Peace Spot?

CEBU, Philippines - (BLURB) Music with the environment for a theme, nowadays, finds it hard to conquer the consciousness of even those who claimed to be schooled. Nobody wants to be told that his acts are wrong. No one wants to hear that her behavior is putting our own planet under pressure, including her loved ones. And that Mother Nature’s patience will eventually wear out.

It was raining too (but not that hard) here in the city when tropical storm Ondoy wreaked havoc upon Manila and the metropolis’ neighboring provinces. I couldn’t help myself from cursing at the thought of bringing an umbrella all the time with me that Saturday because my son and I and together with his father would be at the Cebu Coliseum for the “Tingog sa Katawhan…Pasalamat concert” featuring Joey Ayala and the Bagong Lumad.

Also, I decided to join a media party thrown by San Miguel Corporation that night – in culmination of Press Freedom Week – to check on the ambiance of the P160-million JSU-FSU building and on how the Mariners Court at the ALU Compound in Pier 1 looks like; relishing fond memories with my colleagues in a feminist advocacy program in 2003 via dyLA and on music of local bands aired over 93.1 Smash FM in 2005.

I had to rush from my workstation to the coliseum to catch the gala show. In fact, I had to ask the staff stationed at the gate to consider my matinee show tickets as prior to that, I had print work to attend to.

Who isn’t a fan of Joey Ayala and the Bagong Lumad? I think only those who have never enjoyed what it’s like to be in an “en-masse celebration of music and peaceful empowerment” would have the heart to complain about the concert.

It was as if we were also struck by the force of some other kind of typhoon – wet with spits literally showering from the mouths of a group of students seated in the row right behind me making a big fuss, “unsa god tawon ni? In-ani diay ni?”

The students were in neon green shirts which bore the name of one of the sponsors listed in the press release material I took with me for a guide.

How sad that a concert of a Pinoy musician who runs workshops demonstrating the use of arts as a language of education would be attacked by a group of “scholars” from a sponsoring school. How very sad it was for me to overhear them so sore for coming to the concert, shelling P70 each, when they could have been more comfortable at home with their MP3s.

Indeed, a very, very bad place to be in at that time when you were craving to be part of the experience of “communal spirit, harmony and belongingness geared towards a personal ‘peace spot’, that one can return to time and again.”

The concert was meant to be an inter-active activity designed towards evoking a sense of rising personal and communal creative power to support education for all; a sense of socio-environmental interconnectedness and interdependence; an experience of indigenous cultural elements coupled with an awareness of peace-related issues affecting marginalized indigenous peoples’ communities and the entire population as a whole.

I could have chosen to get a spot nearest to the stage by presenting my Press card, but I think some wind brought me there on Upper Box to listen to the other side of the coin.

Joey’s songs are the healthiest to us in this predicament when nature is already taking a “resbak” at us for our shortcomings. But while the lyrics were flashed onscreen, without the benefit of any video on environmental advocacy which could have enticed the students to shut up, I heard not the singing to the lyrics but the expletives, followed by “manganta pa na sila’g nobody, nobody but you, malingaw pa ta!” And again the students howled.

Well, the sound from up there was very bad too – it felt more like a “ruwedahan”. And while the musicians demonstrated excellence at handling their craft, I began noticing that they weren’t talking to the people in Binisaya.

Joey was born in Bukidnon and even claimed to have stayed for quite some time in Davao. “Pero nganong sige man siya’g Tinagalog woi?”

The concert title, though, had established the connection for we are now starting to thank that we were spared by nature’s fury. Any moment from now, we could be in same situation because we have continued to challenge nature and underestimate its forces. And we have never actually taken Joey’s “Magkaugnay” seriously; that we are interconnected and interdependent and that our actions create ripples to the effect that these also touch other people’s lives either in the positive or the negative sense. “Being part of societal problems, we are called to also take part in the solution.”

I love “Karaniwang Tao”. That’s a Joey song that found a niche in my psyche even when I have never organized myself to act like a full-fledged environmentalist (a hardcore who never eats meat or never uses plastic bags). “Karaniwang tao/saan ka tatakbo?/Kapag nawasak iisang mundo?/Karaniwang tao, ano ang magagawa/upang bantayan ang kalikasan?”

 “Industrialization can never compensate what it had taken away from nature,” this is another way of putting those lines. And sung as if having connected that early with what massive devastation Ondoy’s onslaught had created in the capital.

If only Joey and Bagong Lumad music could connect even to the least who never have studied the arts, it could have made a big difference in realizing another goal of the concert: viewing reality from a heightened experience.

Sayang! Music with the environment for a theme, nowadays, finds it hard to conquer the consciousness of even those who claimed to be schooled.

Or is it because nobody wants to be told that his acts are wrong? No one wants to hear that her behavior is putting our own planet under pressure, including her loved ones. And that Mother Nature’s patience will eventually wear out!