Karla Gutierrez: Harana is fun, caters to youth

MANILA, Philippines - Karla Gutierrez is the artistic director of the Philippine Opera Company (POC) but don’t let that word “opera” turn you off. For lately, and for some time now, her energies and those of the group have been focused on their highly successful mélange of the country’s songs and dances.

Harana brings together art songs (the Kundiman), folk songs, fun songs, traditional and contemporary songs, and patriotic anthems. There are song-and-dance tributes to iconic comediennes (the late) Nida Blanca and Sylvia la Torre (a product of the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory).

And the costumes are authentic, meticulously researched by Karla’s mother, Zenaida Gutierrez.

There have been two Harana concerts thus far, and the second such show (Ang Bagong Harana) will be restaged in the near future.

“Harana (the title was suggested by Karla’s husband Jed Carlos) was conceptualized for touring all over the world,” declares Karla, a noted soprano. “That’s our main goal talaga. We would like to educate Filipinos and expats on the beauty of our love songs. You know the youth. They hear the kundiman and they say, ‘Oh it’s boring.’ We would like to remove that notion.”

So they rearranged the songs to make them more “palatable” to the general public. The treatment is “medyo modern” but the original arrangement was respected.

“We want to tap a large audience so we use young artists para maka-relate ang young ones,” says Karla. The regular performers include baritone Jack Salud, baritone Lawrence Jatayna, tenor Al Gatmaitan and soprano Florence Aguilar. All are classically-trained.

“Nowadays kids are so ano with computer games,” the POC director bemoans. ”After school, they turn on their computers. Wala na. Hanggang dinner na yan. Television. Unlike before, after school they would play patintero, etc. So we tried to revive the songs na hindi nila alam. We educate the young on songs like Penpen de Sarapen, Bahay Kubo, Si Filemon…”

The fun songs identified with Nida Blanca and Sylvia la Torre, like Waray-Waray and Kung Ako’y Mag-aasawa are accompanied by choreography which often brings the house down.

JThe Harana concert celebrates the beauty of Filipino love songs

“We researched on the songs of Sylvia la Torre and we found that if you arrange them well, it clicks with the younger generation,” Karla notes. “When we were listening to the songs of Sylvia as arranged by Paul Zarate, we said, ‘Wow si Sylvia ba ’yan? Pwedeng pang-radyo.”

The Haranas have been performed in Metro Manila (at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater, RCBC Plaza), the Visayas, Palawan and even in The Netherlands. And the response, according to Karla, has been overwhelming: “In all our shows, standing ovations. There really is a magic in Harana; I don’t know what the magic is. The Filipinos are hungry for this kind of entertainment. Most of them, some of them, they even cry.”

She adds: “Then we retoured it in the Visayas, Iloilo, Bacolod, Palawan… and they would always cry. That’s very overwhelming. Kids would go up the stage and ask for our autographs. Parents who watched us would come back and bring their kids. It’s their way of educating their kids on the music na wala na.”

In Amsterdam, the POC performed under the auspices of the Philippine Embassy. The audience was 88 percent foreigners. They didn’t understand the lyrics but they loved the melodies. “It made us proud of our music,” Karla concludes.