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Friday, August 26, 2005
Speak out: More Cebu Pop rumblings
By Melanie de la Merced
121 Kingswood Village
Minglanilla, Cebu
The screening process to select the 12 finalists of the 26th Cebu Pop Music Festival leaves a lot of unresolved questions.
Fact No. 1: The screening committee received 150 entries. The screening, held on Aug. 14, 2005, began at 9 a.m. It ended at 3 p.m.
The entry form used by the festival states that the running time of a song entry must not exceed three-and-a-half minutes.
Assume, for our discussion’s sake, that the average playing time for each song is three minutes. With 150 entries, the time needed to play the songs nonstop from the first song entry down to the final one will be 7 hours and 30 minutes.
Of course, there will be time gaps from song to song in the actual screening.
Assume, too, that lunch or coffee break did not take away the screening time for the judges. The clock is ticking: between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. is a space of only six hours.
A universe of 150 entries is fairly big. A day would probably not suffice for a respectable screening; one that really dissects and weighs the musical merit of every song entry, for which time, effort and money were invested by the songwriters.
Deadline
Fact No. 2: The July 30, 2005 deadline was extended to Aug. 12, 2005.
Deadline extension is perfectly fine, that is, if it is done with utmost fairness.
What might have been fair? The announcement on the deadline extension ought to have been done way before the original July 30 deadline, say, a month preceding.
The announcement, however, went out on July 29. The screening committee, it appears, was grossly accommodating to some songwriters and grossly unfair to others.
Remember: the festival is a songwriting contest. The deadline is there to mark the time for when a song becomes an entry or not.
If it were in a classroom, time pressure is applied as part of an examination itself. It will be grossly unfair if, after answer sheets from several students have been turned in, the teacher suddenly announces a time extension.
Can Philogene Florita, the executive director of the Cebu Arts Foundation Inc. (Cafi) that organizes the festival, extend the deadline? He can. But his power to exercise his prerogative is not the issue; rather, it is the manner that power was exercised.
'Professionals'
Fact No. 3: “The members of the screening committee were professionals in the music industry.”
Surely, the public wants to know who hides behind the phrase, “professionals in the music industry.” Florita? Sam Costanilla? Gani Villarojo? Elvis Somosot?
A bit of transparency will go a long way to preserve the credibility of Cafi as an institution seeking to inspire the Cebuanos to embrace their heritage in arts and culture.
As much effort that songwriters allocate in writing and recording their songs, so much effort should be invested by Cafi in making sure the people who will sit in the screening committee deserve to be there.
The reason is not only that every song entry must get a good and fair screening but that the quality of the membership of the screening committee will largely determine the direction and growth of Cebuano music.
Obviously, the growth that we aspire for Cebuano music is not that it will simply sound like some Tagalog or foreign song. We have our own music, and the Cebu Pop Music Festival ought to discover that.
(August 26, 2005 issue)
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