based on an interview with NOEL CABANGON by JAILEEN F. JIMENO

DO WE have anything we can rightfully call Filipino music these days? Right now, anything written by a Filipino, whether in English or Filipino or Bisaya or other dialects, is labeled as such. But the quality of our music now pales in comparison to what we used to churn out in the past.

	SINGER/songwriter Noel Cabangon. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

Like everything else in our planet, Filipino music evolves. It moves with the times, adapts to changes, is influenced by its environment. Filipino music, you see, is about what we feel as a nation, what we are going through, and what we hope will happen. Culture is about how you live; you cannot separate a writer from his environment.

But there are three things that remain constant: angry rock music, emotional love songs, and the recording companies’ raison d’etre: profit. To explain the first two is this fact: The young is the core market, whatever your product.

No matter what society is going through, we have always been dominated mostly by a young generation. The youth form the bulk of our population, and so we always have a powerful young market. That is why love songs, be they silly or tragic, form part of every generation. Teenagers are either falling in or out of love, going through the identity crisis phase, dealing with raging hormones. If you were a teenager in the ‘50s, you probably sang “Ang Tangi Kong Pag-ibig (My Only Love)” a thousand times during those harana nights. Those who hit their teens in the ‘80s probably will remember songs by Odette Quesada and singers like Jam Morales, Joey Albert, and Regine Velasquez. Those who were teenagers in the ‘90s grew up to edgier love songs by the Eraserheads and other bands, but there were also “boy band” music and more of Regine Velasquez.

Conversely, we have a lot of young writers right now. That’s why today’s radio is dominated mostly by music by the young, for the young. Surveys show that most radio stations now play more Filipino than foreign music. This is helped mainly by the revival of old songs. New bands are singing songs by the Apo Hiking Society, almost three decades after these first hit the airwaves.

My only disappointment is that the airwaves are also littered with some songs that can be considered trash. There are songs that are mediocre, that do not merit being produced and listened to. The writing is faulty, the lines are weak. Some songs have melodies that can be improved. Good music involves poetry, lyrical metaphors, words that create images in the mind without much effort. There should be no room for trite lines. Good writing, good music, involves profound thought.

The current social condition has caused the creation of “noontime show” music as well. This does nothing but excite viewers while a TV contest is going on. Other than that, it has no meaning, serves no other purpose, and contains no value. To me, it’s music for people who have no jobs, who are attracted to the concept of winning fast cash, which is a reflection of poverty in our country. It also serves as our babysitting tool, mesmerizing our children for hours.

What concerns me is that this type of music, while it does not dominate the charts, has strong influence. This music that our next generation is growing up to inculcates no good moral values, does not show how one should conduct himself, how to live right, how to think critically. And to me, that is the essence of music: To make people see things differently, to create images, see the world from a new perspective.

MUSIC AND lyrics are often about a person’s personal experience, what society was like during one’s formative years. I guess that’s why my music often talks about social issues because my thinking was shaped in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

I was a choir member in high school. That’s also when I got my first crack at songwriting. I won first place and P30 in a competition. The money was good enough by those days’ standards, but looking back, my love song was not. After that I became active in the anti-Marcos movement, and that is where I draw my inspiration when I write now.

I joined the music industry in 1982, playing folk songs — original and borrowed, foreign and local — like I still do now. Of course, my music is not as lucrative as other types of music. It doesn’t even get enough attention from radio stations. I am just glad I was able to cross over to the mainstream music industry, after “Kanlungan (Cradle)” was used in a commercial.

Anyway, when I turned professional, the fame and fortune of popular Pinoy rock bands that had their heyday in the ‘70s were already winding down. What followed were girlie joints and their music. Then the “minus one” tapes came along, and that had everyone singing at home and every street corner. To those who were born after the Edsa revolution, that is the precursor of the “videoke,” which now keeps whole neighborhoods awake when there are occasions worthy of late-night carousing — and in our culture, there are many, indeed.

The mid to late ‘80s gave rise to alternative music — alternative in the sense that it was like rock music, an alternative to pop music as sung by the likes of Martin Nievera, Dingdong Avanzado, Gary Valenciano, and some boy bands. Their kind of songs dominated the playlists then. We also had new wave and punk rock, as that was what was popular in the West then. Then the ‘90s saw the bands reappearing, led by the Eraserheads and rock music became stronger. It must have been caused by changes in the market, a change in the taste of the young people who were listening to the radio, watching the videos.

The trend always changes. We opened this century with acoustic music taking over bars, with Paolo Santos and MYMP. What they offered was different from the acoustic music of the ‘60s and ‘70s. For this decade, it’s pop music rendered through acoustic, folk tradition.