WHAT song ignites your past? Like a blazing torch that lights up the nooks and crannies of the mind, all the shadows vanish, and what remains is the sweet melancholy of reminiscence. Or, the rage of long ago that the music had evoked in the heart full of courage to do what is right. That’s why Do you hear the people sing suffuses my being every time I hear the song or the thought of it flashing in the mind.
May 13, 2018, my daughter Rose, son-in-law Tim, and I were enraptured by the Les Miserables musical performed by the Shasta High School in Redding, California. Those students were so enormously talented, they brought me, some twenty years back, to the Broadway production in New York with my hubby Rudy by my side. That was when our very own Philippine pride Lea Salonga played the role of Eponine.
Lines reminiscent of the Marcos Martial Law regime got me fired up and misty-eyed: Do you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of the people / Who will not be slaves again! / When the beating of your heart / Echoes the beating of the drums / There is a life about to start / When tomorrow comes. Lines sung in solitude, thinking of the activists — some brave souls — now in the company of Rudy in high heavens.
Even the most ordinary of mortals singing can lull the overburdened to sound sleep. Vicente, our household helper who was Itik to the family, would massage my father — always with a song. I could still remember the first line: “More than the greatest love the world has known…” I could almost hear Itik’s lilting voice, kind of pushing me to Google the song, and sing the entire sleep-inducing melody with him.
Then there’s Rosal — real name Rosario — another household help who would go about with broomstick and dustpan while singing “It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white when your true love comes your way…” etc., etc. Me, then a high schooler engrossed in my studies, could only smile as to what the metaphors in the lyrics were standing for. Time flew fast, years have gone by, and after all these years, I wonder where and how Rosal is now since her true love had come her way. Rosal and Itik, ordinary angels, that stand out in my Memory Book
My parents were monotones — tone deaf if you please — and as far as I know, so are we all in the family, but for one stunning exception: my brother Antonio. A lawyer, his favorite post was in the Courts — standing counsel for the aggrieved. After early morning coffee, Manong Tonio would walk in the front yard of our house while singing his favorite. Some lines I could still recall: You only want me when you are lonely / You come to me to mend your broken heart…And when you left me, I was alone in misery. He shunned demos and had never joined us in street marches of long ago. He would spare moments, singing his lonesome while strumming the guitar that our parents had bought for him — Manong Tonio, being the lone gifted voice, at least on our side of the Rivera-Carreon clan.
From the distant past, I remember Nanay (or, was it the maid?) singing: Ele-ele, tulog anay, wala diri imo Nanay. Kadto tenda, bakal pa-pay, ele-ele tulog anay. The words came up flowing as you’re being swayed in the gentle arms of your mother, or in your very arms cradling your own infant child. At this very moment, you’re stricken with nostalgia as the music of yore unfolds.
It has been said over and over again that music is a universal language. Agree or disagree? I wholeheartedly agree as David, Randy, granddaughter Danika, and I took a boat ride in Disney World — to the accompaniment of “It’s a small world after all,” a picturesque description of one country’s music after another.
Indeed, music makes it a small world for us all. (Comments to jclagoc@gmail.com)
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Julia Carreon-Lagoc was a columnist of Panay News for two decades. She pops up with Accents now and then./PN
