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Saturday, January 07, 2006
To promote Cebu Pop, karaoke versions eyed
By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
In the age of digital music and innovative musicians, will songs with words like “damgo” and “bidlisiw” still appeal to young Cebuano music lovers?
Organizers of the Cebu Popular Music Festival believe that with extensive media mileage, Cebuano songs will sell and that these songs still have a following.
“Duna man gyu’y mokanta ug Bisaya (There will always be people who will sing Visayan songs),” said Philogene Florita, the festival’s executive project director.
But to keep up with the times, Florita said they are planning to come up with a karaoke version of some of the songs as a promotional strategy.
Even if the festival has been running for 26 years, Florita admits they still haven’t gotten the support of majority of AM stations and all FM stations to play the winning entries.
“It’s a sad reality,” he lamented during a press conference yesterday for the launching of the festival, which will be held on Jan. 13 at the New Cebu Coliseum.
He said that even if a law mandates local radio stations to air original Filipino music, only Tagalog songs are being played by stations in Cebu.
For drama
However, Florita is thankful for stations like dyHP, which uses some of the festival entries for their drama shows.
He hopes FM stations will be just as supportive of the cause of promoting Cebuano culture and preserving the language.
“Nagkinahanglan pa man gud tingali ta ug grease money (Perhaps we need grease money to air the songs in FM stations),” he added.
Florita said the Cebu Arts Foundation Inc., which is organizing the festival, is studying the feasibility of coming up with one karaoke volume of the Cebu Pop Music songs.
One volume, composed of 20 songs, costs about P130,000.
He revealed, though, that some lovers of Cebuano music have produced independently karaoke versions of songs like “Higala,” “Langit ug Yuta” and “Sama sa Usa ka Damgo.”
For this year’s competition, 12 finalists were chosen from 152 entries.
One entry is “Sugbo-ok (Sugbo nga Tibuok),” a take on the ongoing controversy behind proposals to split Cebu into four provinces.
Another song, “Silpon,” is about a person’s experiences with a cellular phone, which has revolutionized the way Filipinos communicate with each other.
Texters’ choice
Composer Jun Cabillar said he wrote the love songs “Bitoon Mo” and “Ning Kiliran” while Dennis Sugarol and Gwendolyn Crescensio wrote about the pains of the children of overseas Filipino workers in the song “Tatay, Pauli na.”
While some song styles and themes may have remained the same, contest organizers will include this year a texter’s choice award.
Gloria Villarojo, the album producer and texter’s choice contest in-charge, said they want to get the public’s pulse by asking them to vote for their favorite entry.
But the award will have no bearing on the contest criteria, she clarified.
The winner will only have the distinction of bagging the first-ever texter’s choice award in the festival’s 26-year history.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 7, 2006 issue)
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