It was a pulsating vintage performance that Joey Ayala, Bagong Lumad and their guest artists gave at the recent Organik Muzik 3 event at the main hall lobby of the CCP. The concert of music, song and dance was made more fascinating and pride-instilling by the inspired touch of having two revered indigenous artists Samaon Sulaiman from Maguindanao and Uwang Ahadas, a Yakan from Basilan perform original music with native instruments from the tribal heartland of Mindanao.
The vocals and instrumental music were complemented by movement and dance performed downstage by the Pangalay Artists Circle, Kaliwat Theatre Collective, Tag-ani Performing Arts Society, and Katrina Luna, with Myra Beltran doing the choreography for Tag-ani’s Dessa Ilagan. The enormous hall and lobby of the CCP had a festive look, adorned with colorful, intricate paper-cuttings of Philippine scenes and artifacts fashioned by the versatile artist Alex Umali.
Part of this year’s Philippine International Art Festival, Organik Muzik 3 is a joint undertaking of the NCCA, CCP, the Bagong Lumad Artists Foundation, and the Tag-Ani Performing Arts Society headed by cultural worker and theater organizer Marili Fernandez-Ilagan who designed and directed the production, assisted by co-director Bobby Cielo. Playwright Boni Ilagan wrote the script for the performance
Why Organik Muzik? Ayala’s down-to-earth logic says it all: we have organic food, which is healthy for human beings. Music can be no less. The connection is made: natural, from the earth, ancestral and traditional, indigenous, an organic life-source that must be nurtured and spread far afield.
The program started with a rousing Ania Na! (“It’s coming down”), a stirring lamentation on the destruction of nature, as well as a forceful warning to her despoilers, and there is no mistaking the timely allusion to today’s loggers and miners gouging out their mega profits from our nature reserves and the ancestral lands of our indigenous people. Old standards as well as recent compositions followed: Bathala, Mga Ninuno, Yuta, Ulan-ulan, Tanaman sa Gugma, Malaya, Kinabuhi Lami, Simpleng Yaman, Matud Nila, Tuba or Not Tuba, Saging, and Magkaugnay.
Ayala and Bagong Lumad (which means “new native” and by extension, the neo-ethnic sound that they created and popularized) have been an iconic fixture on the alternative music scene for almost 30 years now. They disbanded in 1986, reappearing from time to time with a new complement of performers and new compositions, brought together by the head “mandiriwa” (spirit mover) in the person of Joey Ayala. The new Bagong Lumad has teamed up with Popong Landero, who had pioneered with Ayala the neo-ethnic or alternative music movement during their early days in Davao.
The present group includes Traici Tapati Tarongoy, vocalist, free-form dancer and percussion player from Cebu; Onie Badiang, vocalist, guitarist, bass player, composer and arranger from Bohol, who has been performing with various groups since the ’80s (the first-generation Bagong Lumad, Sisa, and Asin); and Chong Tengasantos, eminent drummer, who has been playing since the ’70s with a wide range of percussive expertise.
The Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (Gamaba) or “National Living Treasure Award” was introduced in 1992 to acknowledge and render homage to folk and indigenous artists who are generally unexposed and unknown to mainstream urban and popular culture, have kept faith with traditional forms and expressions that comprise the rich and complex cultural legacy from the ancient past, and have passed on their invaluable knowledge and skills to their community and the nation.
The two Gamaba artists participating in this year’s Organik Muzik excel in the playing of various indigenous musical instruments. Samaon Sulaiman is an acclaimed master and teacher of the kutyapi, a two-stringed wooden master and teacher of this instrument and is also proficient in kulintang, agong, gandingan, palendag, and tambul. Uwang Ahadas from Basilan, a Gamaba awardee in 2000, excels in the playing of several instruments such as the gabbang, agung, and the kwintangan kayu.
The beat and rhythm of Organik Muzik’s agung, kulintang, kutyapi, hegelong, drums, guitars, bamboo tubes, buzzers, and brass bells remain with us long after the concert is over. The lyrics paying homage to native spirits and exorcising the demons of plunder remind us of past struggles in defense of the ancestral heartland.