Songs of Ourselves

Words and Music through Love and Life

Part 4 of Series

Besides my other brothers, Mentz has influenced my penchant for music, even as he has wonderfully sung and danced his way through love and life. 

Though he was not much of a child performer himself, he later has taken to the family program stage like a natural, class act as he has done to presiding matters for (the rest of) our family.

Years ago, I called him to be the Speaker of the House—i.e. our household—because he has hosted and also literally presided our family (gatherings) since 1996. One with a quiet and unassuming disposition, Mentz has always taken to the microphone as if it’s public performance.

Through the years, Mentz has been trained to become a very good public performer. At the Ateneo high school, he led the Citizens Army Training (CAT) Unit’s Alpha Company, a well-respected group finely chosen to parade to give glory to Ina (Our Lady of Peñafrancia) in September in Naga City.

Then in college, Mentz did not only win a Rotary-sponsored oratorical contest; he also served as junior representative in the college student council. And before graduating in 1994, he won a graduate scholarship at the University of the Philippines where he would later obtain his graduate degree. And because he went to Manila all ahead of us, I always thought he has been exposed to the world way before his time.  

In the late 80s and early 90s when he was making the transition from being a high school achiever to a college heartthrob at the Ateneo, Mentz played Kenny Rogers and Tom Jones on Manoy’s cassette tape. Sweet sister Nene and I would always joke at how he covered a singer's song better than the singer himself.

In those days, he deftly worded the first lines of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” as he cleverly impersonated the speaker in “The Gambler”—sounding more Kenny Rogers than the bearded country singer himself: "on a warm summer's evenin, on a train bound for nowhere..." For us, his siblings, no one did it better than Mentz. Not even Kenny Rogers.

Perhaps because I listened to him passionately crooning away Tom Jones’ “Without Love” that I also heard the lyrics of that song after the overnight vigil of the Knights of the Altar inside Room 311 of Santos Hall. I thought I was dreaming but it was in fact Mentz’s tape playing on my classmate Alfredo Asence’s cassette player. Truth be told, I could not do away with the passionate singing that I had carted away Mentz’s tape for that one sleepover in the Ateneo campus.

In 1995, Mentz brought Enya’s “The Celts” and Nina Simone’s collection to our new household in Mayon Avenue. He bought these tapes to fill in the new Sony component secured from Mama’s retirement funds. Most songs of these women sounded morbid but I loved them. Because I so much liked the voice that came and went in Enya’s “Boadicea,” I played it the whole day on my Walkman (which Mentz kindly lent to me) while writing my thesis on F. Sionil Jose’s Rosales saga.  

In early January of 1996, Mother would pass away.

When I played Nina Simone’s “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” one night during mother’s wake, one of my brothers asked me to turn it off. Perhaps it was too much for him to take. That black woman’s voice was too much to bear. But away from people, listening to these women’s songs did not only help me finish my paper; it also helped me grieve. 

Among others, Mentz adored Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Because this was the time before Google could give all the lyrics of all songs in the world, Mentz knew the words to the song by listening to cousin Maida’s tape many times through the day. While every piece in the collection is a gem, “Homeless” struck a chord in me that years later, I would use it to motivate my high school juniors to learn about African culture and literature. Talk of how the South African Joseph Shabalala's soulful voice struck a (spinal) chord in both of us.

Years later, when we were all working in Manila, I heard him singing Annie Lennox’s “Why” and miming Jaya singing “Laging Naroon Ka.” At the time, I could only surmise that he was humming away his true love and affection which he found with his beloved Amelia, a barangay captain’s daughter whom he married in 2001.

With my sister Nene, the household of Mentz and Amy in Barangay San Vicente in Diliman would become our refuge in the big city. Though Nene and I worked and lived separately from them, it was where we gathered in the evening as a family. Even as Mentz and Amy gradually built their own family, their growing household has become our own family. Through years, it has not only become the fulcrum of our solidarity; it has also become the core of our own sensibility.

Many times, I would be told how Amy and Mentz would go gaga over live musical performances by their favourite local and foreign singers. Once they told me how they enjoyed the concert of Michael Bolton, whom the couple both loved. I would later learn that Amy had a very good collection of Bolton’s albums from “Soul Provider” to the greatest hits collection. I wouldn’t wonder about it even as I have always liked the white man’s soulful rendition of Roy Orbison’s “A Love So Beautiful” since the first time I heard it. (But I think I wouldn’t trade off the Roy Orbison original.)

Years have gone by fast, and three children have come as blessings to Mentz and Amy. Once I heard him singing with his firstborn Ymanuel Clemence singing Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open,” indeed their anthem to themselves. Yman, now a graduating high school senior, has likewise taken to performing arts as a guitarist and an avid singer of alternative rock and pop. Mentz’s firstborn is one soul conceived by his father’s love for lyrics and heartfelt melodies and his mother’s love for Michael Bolton and a host of many other soulful sensibilities.

With Yman, and now Yzaak and Yzabelle, their vivo grade-schoolers (like the rest of today’s youth who can hardly wait to grow up) singing the words of Daft Punk and Pharell Williams from the viral downloads on YouTube, this tradition of song and sense and soul is subtly being passed on, with each of us now and then singing our own ways through joy, through love and through life.

