Our mothers’ voices

Chin-Chin Gutierrez has done all Filipinos a signal service with the excellent production of her double CD album Uyayi: First Songs, a collection of Philippine lullabies.

The compleat conduct alone of her research, across the proverbial length and breadth of our archipelago, took all of three years, reaping songs indigenous, folk, and adapted – from what were eventually classified as four distinct topographical sources: the baybayin or coastal areas, patag or plains, burol or hills, and bundok or mountains.

The idea of seeking out a country’s "first songs" is entirely inspired, and may have occurred earlier to a musicologist, ethnolinguist or anthropologist. And a similar project must have been carried out sometime ago as an academic precedent. But certainly not on this scale, and very likely not on the same ambitious plane as this creative, artistic, and potentially commercial triumph.

It can’t be coincidental that a colorful personality like Chin-Chin managed to pull off this milestone of a musical compilation. An intriguing celebrity as a movie and TV actress who’s known to embrace environmental causes, even sometimes whispered about as possibly flaky for daring to write poetry and claiming to converse with elementals, Gutierrez is clearly not of the mainstream mold. She has her causes, concepts and creative conceits to take to bed.

Well, with Uyayi we’re assured that she does speak to devas, imps, angels. And can become one herself —- an angel, that is, perhaps even of Tolkien’s Elvish landscape, and not simply of the garden variety, since she easily rivals Liv Tyler’s Princess Arwen in drop-dead loveliness and desirability.

From concept to execution, Chin-Chin or Carminia A. Gutierrez as executive producer (also responsible for field research, interviews and recordings) made sure to gain the counsel, collaboration and support of professional equals. She traveled far and wide, democratically and demographically sought out lullaby singers for backgrounder interviews and recordings, culled bountiful materials, made copious notes on the same —- all in a commendable effort to share this variegated and multi-hued tapestry of a country’s child-rearing musical traditions.

Disc one features 17 lullabies as sung by Chin-Chin herself, and it is a welcome surprise for most of us who have been hardly aware that TV’s soap-opera villainess voice can turn radiant upon higher, nobler transport to musical notes. And we gather and appreciate that she had actually taken formal voice lessons.

Master musician and record producer non pareil Roberto "Bo" Razon serves as producer for CD 1, "Interpretations," as well as the arranger for most of the songs as rendered by Gutierrez, and invariably as instrumentalist. Other arrangers are Joey Ayala (for the Cebuano Anak Nga Walay Palad and the Tala-andig Dilay-en), Chin-Chin herself (for the Tausug Maglangan-langan Ako, which is a resounding chant for the most part), Tots Tolentino, Malou Matute and Rachel Cunanan.

Some of the songs are of course as memorably familiar as Nanay’s milk, or those early mornings and evenings inside nipa huts and accessorias crowded just off narrow city streets.

These include the ever haunting Tagalog favorite, Uyayi ni Nena (Tulog Na, Mahal Ko), with Bo Razon and Colby de la Calzada on guitars and Herrick Ortiz on cello; the lilting Pampango Mendang Na Kong Mendang, heavily rhythmic and guaranteed to make more than just an infant sway on a hammock (with Sherwin Valencia on trombone (!) and Razon on a variety of instruments); the Hiligaynon Ili-ili Tulog Anay; the Ilokano (or Iluko) Dungdungan Kanto, sung as a duet with child vocalist Jacques Dufourt; and of course the classic Sa Ugoy ng Duyan, collaborated on decades ago by our National Artists for Music Lucio San Pedro and Levi Celerio, and here arranged wonderfully by Tots Tolentino.

Other songs are sourced from the Teduray, Ilonggo, Maguindanao, Bikolano, Ilokano, Waray, Ifugao, and Kalinga. The lyrics are on full display, with English translation.

For disc two, billed as "Sources," and which was produced by composer Verne de la Peña who also served as academic consultant, 35 cuts are presented a capella, as sung by mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and which comprise a veritable treasure trove of honest, earnest voices.

Particularly charming, bemusing, is Papanok as sung by malong weaver Kalma Diko of Maguindanao, who learned the lullaby from her grandmother. It is a local adaptation of My Darling Clementine. Similarly, Matudtud Ka Anak as warbled in Pampango by Simplicia Duya seems (at least to this aria aficionado) reminiscent of Red River Valley.

The rest of the production team deserve our kudos, among them Anjie Blardony Ureta as editorial consultant, Robert Quilao who did the CD cover art and design, and Sweet Sisa Esteva as vocal coach. Antonio Jose Perez is project consultant. "Butch" also came up with an engaging 13-minute video journal to wind up disc two; this can be viewed as a VCD on a computer screen. Chin-Chin is shown in her field research efforts, from the Cordilleras to the Mindanao hinterlands.

Uyayi: First Songs is presently available only at Mag:net Gallery outlets (at The Loop, ELJ Tower at the ABS-CBN Complex; and at Paseo Center on Paseo de Roxas corner Sedeno St. in Makati).

If our Department of Education honchos know any better, they should make an effort to distribute this double CD album to all public schools. Kids and parents alike ought to be convinced that there is pan-Philippine harmony in diversity, perhaps as a salve for pre- and post-election trauma.

It also makes for a perfect post-holidays gift for that balikbayan friend who slipped away, or friends and family abroad. Yes, out there in our modern version of the hinterlands and yonder lands – as a winsome, wistful reminder that wherever we find ourselves, we can turn into little Alicias once again, swooning and swaying along as we’re cradled back to wonderland.