Tuesday, September 02, 2008 Niñal: Toyang outside the wall By Lorenzo P. Niñal Insoymada
I WAS cleaning the toilet bowls of the San Carlos Seminary College in Mabolo, Cebu City in 1993 when I heard a song by the Eraserheads for the first time.
The music came from a house just outside the seminary’s west wall, from a room where the owner’s daughter would treat us seminarians to long-distance striptease at night.
I froze. Who was this guy warbling about his house being small yet clean including the kitchen? And what was my favorite childhood rhyme “pen pen de sarapin de kutsilyo de almasin” doing in the song?
But for some reason, the song threatened my dream of becoming a priest-musician. The seminary was teaching me classical songwriting and here was this frisky, bouncy tune threatening to undermine the seminary fathers’ efforts. The song sounded irreverent—and one couldn’t afford to be irreverent in the seminary—and yet I was enjoying it, without a tinge of guilt. It just blew me away.
I asked my classmates if they had heard of the song. They said no, and they were not interested. They’d been singing “Diosnong Magtutudlo” (Heavenly Teacher) all their life, any music from the radio was the devil’s creation. And they had toilet cleaning to do, please. But I was determined to know more about this raw sound that made me pause and listen, and doubt my vocation.
With the limited TV hours allowed us, the best place to do my research was the library. There were magazines there, surely they could provide me with information. So I rushed there after my toilet assignment and begged the librarian to allow me a few hours’ extension because I was doing a research on the Spanish Inquisition.
From a Sunday magazine I learned the band was called Eraserheads and the song was called “Toyang,” a cut from their debut album “UltraElectroMagneticPop!” The article listed down all the other songs in the album: “Easy Ka Lang,” “Maling Akala,” “Pare Ko,” “Shake Yer Head,” “Ganjazz,” “Ligaya,” “Tindahan Ni Aling Nena,” “Honky-Toinks Granny,” “Shirley,” “Walang Hiyang Pare Ko,” “Combo on the Run.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The song kept playing in my mind. If “Toyang” blew me away at first listen, were the other songs equally mind-blowing? I hated the prohibitions in the seminary. I envied college students outside who could listen to the Eraserheads anytime they wanted to.
I waited for “Toyang” to play again on the radio from the house outside the wall. Then a few minutes and I was watching the silhouette figure of the girl moving rhythmically to a different song but whose irreverent appeal was now familiar to me. The girl wasn’t strip dancing this time. She was simply head slamming, occasionally hitting imaginary drums, and shouting at the top of her voice, “Di ba, ‘tangina!”
