For the love of Cebuano music

(Contributed fotos/Britz Bryan Briones)

THE local music industry can be peppered with canned opuses, greedy commercial pursuits and crab mentality. In Cebu, this hard reality is probably pushing Cebuano musicas in music written with the Cebuano dialectto the gutter of the imported-sound driven scene. Its a hard world but many homegrown artists are not quitting the dream of being heard. Not yet, or maybe never. As long as platforms for exposure are available, the game is on.

The 35th staging of the Cebu Pop Music Festival (CPMF) concluded last January with the same hope every year of catapulting original southern music to the limelight. The edition produced three champs from three separate categories. Evolution

A Cebuano composer can revel in the fact that Cebuano music has evolved for the better over the years. Although marketing the songs is another story, we just have to believe that we will get there one day, Manolito Languido encouraged.

The 45-year-old electrician from Carcar City, Cebu bagged the grand prize for the rock genre. Interepreted by Jamila Albino (who won best interpreter for this years festival), Languidos piece Padayon Sugboanon reflects on the message of resiliency amid the series of crises that hit the country.

The high school undergraduate who finished a vocational course in building wiring installation had no formal orientation with music. He was a choir member when he first picked up a guitar and was 15 then. Two years later, he started writing songs. Eventually, he assumed the choirs guitarist position and also learned the keyboardthe instrument he would play every Sunday mass in his hometown chapel and every Wednesday at South General Hospital in Naga City, Cebu where he currently works.

Potential

The composer stint of the part-time reporter and program anchorman (dyRF AM Radio) progressed from writing his first recorded song Dagat Atong Ampingan in 1997; being a finalist the next year with Palamboon Nato Ang Binhi at the Huni Sa Paglaom: Songs for the Third Millennium, to landing as CPMF finalist in 2009, 2014 and finally emerging as champion this year.

A lot of potential composers are all over the place. But in a scene where a nonsense song can become an instant hit, its as if music is already losing its essence. We shouldnt undermine Cebuano music but there must be a decent way to preserve it. A competition is one, an avenue to gauge ones worth especially those who are digging the dialect, Fr. Lyndon Ruiz challenged.

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For the love of Cebuano music