History & hymns in jukebox musical

MANILA, Philippines — The marvel that is Eto Na! Musical nAPO! is just the spark that the country needs in its bleak chapter of contentions to bring cheer to a people who have long suffered yet curiously bounced back. After all, this trio from Ateneo has consciously woven history with hymns of love, life and lore through times good and bad in almost half a century of composing and performing their single-minded passion — Pinoy music.

On a night Jim Paredes and Boboy Garovillo reserved for family and friends from way, way back, old guards of democracy who came of age during the Martial Law years came with their children and grandchildren to pay homage to the APO legacy at the Maybank Performing Arts Theater, Bonifacio Global City (BGC). In the month when Ninoy made the ultimate sacrifice, three generations came to witness a night of nostalgia that stirred the soul and sparked hope that despite the morass of their elders’ generation, the next one will carry the other to higher ground, as in the hero Aeneas carrying in his back his father, Anchises, from burning Troy.

The young performers of the production mounted by 9 Works Theatrical and Globe Live Events are receiving the torch of faith, family, friendship and freedom, which in essence are the songs of Jim, Boboy and Danny Javier. The golden era of OPM in the ‘70s, cresting with the tide of Marcos’ overweening ambition, serves as the milieu of the musical told with a straightforward narrative: a group of seven friends hurdling college and adulthood, who entered a songwriting, singing contest. The song was not just the challenge, but life itself in a country where a conjugal dictatorship was wringing the life out of its people.

Jim is proud of the subtleness of the politics of the play: “Not too strong as to take away the power of the story and the joy of the songs.” Librettist Robbie Guevarra helmed the production with Daniel Bartolome (musical director) and PJ Rebudilla (choreographer) with just the right bildungsroman flavor, focusing on the conflict between young people and their society in a quest for life’s meaning, leading them to the road to maturity.

The curtain raiser Blue Jeans brought back a flood of memories of simpler times and fresher climes, when bliss was borrowing from the library a good novel to read underneath the Calumpit tree in our school yard, buying a new pack of stationery from Papers in Malolos, and watching Sonny Cortez sing the Sugar Song with Millie Mercado over the KBS channel of our Hitachi black and white TV. The haunting Batang-Bata Ka Pa reminded of the pains of parenthood we ran roughshod over when we were young. Unabashed Mahirap Magmahal ng Syota ng Iba, resurrected the ghosts of loves past, of perfumed love letters surreptitiously slipped in notebooks, glittered birthday and valentine cards mailed to the school office (not to our homes as our parents may intercept them), beribboned cattleyas pinned by a white gloved cadet in the lapel of his corps sponsor. Pumapatak na naman ang Ulan is a defining song to which all adolescents then and now can relate to — chilling out, whining, taking for granted the one true thing — being young.

Faith, family, friends are themes of the songs woven in the jukebox musical with loving, hoping, searching as the motifs in the bewildering search for one’s place in the sun. Dialogues teeming with the jargons of the era: Metrocom, curfew, de-hins, a-laws are the nagging palpitations of a national psychosis that is resurfacing long repressed fears and anger in a nation of tenacious history and exuberant hymns. APO is leaving behind not just a legacy of music, but is paying forward a treasure to ransom a country from forgetfulness.

(Eto Na! Musical nAPO! runs until Sept. 2.)