The old and the new from Joe Mari

"The songs we sang had melody," says Jose Mari Chan in the lyrics of his composition A Day in the Life of a Song, one of the cuts in the album A Heart’s Journey. It is one of his new compositions but it is made up of the titles of 26 tunes popularized by the Beatles during the ’60s. Like many who grew up during that period, I believe his music career derives a lot of influence and inspiration from that Fabulous Four. To this day, no other group or solo act exemplifies the timeless quality of pop music better than the Beatles.

This was true in 1965 and still holds true as of this moment. The Beatles was the biggest selling pop act of the past two years. But despite the group’s tight grip on the hearts and minds of music lovers, not every song or kind of music that comes along can be as melodic, as trendy and as all-encompassing in appeal as those Beatles songs. And I believe it was the search for tunes that truly sing at a time when popular music can be unsettlingly dissonant that brought about the mix of old and new materials found in Jose Mari’s latest release.

The road may wind and your heart may roam/but true love will find you again and lead your heart on, gently back home, he sings in the title track, which is another one of his new works. It is a song of the moment, a summation of all that has gone before and I like to think that its theme allows him to re-explore bits and pieces from the past.

I am glad he chose to include Here and Now. One of his early hits, it is an exultant declaration of the discovery of true love and surely one of his best. Those in search of wedding songs should give a listen to this new version. There is Night Time, also previously recorded, a light ballad whose easy charm should still make it a strong favorite among today’s listeners. Others are If We Only Had More Time Together and Phone Call, all written long ago but still fitting nicely into this new collection.

Although undeniably Jose Mari Chan’s, strains of R&B can now be detected in some of the new compositions in the album. This is particularly true of his daughter Liza’s rendition of I Have Found My World in You and the contributions from other songwriters like Jungeee Marcelo, Please Don’t Say Maybe and Lilibeth Tan, The Way I Feel for You. But if you still prefer the Jose Mari Chan of Can We Just Stop and Talk a While and Constant Change, he offers up the first single Easier Said Than Done, plus There’s No Getting Over You and The Best of Friends.

Not to forget, Heart’s Journey also includes Empty Space, the Prayer of the Heart of Jesus written by Jesuit priests Manoling Francisco and Johnny Go. Also previously released in another album, it is a moving and fitting conclusion to this journey of the heart.

Goodbye to Diomedes

Philippine music lost another great talent last week. Diomedes Maturan, singing star of films, records and television passed away at 61. The cause of death was cardiac arrest. Maturan started out as a local version of the cool American balladeer Perry Como. His rendition of Rose Tattoo made him the national champion of the prestigious talent show on television Tawag ng Tanghalan in 1958 and earned him the chance to record and appear in the movies. Among his most popular films were Rose Tattoo ng Buhay Ko, Private Maturan and Ginintuang Tinig.

To Maturan’s credit the Perry Como tag only served as a starting point for a long and successful career and he later used the same mellow singing style to interpret Filipino compositions like Dahil Sa ’yo and Buhat in his own way. Although he seldom appeared in the movies and did recordings later in his career, he continued to be active in the concert circuit and sounded even better than when he was starting out. When I last heard him sing live, he was doing the challenging Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. You’ll Never Walk Alone beautifully. At the time of his death, Maturan was getting ready for a tour of the US of A with other Filipino artists. This is another case wherein it can be rightly said that they do not make them this way anymore.