Lolo Jose, Koyang Jess

Just when we thought we’ve learned everything there is to know about Jose Rizal, comes this book written by a direct descendant of the national hero, Asuncion Lopez Bantug’s profusely illustrated family chronicle, Lolo Jose (Vibal Publishing, Filipiniana Classico).

Told mostly from the first person point of view, the work by Rizal’s grand-niece offers a different take on the hero and first Filipino, other than what we’ve been taught since grade school when at each level there was a separate Rizal textbook. In this manner the reader can’t help but develop a closer affinity to the subject at hand, because the narrator is after all the apo of Lolo Jose.

This is actually the second edition of the book, the first having come out more than 20 years ago and for which the National Artist Nick Joaquin had written a foreword; that foreword is reprinted here and given a new refurbished setting courtesy of this handsome reissue. Since we haven’t seen the first edition, which is still a classic nonetheless, we can only surmise that the new edition ups the ante, so to speak, on existing Rizaliana, one that any history scholar or aspiring Rizalista would do well to take note of — a deluxe volume not exactly coffee table, with just the right amount of gloss.

It becomes almost second nature then to step into this firsthand version of our history, and stroll through the Intramuros of the 19th century, the corridors of the Ateneo where Rizal learned the basics of a Jesuit education, how it was like to be a man for others. Now we begin to understand more why he threw the other shoe or slipper into the river after losing its pair, though this may be the logic of native common sense: of what use would be half a pair of slippers or shoes unless one were half a man?

The reader gets enlightening views of Rizal’s varied lady loves and “crushes,” if you can call them that, for even the grand-niece is not sure which of these relationships developed into something more than the age of empire’s ligaw tingin.

There’s Segunda Katigbak of the prominent forehead, or was that a trick of the period daguerrotype? Leonor Rivera as the prototype Maria Clara, and how Rizal locked himself in a room for hours and was sullen for days after learning of her death at a tender age. The mola Caucasian woman Josephine Bracken that captured the imagination of the epic poet Cirilo Bautista, who has devoted reams of verses to an imaginary conversation between the two lovers.

Bantug narrates too how excited the Mercado family was upon Rizal’s first homecoming from Europe, a crowd of people following him to the house’s gate, almost like a scene from one of his novels. The author also takes pains to detail the role of Rizal’s sisters in his development as a child genius who made plays using puppets and carved and sculpted figurines in his makeshift workshop in the family home in Laguna.

What Lolo Jose the book conveys is not only a subjective chronicle about one who helped shape the national consciousness, it is also a handy scholarly reminiscing complete with timelines and family tree.

* * *

If the folk singer Jesus Manuel Santiago lived during Rizal’s times, he would have been a good candidate to be sentenced to death by musketry or at the very least confined to the dungeons of Fort Santiago for subversion. Jess Santiago’s third album in about two decades, and most probably his first CD as technology has caught up with his troubadour style, is “Puso at Isip,” independently produced and gathering 13 of his latest songs written in the past eight years.

It has been a while since we’ve heard from Koyang Jess, long after the groundbreaking Halina of the martial law years, which he would sing at writers, workshops making the audience’s hair stand on end. A pleasant nostalgic surprise it was when we heard it again as part of the soundtrack of Lino Brocka’s Bayan Ko, Kapit sa Patalim, when we had a chance to view the film again during last year’s Cinemanila. How much or how little have things changed?

Then, during the Cory period-Koyang released the less grim but no less determined Obando, a paean to his hometown in Bulacan combining folk ritual and sociopolitical realities. I still have cassettes of those first two albums lying around somewhere in the apartment, ready to be rediscovered under the analog mound of books and knickknacks and cat fur that has overwhelmed our daily digital lives.

Not that the old troubadour’s mien has changed that much, except for the technological divide. Now we can hear that pleading baritone as clear as our conscience, but unlike other folk artists Santiago has no time for preaching or scolding, because like any good writer the former Makata ng Taon knows the value of narration, a good story, because the medium is the message, the fly in the ointment of our attention.

The opening cut is vintage Koyang, how as Filipinos we’ve gone through a couple of people powers and even if there were an EDSA 3 and 4, little change is gonna come unless... he leaves this an open-ended tease full of ideological ramifications that would make uneasy all the powers that be, or at least those who have the presumption of authority. Santiago is an advocate of controlled anarchy because it is the only way to get at the root of the matter, by removing all the artificial props.

There’s a touching samba-like song for his daughter who just turned 18, certainly worth more than any swanky debut in a five-star hotel. How time passes, he sings, and the sentiment can easily be felt by other parents whose children are growing up too fast. In this mode the folk singer is able to age gracefully, and would that his listeners too could have occasion to trick the clock fantastic.

Only in da Pilipins is a kind of rambling humorous ditty that would be a hit in places like 70s Bistro and Conspiracy Cafe, the chorus encouraging drunken singalongs. The political kilabot is again ever present in Mga Panginoon where George W. Bush and Gloria in excelsis are put in their rightful places.

There’s a three-section spoken word-inspired song toward the end of the CD, where we hear he gets support from Radioactive Sago and the band’s frontman Lourd de Veyra. The Ayala siblings Joey and Cynthia also lend a hand to “Puso at Isip,” because the Koyang as elder statesman is always worthy of respect and affection from fellow musicians and artist colleagues who see in him one who has never sold out and uses his guitar better than a rebel would a long arm.