THE culture of music in the Philippines has grown to not only include English and Tagalog songs, but it has later evolved to include regional languages like Bisaya. VisPop is only one of the popular initiatives done by Cebuanos to further promote diversity in music.
However, there are a hundred more languages in the Philippines, not only Bisaya that needs to be utilized and promoted. One of the many musicians who realized this significance is the songwriter from Koronadal City who goes by his musician name XT on Sax. XT not only writes songs but is also a saxophone player and plays the instrument in the Koronadal-based band Matcha.
Koronadal City, the capital of South Cotabato, is one of the few places in Mindanao whose people speak Hiligaynon. History tells that the early settlers in the area and other neighboring provinces were immigrants from Iloilo. Because of this, instead of speaking Bisaya like some Mindanawons do, South Cotabatenos speak Hiligaynon as their first language.
After being mentored by veteran musicians like Ryan Cayabyab and Gary Granada in the PhilPop Bootcamp 2019 in Tagum City, XT became more inspired to use his mother tongue in writing and expressing the message of his songs.
He was in transit from Tagum City back home to Koronadal City from the workshop last year when the melody to his now-completed song “Hinambalan” kept playing in his mind. Immediately after arriving to the Musician’s Lair in Koronadal City, a recording room where his musician group of friends usually hang out, XT played the melody in his mind to the piano. And that was it.
Philpop made him acquainted with young songwriters who speak Bisaya and who have long chosen that Bisaya will be the language they use in their songs. He had an epiphany and from then on vowed to also use his mother tongue in his future songs.
“’Tong nagsearch ko abi sang mga Ilonggo songs sa Youtube, sa Internet, wala gid kaayo sang mga pop songs. Usually ang ara kay mga old songs na, folk songs (When I searched for Ilonggo songs in Youtube, in the Internet, there are no much records of pop songs. Usually there are old songs and folk songs only),” XT said.
The music scene in Koronadal City has long been continuously breathing and kicking with the band gigs, songwriting winners, and individual singers flourishing in the national scene. But some of them sing and write English or Filipino songs. XT’s initiative to include Hiligaynon in the ever-growing music scene in the city is but a celebration for all the other musicians.
With the excitement to solidify this advocacy, he gathered his musician and songwriter friends and together they decided to release Ilonggo Pop before the year ends.
“Sa una, nahadlok kami nga basi ang tan-aw sa Ilonggo songs kay buki bala haw. Daw badoy. Kay di ba daw may hierarchy of languages man ta abi. English, then Filipino, then Bisaya, tapos Ilonggo (Hiligaynon). So medyo amo na ang una nga challenge sa amon (First, we were scared that the Ilonggo songs we would produce would sound off-trend. Because there seems to be hierarchy of languages in [the Philippines]. We have English, then Filipino, then Bisaya, and then Ilonggo [Hiligaynon]. So that was the first challenge for us),” XT explained.
But this fear of being called ‘baduy’ later faded when they realized that the young musicians that they pooled together are sensitive enough to portray their inner messages through the song but at the same time technical enough to retain the musicality aesthetics in their songs – all of this without compromising the beauty of the Hiligaynon language.
Now they have eight songwriters in the group and have initially released six songs on Spotify and Youtube. These are Hinambalan (XT on Sax, EJ Parsacala), Ara Lang Ko Di (Don Flores), Balahibo ni Mayang (Black Tamarind), Buy-an (XT on Sax, Ferdinand Aragon, Mau Ria), Na-feel Mo Man (Marvin Blue Corpus), and Huy Toto (NatNat). Though all of them pop, these six songs have individual characters and identity. The Ilonggo Pop album on Spotify now has 104 followers and counting since they released in December 21, 2019. Five more songs are scheduled to be released in the coming weeks.
“Ang amon hindi ni siya para hambalon nga nauna pa ang Ilonggo Pop sa Marbel kaysa sa Bacolod or sa Iloilo. Gusto lang namon nga mas makilala pa gid ang Ilonggo songs kay para mainspire man ang mga Ilonggo songwriters sa Visayas nga magsulat man in Hiligaynon (We’re not doing this to be compared with Ilonggo songwriters in Bacolod or Iloilo. We want to inspire them to also write in our mother tongue),” said XT who also mentioned that the group’s dream in 2020 is to be able to perform in Iloilo and Negros.