Growing Up CRIS

She’s a 19-year-old pop singer who’s just finished her freshman year at a prestigious college in New York. She’s in town for summer vacation, and putting together the play-list for her first major solo concert since going abroad to study.

Do you pick the hit songs of Britney Spears, Cristina Aguilera, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne and Shakira? Or do you opt for songs popularized by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline, Doris Day and Gloria Estefan? Well, if you figured out that the 19-year old singer in question is Cris Villonco, and that the latter list of songs will end up in the concert night’s repertoire, give yourself ten points and move to the top of the Music Appreciation class!

While this writer has no complaints about the choice of songs, I questioned the likelihood of an audience her age identifying with the heady selection of songs. Cris gamely accepts, "It may not be a range of songs that those of my age will readily listen to; but we made the conscious decision to put in a mix of songs that are representative of the songs I’ve loved since way back, when I’d go to the karaoke bar with my Dad (Opop Villonco) and my Titos and Titas and they’d be choosing the songs; of the kind of music I’ve been exposed to in my first year at college. And of the kind of songs I’ve always wanted to do, but couldn’t because they wouldn’t fall clearly in the two categories I’ve been known for in my career. These categories were Broadway songs or the pure teen pop genre. Inevitably, there will be a nod or two to those types of songs; but by and large, the songs will showcase a very different ‘Me’."

Talk about asking your audience to grow up with you and accept the changes that have come into your life, and the July 31st concert at Rockwell’s Dish certainly fits the bill. Cris smiles as she says, "Just to be extra sure, my Mom (Monique Siguion-Reyna Villonco) and Tita Girlie (Girlie Rodis, Cris’ manager) are making sure friends and family will occupy the tables by the stage." She laughs at the thought. "I am hoping though that with the popularity, even among people my age, of such artists as Norah Jones and Michel Buble, a good cross section of age groups will form the audience for that night. There seems to be a respectful ‘borrowing’ from the past in order to come up with something new or novel in today’s music world."

The acoustic scene phenomenon also bodes well for such a drastic move. It seems that Manila’s contemporary live music crowd are more than ready to try something different. While the ‘wall of noise’ that the band scene perpetuated still has its followers, a growing number of kids are open to more introspective, tradition-laden music. The irony, in fact, is that some of these throwbacks to genres from the past have now been labeled ‘alternative’.

As Cris enthuses, "My first year at Sarah Lawrence really opened my eyes in terms of how much of music theory and appreciation is still out there for me to experience and develop. I have one professor in Jazz (who) helped me ‘discover’ Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald. I understand how someone like Norah Jones is actually more country or blues than jazz per se. That she joins a tradition of song styling and performing that has its roots in gospel as well. Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin’s original version of soul and rhythm and blues–it’s an ever widening net that encompasses what we can term popular music, and as I’m being exposed to it, I’m just so excited to try them out and enrich the range of what I can perform."

With special musical guests like Jose Mari Chan, Johnny Velasquez (of the retro band Spirit of ’67) and the R and B boy band 17:28, Cris stays true to the tradition of making the concert a celebration of friends and family. I joke if her Lola Armida (Siguion-Reyna) is likely to get up on stage and do a number as well.

Cris’ eyes light up at the thought. "You know the tradition of my university and the confident, larger than life modern woman! Well, Mahal (the family pet name for Armida, who refuses to be called Lola within the family) came to visit me and she charmed them like nothing. The Head of the Music Department, the one in charge of the Music Library–they were all fans by the time she left. They’d always ask, ‘Anna, when is your grandmother coming back to visit?’ That’s what they call me there, Anna. That is my real first name, I’m Anna Cristina." Who knows, a special course on Aawitan Kita may be just around the corner at Sarah Lawrence.

On her first year aay at school, Cris assesses, "It’s been really stressful. My life is an endless repetition of classes and lectures, homework and more classes and lectures. The load is really heavy given the number of courses I opted for. In fact, it’s fellow Filipinos at Sarah Lawrence like Pilar (Valdes) who remind me that I also have to make time to leave campus every so often. My Mom was with me for the first two months and when she left, I remember how it hit me like a sledgehammer that there I was, truly on my own, by choice, and it scared me! I was so miserably homesick after she left; and it was only after a few more months that I got over that feeling."

The observation we Filipinos make about how our stomachs will always be staunchly Filipino is so true. I was craving for Filipino food in no time at all. Sinigang, adobo... the big treat I’d give myself on weekends is lunch at this small restaurant on 14th and 1st, Elvie’s Turo-Turo."

Living away from home can give one a fresh perspective on the people one is close to: the very things that may have bugged us or frustrated us can now be the very qualities we appreciate or look for from those close to us. Wide eyed, Cris had to admit, "That is so true. My Mom is so mabusisi, and while a year ago, that may have been something that at times I found suffocating, now I am so happy she is that kind of a person. I’m so much more appreciative of how that style of mothering is so her, and I don’t have to see it as smothering. She still gripes about how I don’t spend enough time with her while I’m here for the summer, but I do know I’ll miss her so much when I have to go back."

"Another thing is how values play such an important part of my life now that I’m on my own. Before I’d roll my eyes and think ‘Lecture, lecture’; but now, I’m so happy for all my parents have given me in this area. Even the more trivial things like being organized, I’m so thankful for. You should see my room here in Manila, it’s a disaster area all by itself, and there was no way I could be like that on campus, where I share a room with two other girls. One of them, a Brazilian, has become my best friend there.

"Then there’s the appreciation of how I have to be frugal and independently wise with money. That was something I never wanted to face. And of course, the situation now makes it especially important. My father is still there for us, but unlike before, it’s not like it’s some flowing tap that’s never turned off. My Mom had to sit me down one time before she came back. In typical fashion, she made a list of expenses, and demonstrated how certain things like shopping and impulse spending had to be controlled to make things work when she’d leave. We forecasted expenses for the rest of the year, and I knew that this was reality biting and it could not be ignored."

I asked Cris’ mother and grandmother what they missed most about Cris, now that’s she’s studying abroad. "You know, she’s not the one you’d notice so much as having left," Armida relates. "There are others who make such a mark because they’re either so noisy or troublesome, that when they’ve gone, there’s a big space left behind. With Cris, she’s so good and essentially so accommodating, you don’t notice right away that she’s no longer there."

Monique wings in with, "I know it sounds babaw, but I don’t have anyone to watch movies with. My youngest, Tere, is into horror and action films and I can’t stand those. With Cris, we had the same taste for dramas and romance comedies. Besides, she is still such a presence, even when away. We talk practically every three days and I’m constantly attending to things for her here."

Given that Monique ‘overstayed’ two months to be with Cris and there have been visits by the whole family to the campus, we’ll leave them with their feigned nonchalance.

Thinking back to that play-list of songs for her concert, one could say that it is a sign of Cris’ growing maturity as an artist. But it’s the confluence of events and circumstances that really brings home the fact that the year away has meant much more than that. The year has signaled Cris’ growing maturity as a person. If some of that can be put into the music she’ll be making come 31st of July, we’re in for a very special night.