Music that heals

MANILA, Philippines - Sometimes, the healer has to be healed. Basil Valdez has been healing people — first through his songs like SALMO (Sundin Ang Loob Mo) and Lift Up Your Hands for years.

Then, he healed people through his hands. I remember standing in the sala of Basil’s house and feeling his hands resting lightly on my head. I was trying to make out the words of his whispered prayers; he was doing his best to untangle my frayed nerves.

Basil has seen worse. People with only a few weeks to live clutch his hands, hoping for a miracle. Others pour their troubled hearts out to him for three straight hours. Even Jesuits from Ateneo de Manila go to his house to ask that he join them in prayer. Indian healers also visit him, hoping Basil will unlock the door that would rid them of their problems.

Even healing priest Fernando Suarez, Basil reveals, invited him to sing for one of his well-attended Masses.

“Hundreds of people have come to my house,” says Basil. “Sometimes, I can’t perform for three months because I had to devote my time to healing.”

The gift, purely unbidden, adds Basil, grew and grew through the years. Until he himself had to back out. Basil can’t take the pressure that went with seeing people cry and break down before him day in and day out.

“It got to be so demanding I stopped (healing) in 2000,” he explains.

Basil resolved to return to singing, his work for the past 40 years. What pushed him to do this even more was a girl who came up to him in Ateneo and said, “Aren’t you going back to singing? You should, because it’s your songs that heal people.”

True enough, Basil relates how a cancer patient played and replayed tracks in his SALMO (Sundin Ang Loob Mo) album of inspirational songs.

Now, Basil has put all these behind him. He’s done with grief and would rather think pleasant thoughts.

“If I can be like Tony Bennett, who, at 84, has joined other artists in singing We Are the World (for relief efforts of earthquake victims in Haiti ), I would,” relates Basil. The respectability the world still gives Bennett in his advanced years inspires Basil no end.

It inspires him to create new ways to make music attuned to the times and today’s generation.

The former Circus band member in Basil keeps a sharp eye on the still booming band scene. In fact, Basil wants to work with today’s top bands and reinvent their music.

“Some singers have bands interpreting their songs. I’d like to do the opposite. I want to make an album where I interpret the songs of Sugarfree, Itchyworms, Mayonnaise, Freestyle and Hale,” he says. “Side A is also good. I also like Coffee Break Islands’s reggae sound.”

He singles out Kyla, Erik Santos, Christian Bautista and Mark Bautista as the stand-outs among today’s crop of solo singers.

Talented as they are, Basil laments the dearth of original songs at their beck and call. Gone are the days, Basil says, when Ryan Cayabyab, George Canseco, Willy Cruz and others whipped up Original Pilipino Music that would evolve into the classics that we know by heart these days.

“We were lucky back then,” recalls Basil. “We can really hone our talent. Today, you’re no longer in once your TV show goes off the air.”

And that’s why Basil is glad OPM Through the Years will bring back the good old days when covers were not yet the norm; when composers had a heyday making music they can call their own.

The concert, set Saturday, July 17 at the SMX Mall of Asia, will see Basil, Vernie Varga, Joey Albert, Gino Padilla, Charlie Green and the CompanY joining hands to toast Pinoy creativity in song.

It will be the days of Gaano Ka Kadalas ang Minsan (Basil) Tell Me (Joey), I Believe in You (Gino) and others all over again.

The Internet and other forms of modern media may make it hard for us to bring back those good old days of OPM again. But with Basil et al around, we still can, even for one brief night of good old reliable OPM.