians Danny Fabella and Levy Abad, Jr.

The poems are: “The Guerrilla is Like a Poet,” “The Giant Oak,” “What Makes a Hero,” “In Praise of Martyrs,” “Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Mangoes,” and “The Bladed Poem.”

Two of these, “The Giant Oak” and “Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Mangoes,” were read at poetry festivals in The Netherlands where Sison and wife De Lima live in forced exile; the rest were taken from Sison’s book Prison and Beyond.

The music for the poems is arranged for this album by Josefino Chino Toledo, who teaches at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Music in Quezon City. Soprano Rica Nepomuceno does the vocals for all the songs in the album, while internationally-known pianist Ariel Caces provides the accompaniment.

Protest songs as classical music

One is accustomed to hearing protest songs, particularly the contemporary ones, rendered as either folk music or marching hymns, and in a few cases as rock.

That the Sison songs in this album are rendered as classical music thus tempts one to set the CD player so that he hears these pieces first before the other ones. Hearing the performances of these songs by Nepomuceno and Caces, as arranged by Toledo, it may be said that the songs are done justice.

Nepomuceno’s vocal feat combined with Caces’ sophisticated piano moves capture the mood of the songs, and blend these with the unique classical flavor: they evoke the determination in “The Guerrilla Is Like a Poet” and “The Bladed Poem,” the sadness and resoluteness in “What Makes a Hero” and “In Praise of Martyrs,” and the contemplative mood of “The Giant Oak” and “Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Mangoes.”

Nepomuceno and Caces know just when to be loud and when to be mild. Their renditions of the Sison poems hit the listeners in the heart.

Of the Sison poems in this album, “What Makes a Hero” (“Whatever is the manner of death/There is a common denominator/A hero serves the people/To his very last breath…”) and “In Praise of Martyrs” (“We praise to high heavens/And for all time/The heroes who die/In the hands of the enemy…”) are likely to become anthems of sorts soon, what with many of the old activists having departed forever in the last four years and many progressive mass leaders being sent to the next life by violence.

In “Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Mangoes,” we are reminded that life in exile is no picnic: “Sometimes, the heart yearns/For mangoes where there are apples/For orchids where there are tulips/For warmth where there is cold/For mountainous islands/Where there is flatland…” In the end, however, we are taught the loftiness of doing one’s best to serve one’s native land even from faraway shores: “The well-purposed continues/To fight for his motherland/Against those who banished him/The unwelcome exploiters of his people/And he is certain that he is at home/In his own country/He’s at home in the world.”

But of course the Sison poems are not the only songs in Songs of Love and Struggle.

Patriotic songs

Also in this album are five other patriotic songs: “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa” (Love for the Native Land), based on a poem by the anti-colonial revolutionary Andres Bonifacio set to music by ex-political detainee Luis Salvador Jorque; Danny Fabella’s “Anak ng Bayan” (Child of the Nation), which has become a favorite among student activists – being about a youth who takes to the hills to fight for freedom and justice; “Mutya ng Pasig” (Pearl of Pasig), “Lupang Hinirang” (Beloved Land; not the Philippine national anthem), and of course “Bayan Ko” (My Country) by Jose Corazon de Jesus and Constancio de Guzman.

“Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa” passed from hand to hand during the revolutionary wars against the Spanish and American occupations, and set to music became sort of a second national anthem together with “Bayan Ko” (written and composed during the American colonial occupation) during the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship. “Mutya ng Pasig” and “Lupang Hinirang,” rarely heard these days except on the TV shows Paco Park Presents and Aawitan Kita (I Will Sing to You), are given a new lease on life, so to speak.

The significance of placing these songs side by side with the Sison poems is that it shows the continuity of the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation.

But before you get to the “heavy stuff” in Songs of Love and Struggle, you are treated to four entertaining classic folk ditties: “Pamaypay ng Maynila” (Manila’s Fan), “Usahay,” “Sarung Banggi,” and “Mag-asawa’y Di Biro” (To Wed Is No Light Matter). They are in the album to show that even amid struggle, the Filipino does know how to love – and laugh even.

Nepomuceno and Caces

Overall, Songs of Love and Struggle would indeed be useful for educational and cultural exchange purposes. It would, in particular, show Filipino expatriates eager to discover their roots that their fellow Filipinos in the Philippines do know how to make and sing great music and not just the infantile “tunes” that are imposed upon FM radio listeners these days.

Last but not least, it shows that protest songs can be rendered as classical music – meaning that the genre is definitely not just for the velvet crowd.

Sison, who took a degree in English Literature from the University of the Philippines (UP) with honors in 1959, has been noted as a writer since his university days. Considered the Philippines’ leading revolutionary, he has authored several books, including two poetry anthologies: Brothers and Other Poems and Prison and Beyond. He won the Southeast Asia WRITE Award in 1986 in Thailand.

Fabella and Abad are members of Musikangbayan, a protest folk group that has released three albums: Rosas ng Digma (Rose of the War), Anak ng Bayan (Child of the People), and Songs for Peace. Fabella is also with Sining Bulosan, the cultural arm of Migrante International.

Toledo, who teaches at the UP College of Music, is the founding director of the Metro Manila Community Orchestra and the UP Festival Orchestra, among other music groups.

Nepomuceno took a degree in Music at UP under the tutelage of Fides Cuyugan-Asencio, and pursued further vocal studies in Vienna. She presently studies at the Conservatorio G.B. Martini in Bologna, Italy.

Caces, besides being an accomplished classical pianist, is also a conductor. Bulatlat

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