Andres Bonifacio’s school of rock

MANILA, Philippines - Gat Andres Bonifacio’s story can only be sung through the rage of rock music. Some would be quick to throw in a remark and say that “Yes, of course, that classification’s pure cliché — classical music, sophisticated jazz, and the like are for the illustrado, Rizal; while the crude and violent sounds go to the Great Plebian, Bonifacio.” But no, it doesn’t work that way. Rock music is the butter to Andres Bonifacio’s bread because both are, suffice it to say, easily misunderstood.

“[rock] Supremo” is a compilation produced by RockEd Philippines to make Andres Bonifacio, his life and works, more accessible to the music-listening public (the best part is that it’s absolutely free for download on Soundcloud). The songs on the album stitch together the canvas upon which Ballet Philippines drew their dance for the staging of a full-blown ballet production of the same name, held at the CCP last September. These performances were made in light of our national hero’s 150th birth anniversary — here’s to hoping that wherever his bones may lie, these sounds somehow please him. 

Aside from the oxymoron present in the combination of the words “rock” and “supremo,” the compilation presents us with critiques and hefty amounts of nationalistic food for thought, packaged in the easily digestible form of rock music. Starting with Tarsius’s Overture, “[rock] Supremo” transports the listener out of the typical barong-tagalog-at-baro’t-saya depiction of our history and into the maze and deluge of postmodern inquiry. As words are spoken one by one and eventually drowned in echoes, techno music is injected — synthesizers, blasters, sirens, heavy toms, snares and bass start flooding in, all ending after the three-minute mark with the word “Sino?”

Not the typical musical

From that point on, the listener is introduced to the fact that this isn’t going to be the typical “musical” we’ve come to know in tributes for the Great Jose Rizal. For one thing, “[rock] Supremo” is about our history’s greatest underdog, Andres Bonifacio. This inquiry would be far more nuanced than the who, what, where and how questions. These are songs that question the -isms that make us who we are now.

 â€œI considered myself a greater Bonifacio fan than a Rizal fan,” Vin Dancel told me, “so the project really excited me.” Peryodiko wrote and sang the second song in the compilation, Sintensya. It is a song written from the perspective of Bonifacio, sentenced to death, heartbroken and heavy with the burden of betrayal. One is led to imagine the chains clamped to his hands and feet, dragging him down as the snare drum rolls to a slow march and the guitar plays a bevy of minor chords.

“For me, the betrayal of Aguinaldo was more personal because I only got to know the real story about Bonifacio’s conviction in college,” Vin said. “I felt betrayed by my teachers as much as I felt betrayed by the Magdalo group who killed their fellow Filipino. I mean, how can you allow this information to be kept from the students you’re teaching?”

The song ends with the line “Nasa’n ang dangal dito?” repeated until it becomes haunting; a line, Vin says, must’ve been ringing in Bonifacio’s head as he marched up Mount Buntis to be executed. Honor was one of the pillars of the Katipunan.

Set in present time

Sandwich sings Balintawak, a song set in the present time, searching for the freedom the Katipuneros once passionately craved and angrily fought for in the Cry of Pugad Lawin (originally called “The Cry of Balintawak”) as they tore their cedulas. Through the lyrics’ wordplay, the song eloquently puts the struggle to find freedom into perspective: “Sino nga bang nagdiwang? Sino nga bang dumalo? Nabali na ang tawak. Nabiyak na ang bato.”

“Malaya na ba talaga tayo o nag-iba lang ng nang-aalipin?” Raimund Marasigan, frontman for Sandwich, said in an interview. When everything’s been said and done in our history, how and why is it that the freedom Bonifacio cried for in Balintawak is still somewhat unrealized? “The song changes its key signature at the end,” Raimund said, “to signify that there’s always hope through it all.”

Stellar line-up

“[rock] Supremo” is made complete with songs from Dong Abay, Rico Blanco, Kai Honasan, Pedicab (an inquiry into Bonifacio’s reluctant lower middle class roots), Ebe Dancel, Gloc 9, Peso Movement (a rendition of Bonifacio’s Pag-Ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa in dirty rock Tchaikovsky) and Radioactive Sago Project. The differences in tones and moods in these songs compared to songs on Rizal’s life are telling of the rift we have created between two of our national heroes; one enjoying such a victorious and glorified story and the other suffering a difficult and miserable life.

While we can sing freely of the many women in Rizal’s life, the same can’t be sung about Bonifacio, whose wife, Gregoria de Jesus, writhed in the hands of the Magdalo group and was even allegedly raped by “Ynton” Bonzon. Ebe Dancel wrote Lakambini, a song imagined as a letter written in prison from Bonifacio to his wife. “Bonifacio wanted to assure her that even if her body leaves, his heart, his soul, his life, stays with her,” Ebe said, “and indeed, he has kept that promise up to now.”

There is no need to compare Rizal with Bonifacio. But their glaring differences make it convenient for us to polarize the two, relegate one as a hot-headed poor boy from Tondo and the other, an illustrious hero from “the South.” But through this rock collaboration, we are challenged to see that there are many nuances to the 1896 Revolution. And at the center of it all was a man who struggled and labored hard for it.

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Download the “[rock] Supremo” songs for free at http://soundcloud.com/RockEdPhilippines. Tweet the author @sarhentosilly.