Emy Munji celebrates his first 70 years

I do not know if he ever recorded as Edward Miller but way back in the ’70s Emy Munji played the piano for several albums as Ian Hero. It was a time when original Filipino music and artists were just beginning to win acceptance among the colonial-minded masses but there was still no way for a record company to market a Filipino pianist performing foreign top 40 material. So the then management of Vicor Music Corporation decided to create this guy "Ian Hero" who shall be faceless and identity-less but because of his skill on the ivories and the all-hit line-up of cuts, he will surely sell a lot of albums. And Ian Hero did sell a lot of records and about four of them were arranged and performed by Emy Munji.

It still seems unfortunate that a talent like Munji, a musician who can dance circles around some big name figures from abroad was made to hide behind a fictitious foreign-sounding name. But such were the times. Although Pinoy Rock had already begun to make itself heard, everything else about music then had to be foreign. Sure, he did record some albums with his own name featured on the cover but these were mostly native compositions that catered to older listeners and to Filipinos living abroad. For fulfillment as an artist he went to arranging and playing for local bands and composing classical pieces occasionally.

But there always comes a time for genuine talent to shine and recently Mang Emy, as he is known in the local music circle, came up with his very own album. Titled My First Seventy Years, the CD contains a variety of tunes culled from the past 70 years that he composed, arranged, performed in plus some personal favorites. Also around for the ride are some friends and his talented children, Willy as producer and Ayen who sings Nonong Pedero’s Noong Unang Panahon from Tales from the Manuvu.

The other cuts in the album are Give Me the Old Big Band Anytime composed by Jose Mari Chan, Temptation with Mon David on the vocals, Once in a While, and Mang Emy’s original works, Squatty Roo, Left in the Mist, How Can I, with Jay Cayuca on the violin, Mamahalin sang by Dulce with lyrics by Ayen and My Musical Travelogue, a suite evocative of the exotic places he visited during his travels abroad.

A single album is not enough to contain the works and memories of a versatile talent like Mang Emy but My First 70 Years is a good start. I just hope that he decides to do another album again soon and that he will not wait again for another 70 years.

Reader’s feedback

From the mail: Evelyn C. Leary of 51 Araullo St., San Juan, Metro Manila wrote to provide more info about Gordon Jenkins’ Manhattan Tower. "The complete four parts can be found in The Gordon Jenkins Collection CD#303 released in 1997 but copies are still available abroad. This was the one recorded in 1945 by Decca Records 12" 78 LP (4 extended sides). In 1956, Mr. Jenkins remade this for Capitol Records in Hi-Fi and added new songs to the suite among them Married I Can Always Get. It was a bestseller and Decca claimed it sold over half a million copies. Patti Page (a record of which I had before) and Robert Goulet recorded their own full-length versions.

The CD was a compilation of all the hits of Jenkins and reissued by Collectors’ Choice Music but this company had advised me, to quote "we apologize, but due to the high number of fraudulent orders we’re receiving from the Philippines, we are no longer able to ship order to that country." This is most unfair since I’m not one of those S.O.B.s, but that’s their decision.

To me, New York is best remembered in the 1950 movie On the Town with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin. The story was about three sailors on liberty in New York. Great musical and Broadway show by Leonard Bernstein."

Thanks for writing Evelyn and for all the info. The Manhattan Tower I have must be the 1956 copy since it has Married I Can Always Get but I would still love to listen to the original and to those versions by Patti Page and Robert Goulet. I also agree that On the Town is a wonderful musical and that it is most unfair for Collectors’ Choice Music to lump all of us among other wrong-doers from the Philippines.