One horrific typo, one terrific artist

Two Saturdays ago there was a despedida party for Dr. Boogie Nights at Piper’s in Makati, where the hon-oree himself performed a music set. The fellow enjoys a double life. As Theodore S. Gonzalves, he had just completed a Fulbright grant that saw him conducting lectures and presentations at the Ateneo de Manila University. Now he’s back at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Honolulu, where as an assistant professor in the Department of American Studies, he teaches comparative culture, a field where he holds a "true" doctorate.

Much earlier, Dr. Gonzalves had been an academic, literary and musical mainstay in California, where he taught courses in history, politics, and ethnic and cultural studies at UC Irvine. He also performed on the keyboards as part of a jazz trio, served as musical director for the performing arts troupe tongue-in-cheekly called Tongue in a Mood (which performed at the CCP over a year ago), and organized music concerts at San Francisco’s Bindlestiff Theater.

We met him through the Internet, when he agreed to submit an essay, rather lengthy and definitive, for Fil-Am: The Filipino American Experience, a coffee-table book I edited way back in 1999. That essay was on the murals done by Fil-American artists around the Bay Area, a few of which a video team I was part of eventually documented. Come to think of it, another essay Theo submitted for Fil-Am was on the historical overlap between Filipino Americans and jazz music.

Can’t recall now if Theo and I met at all during the round of book launchings we had for that anthology in several US cities. Maybe we did, at the San Francisco leg. On a brief stopover in Honolulu in 2002, I tried to look him up at the Manoa campus, in vain. So it wasn’t until he delivered an initial lecture at AdMU’s Escaler Hall some weeks ago that I reconnected with Theo Gonzalves a.k.a Dr. Boogie Nights.

At Piper’s he did his standard set, riffling on his keyboards as he recounted his musical genesis, as someone who played the piano or organ in church, and subverted the pieces by including strains from the music of his idol Prince. He also played and sang his own compositions, solo this time, sans the backup he had at Ateneo.

Front acts were provided by the hilarious stand-up comics Allan Manalo and Tim Tayag, individually, and the serious musical aesthete Aya Yuson on solo jazz guitar. Manalo had also spiced up Gonzalves’ gig at the Ateneo, where his Fil-Am act was received with such knee-slapping appreciation that he just might be asked to render a lecture himself. Maybe on the writing of stand-up comedy material, such as how his Lola back in the USA dressed him up for Halloween as a Kikkoman bottle, occasioning an invite to join the heroic Justice League. I understand that Al now performs on Thursdays at Mag:net Katips across the Loyola Heights campus.

Tayag was no less infectious at Piper’s, albeit the crowd, made up mostly of women for some reason (maybe Dr. Boogie Nights’ shaved pate), seemed somehow only modestly receptive. Another feature that preceded the main act was a slide show as evidence of Theo’s travels in Luzon during his six-month stay – from images of Sagada to Pampanga’s Lenten penitents, gritty city scenes to rural fiestas.

One image he didn’t show that night, but e-mailed me later upon jazzman/author Richie Quirino’s abiso, was one he took of Nick Joaquin’s gravesite at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Quite a shocker, as what should have been a venerable tombstone misspells our beloved National Artist’s exalted surname – with a "U" in the first syllable instead of an "O"! Aargh. Can’t believe that neither CCP nor NCCA ever sent a rep to check on this.

We were there during Nick’s interment in May last year, but the cement cross with the dear departed name’s hadn’t been put up yet. Nick lies next to his old buddy Franz Arcellana, who if I’m not mistaken lies right after Carlos Quirino, Richie’s Dad. Thus the discovery, when Richie took Theo for a graveyard visit.

Well, whoever carved out that name must either have declared Cebuano independence ahead of everyone else, at least orthographically, or taken his cue from the anagram Quijanu de Manila, assuming he was a fan of Keanu Reeves.

Calling on the CCP and NCCA: Rectify this immediately, please. Until you do, a gross typo remains terribly ironic in our field of heroes, especially since Nick started as a proofreader in what would prove to be a sterling literary career.

* * *

Last November in Vancouver (yes, how euphonic), we happened to wade into a magical art exhibit’s opening at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research. The artist was Bert Monterona of Davao City, then of artist-in-residence status. His tapestry-like paintings so impressed us that we wrote about them in this space. Now here’s a follow-up on the artist, who’s been back since early this year.

Monterona’s homecoming exhibit titled Hulagway sa Panaw – Mindanao Reality Check: Contrasts in Dreams is ongoing at the Activity Center Area, at the ground floor of the NCCC Mall, Matina, Davao City. It had a formal opening reception on July 8. Co-presenters are the Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Incorporated (MISFI) with the City Mayor’s Office, the People Collaborating for Environmental and Economic Management in Davao (PCEEM DAVAO), and NCCC Mall.

Bert Monterona has long been considered a compleat artist, because he is also socially committed as an educator and cultural activist. As an artist-educator he has organized art workshops in schools and communities – for skills development, peace-building, and art-as-therapy. Active in social development advocacy work for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Mindanao, Monterona offers his art as a tool for elevating social realities to aesthetic heights.

He has vigorously promoted Mindanaoan arts and culture through exhibitions, lectures and workshops in various countries, mounting major solo shows in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, USA and Canada. He has received grants and distinctions from the Australia Council for the Arts, Asian Artists Awards of Vermont Studio Center, USA, and the Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards.

Here at home, he has been feted as GSIS Museum Artist of the Month and a winner of an Art Association of the Philippines best entry award. He has also served as the Mindanao coordinator of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Committee on Visual Arts from 1996 to 2001.

Gingging Avellanosa-Valle of Davao City has written a laudatory essay on Monterona, titled "Beyond Colors and Strokes Are Messages Of Dreams and Hopes," where she recalls the days in the mid-’80s when he was still a photojournalist engaged in fact-finding missions on human rights violations. Bert would go with NGO workers to the hinterlands of Davao del Norte, there to take potshots (with his camera) at APCs. But it wasn’t until the ’90s, as Avellanosa-Valle recounts, that she became impressed with his distinctive murals.

She writes: "Bert Monterona’s art cannot but arrest attention and focus. He paints the lumad with familiarity, as if he knows each line and contour of the lives of indigenous peoples. The features of his characters seem to be conversing with the viewer, as though he was talking to them when he did the works."

No wonder, she could only say to herself, when she found out that Bert’s mother and lola were of the Bukidnon tribe, and that this lineage served as the inspiration for his art.

Bert himself intimates:

"I was inspired by my childhood experiences, when we would hunt wild animals for game, chase birds in the forests, find wild berries and play with monkeys up in the trees – beautiful memories that linger even when the forest in my childhood began to disappear, like the nurturing love of my grandmother who has kept me going even when she is long gone. These all fueled my inspiration.

"Lumad art is my life and my experience; it is my culture and my struggles. It is an instrument that would bring respect for the Indigenous Peoples, so that they can be given proper attention just like other peoples in Mindanao."

Kudos to Bert for his month-long exhibit. Perhaps we should try to catch it before we find ourselves having to queue up for visas come the artistic creation of the Republic of Mindanao.

Let’s hope that friends like Bert, the poet-artist-publisher Tita Lacambra Ayala, the former Malacañang adviser and quiet ideologue Paul Dominguez, and the poet-educator Ricky de Ungria, UP-Mindanao chancellor, will vouch for this Manileño should he dare revisit vigilante turf. One can’t be "salvaged" in the streets of Davao City just for smoking unfiltered cigarettes, can he?