Sing! and age happily

When do you know whether you’re scoring a success, or hitting a failure? That’s a question Loy’s Harem appears to be facing now. When we began to put on our little show at Punta Bar on March 1, we had a big enough crowd. I wrote about it and friends who read my column came. It was our first night. We were tense but in the end we — guests and performers both —enjoyed ourselves. We ended that night at Club Lee, what we call Loy’s Place, pigging out like teenagers on bread, scrambled eggs and luncheon meat. We all felt young again.

On the second night, a whole bunch of my cousins showed up. One of them, Ica Laurel, sang in German. She had a good voice, too. But since then the Rivera sisters have returned to Canada. My Laurel relatives have returned to what they usually do on Wednesday nights and my Sy-quia cousin has returned to Barcelona. That night Grace, one of my readers, brought her sisters and their friends and they sang with us as well. But the crowd on the second night was roughly half of what it was the first night.

 The third night was the most difficult for me. I kept forgetting the words of the songs I was singing. Our crowd was smaller than the second night but there were good voices singing onstage. Kath Mojica, my friend from McCann, sang I’ll Be Seeing You very well. Sonia Roco sang Perhaps Love and Hedda Henson sang Historia de Un Amor. Yoly Bacani also sang. Once again, it was a wonderful night.

 Last night was the fourth night. I expected a group of my former writing students but it was only Gigi Gonzales who came. Then four of my Sunshine Place classmates arrived — Clarita Cabochan, who is the grandmother of Lea Salonga, and her companions Marlene, Lulu and Dotty. Then there was a gentleman at the bar who told me he wanted to hear me sing in French but he left before I could ask him if he was satisfied. Finally there was a tall thin gentleman with a shock of white hair who came in. He looked familiar. I approached him and introduced myself and he told me he was Toto Africa. (Yes, like the band and song.)

 “Toto!” I exclaimed. “Of course I know you.” We belonged to the same high school batch — he at the Ateneo and me in Maryknoll. We used to go to each other’s jam sessions when we were young. I was so pleased to see him. 

We invited Clarita to sing a beautiful kundiman, Ang Tangi Kong Pag-ibig. Marlene sang a lovely song by Diana Ross. Lulu and Dotty refused to sing but they outdid themselves clapping. 

Then Toto sang. Oh, my goodness, he swept the crowd off their feet. He sang She in French, English and Tagalog, gave a tribute to Pete Lacaba, who was his classmate at the Ateneo and who translated She into Tagalog and called it Siya. It was such a beautiful performance. It impressed Loy so much he invited Toto to join our group.

Last night our pianist Edwynn Castillo offered me half of his dinner. “What do you think?” I asked him. “Should we shut down the show? We don’t seem to be getting enough people to come and watch us.”

“No, Ma’am,” he said. “The crowds are always like that. You never know how many you will get in one night. But all of you have improved your singing styles so much. And I love the songs you sing. Do you not notice, Ma’am, how much your singing styles have improved?” 

He was right. I used to be the lousiest singer in the group. Now I’m not so bad anymore. I have learned that the secret to singing well is to allow your feelings to weave in with the song. Last night I sang Body and Soul and I thought I did that pretty well even if my voice did crack. If you are feeling something, wouldn’t your voice crack occasionally? It’s true. We — Marilou Pellicer, Chay Rodriguez, Maricris Heras and I — are all singing better, even Loy, whose wonderful cool voice is now showing a lot more feeling than it ever did before.

 I think singing is one of the keys to aging happily. We always sing together and so we always have a lot of fun. In the end that’s what’s important to me, that’s why we set up this performance at Punta Bar, I want to give seniors a place where they can go, sing, hang out and just enjoy themselves.

 We have two more Wednesdays at Punta Bar, March 29 and April 5. Then we take a Holy Week break and resume on April 19 until May 24. Please come and join us, have fun with us, sing with us. Let us know if we will stay open because of our success or close because… well, “failure” is too sorrowful a word.

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