Monday, May 16, 2005
Cuizon: Of Loboc angels
By ERMA CUIZON
Bird by bird
I DON’T remember what movie it was, it could have been “Island in the Sun,” Mother’s favorite movie. What I remember of it clearly is a scene where fishers moved out to sea, wading together, pulling a wide fishing net in place. But it was the tonal quality of the scene that I can’t forget. All of the folksy black men in town sang passionately while pulling the fishing net out to the waters.
What a Spanish chronicler described, after a visit to Loboc town in Bohol in the early centuries, is reminiscent of the singing fishers. When the Spaniard went to visit Loboc on a bright day, it’s said he saw a group of children walking along the banks of the river, together playfully singing a song to the sky. And this was not a movie.
The Loboc Children’s Choir last week gave me the same feeling of awe, listening to children who thrive on songs. At Ayala’s Theater 1 last week, very young kayumanggi children of the Loboc Central Elementary School, reared in musicality, sang their heart out with infectious joy. And it wasn’t for the Queen of Spain nor for European or Asian audiences (like China) where they’ve been to, that they sang that Saturday. It was to serenade people into helping the island of visiting birds, Olango, so that the community there would have a better life.
But this is precisely the difference the choir makes. It has not just performed in classy concert halls or auditoriums but also in prisons, orphans’ shelters, homes for the aged, for a cause. Although an international figure now, the choir has not stopped taking part in school activities or town festivals, or the latest wedding in town.
I find the group of over 20 singers as spontaneous today as when I first saw the original group just after it was put together in 1980 by its musical director and conductor, Alma Fernando-Taldo.
Although there are changes among its members yearly, as soon as the children grow up beyond 13 years old, the choir has remained as charming as the first batch. Yearly, the prime movers choose from the pool of child singers of the Loboc Central School. You’d think they would run out of talents, but no. The line for the audition every July is always long.
They are children of generations of composers, singers, musicians, also conductors. If they’re not in the choir, they’re in bands, rondallas, or comparzas, and certainly, they sing in church and engross the vicinity with sacred music.
In cooperation with the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, the choir will go back to China, this time to Shanghai, in July.
Twenty years from now, in tradition-bound Loboc, hopefully the choir will still be of angels aged 10 to 13, not of ordinary mortals.
(May 16, 2005 issue)
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