Songs of Ourselves

Words and Music through Love and Life

Part 2 of Series

Manoy Awel, our eldest brother, has had the biggest influence in each of us, his younger siblings. 

While brothers Ano and Alex strutted their way to get us equally break-dancing to Michael Jackson and his local copycats in the 1980s, Manoy’s influence in the rest of us, his siblings, is indispensable. Being the eldest, Manoy held the “official” possession of Mother’s pono (turntable) like the two Stone Tablets, where the songs being played later became the anthems among the siblings. 

On this portable vinyl record player, every one of us came to love the acoustic Trio Los Panchos, Mother’s favorite whose pieces did not sound different from her aunt, Lola Charing’s La Tumba number which she would sing during family reunions. 

In those days, Manoy would play Yoyoy Villame’s rpms alternately with (Tarzan at) Baby Jane’s orange-labeled “Ang Mabait Na Bata.” But it was the chorus from Neoton Familia’s “Santa Maria” which registered in my memory, one which chased me up to my high school years. 

Manoy’s pono music would last for a while until the time when there would be no way to fix it anymore. A story has been repeatedly told of how Manoy dropped the whole box when he was returning (or maybe retrieving) it from the tall cabinet where it was kept out of our reach. Here it is best to say that I remember these things only vaguely, having been too young to even know how to operate the turntable. 

Since then, we had forgotten already about the pono, as each of us, through the years, has gone one by one to Naga City to pursue high school and college studies.  

One day in November of 1987, Supertyphoon Sisang came and swept over Bicol. At the time, I was still in Grade 6 staying with Mother and brother Ano in our house in Banat; while my brothers and my sister were all studying in Naga.

The whole night, Sisang swooped over our house like a slavering monster, and in the words of our grandmother Lola Eta, garo kalag na dai namisahan (one condemned soul). The day before, we secured our house by closing our doors and windows. But the following morning, the jalousies were almost pulverized; the walls made of hardwood were split open; and the roofs taken out. But our house still stood among the felled kaimito, sampalok and santol trees across the yard.

Among other things, I remember brother Ano retrieving our thick collection of LP vinyl records. Most if not all of them were scratched, chipped and cracked. In a matter of one day, our vinyl records had been soaked and were rendered unusable. Ano, who knew art well ever since I could remember, cleaned them up one by one, salvaged whatever was left intact, and placed those on walls as decors. 

The 45 rpms and the LP circles looked classic like elements fresh out of a 1950s art deco. On the walls of our living room now were memories skillfully mounted for everyone’s recollection. And there they remained for a long time.

By this time, Mother had already bought a Sanyo radio cassette player which later became everyone’s favorite pastime.

Soon, Manoy would be glued to cassette tapes that he would regularly bring in the records of the 1980s for the rest of us. The eighties was a prolific era—it almost had everything for everyone. Perhaps because we did not have much diversion then, we listened to whatever Manoy listened to. On his boombox, Manoy played Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Heart, Sade, America and Tears for Fears, among a million others. Of course, this “million others” would attest to how prolific the 80s was.

In those days, Manoy recorded songs while they were played on FM radio stations. It was his way of securing new records; or producing his own music. Then he would play it for the rest of us. Music was Manoy’s way of cheering the household up—he played music when he would cook food—his perennial assignment at home was to cook the dishes for the family. 

Manoy loved to play music loud anytime and every time so that Mother would always tell him to turn the volume down. Most of the time, Manoy played it loud—so that we, his siblings, his captured audience in the household, could clearly hear the words and the melodies, cool and crisp.

While Mother and Manoy would always have to discuss about what to do about his loud records playing, we, the younger ones, would learn new sensibilities from the new sounds which we heard from the sound-box. We did not only sing along with the songs being played; we also paraded nuances from them which we made for and among ourselves. Out of the tunes being played and heard, we made a lot of fun; and even cherished some of them.

When we were very young, I remember hearing a cricket when Manoy played America’s “Inspector Mills” every night, which lulled my sister Nene and me to sleep. Nene and I asked him to play it all over again because we would like to hear the cricket again and again in the said song. (Later, I would be aware that it’s not only a cricket but also a police officer reporting over the radio.)

During those nights, Mama was expected to arrive late because she worked overtime at her father’s house that hosted Cursillo de Cristianidad classes, a three-day retreat seminar which the family committed to sponsor for the barangay Bagacay through the years.

Sometimes, it was just fine even if Mother was not there when we slept. At times, we knew she wouldn’t be able to return home for that weekend, so we were lulled to sleep in Manoy’s bed listening to America and his other easy-listening music. Because he played these songs for us, the lonely nights without Mother in our house were made bearable by Manoy Awel. 

When Manoy was not around or when I was left alone in the house, I would go to his room and play his records to my heart’s content. Because he would leave his other records at home, I equally devoured them without his knowledge. None of his mixed tapes escaped my scrutiny.

Through the years, Manoy would later be collecting boxes of recorded songs and later even sorting them according to artists and genres. 

 One day, I saw these recorded tapes labeled “Emmanuel” on one side and “Mary Ann” on the other. It wouldn’t be long when I learned that Manoy had found his better half, his own B side—in the person of Manay Meann, his future wife.