A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step – so goes the saying – but in this particular case it also runs on 2/4 time, that is, follows the habanera rhythm of the harana, the Filipino ” custom of courtship and its music “of yore.
Through this remarkable documentary film classically-trained guitarist, Florante Aguilar takes us to various urban and rural locations – on foot, while riding pedicabs, tricycles, jeepneys (the unique Filipino reinvention of the U.S. army jeepney), rented vans, cabs, buses – through frenetic city streets, muddy country roads, verdant fields of green lined by tall, graceful coconut trees, breathtaking seaside vistas – in search of something he had reasonable doubts about in the beginning.
” Ever since I started looking for haranistas (serenaders) I suspected I may not find any. I thought maybe it’s just a romantic notion that has no basis. I secretly thought that they are probably gone…” Aguilar intimated.
But he did distinctly remember that when he was a boy the town’s elderly musicians spoke of “men who sang and wrote beautiful songs” which eventually he would understand to be haranas. This memory would persist and lead to thoughts about unpublished works that may never see the light of day. Eventually it would dawn on him that this old world musical genre would’ve slipped into total oblivion had it not been for a handful of quintessential harana songs that, luckily, had been recorded and even became part of the popular mainstream repertoire.
All these realizations would spur Aguilar to embark on a search for skilled practitioners and experts who might be able to fill in the gaps surrounding the harana’s illustrious past. “I have to find these men,” he thought. But with hardly much documentation to work with outside hearsay he had to start from scratch, literally from the ground.
He resorted to casual talk at first with the locals he’d encounter along the way, for instance, men who drove taxis, pedicabs and tricycles, who were old enough to have recollections. His questions to these folks would often be engaging while being on target, as he aimed to separate the men from the boys, so to speak.
There was Arman the tricycle driver who obliged to sing and play for him at his humble rural abode in Bagupaye, Quezon; followed by Sammy from Ajos who marveled him with his superb yet unschooled guitar technique. Together these men along with some other harana enthusiasts in the area would converge at a local host’s residence to sing some harana songs, at least two of them unpublished and homegrown, side by side Santiago Suarez’ Dungawin Mo,Hirang (Look Out the Window, My Dear).
But it would be in Maragondon, in Aguilar’s home province of Cavite, that he would meet his first two prize finds. Celestino Aniel, or Mang Tino (‘Mang’ is the respectful Tagalog equivalent of ‘Sir’), a native of San Roque in Naic town, was first to be discovered. Born in 1944 to poor parents, he began farming at age 14, and would support his own family later in life also through farming and harvesting. He reminisced about a time when, while walking along the fields, or plowing it, he’d sing songs, by way of entertaining himself out of the drudgery of his daily toil.
Aniel acknowledged he was a haranista (in fact, he said, the harana was primarily responsible for him marrying and having children) but pointed out that it had been 25 years since he last practiced it. Nevertheless, he added, he still remembered the harana songs, along with the fact that there was a time when he was a much sought after harana singer. In his own words: ” You know how it’s like in the province…there were always visitors, young ladies coming from other towns…I’d checkout a lady first, if she was pretty…” When they first met Aniel sang for Aguilar Awit Ko’y Dinggin (Listen to My Song), written by T. Marquez and once recorded by the most iconic of the early Tagalog singers, Ruben Tagalog. Suffice it to say Aniel’s full, finely-textured harana voice easily gave justice to the song.
The next prize find of Aguilar was Romeo Bergunio. Introduced to Aguilar by one Lola Zeny (‘Lola’ is Tagalog for an elderly lady or grandmother). Bergunio, born February 17, 1946, sired five children, none of whom took to singing. He had for the longest time earned a living by fishing from his small outrigger boat.
His early claim to fame was his having won first place in a contest called “Harana of the Maragondon People.” His winning song was Dinggin Mo Hirang (Listen, My Dear) by Santiago Suarez, a very old piece which, as far as Bergunio remembers, was never recorded. His late father, he said, taught him to sing it.
In the film, Mang Romeo somewhat stands out as the one more ready to explain in detail about some of the aspects of the harana culture, like when he talks about the different steps taken during a traditional harana or when he recommends to a young man a certain approach to wooing the girl of his dreams or when he relates how hard he had to try to convince his wife on two occasions to allow him to pursue his love for harana singing. Aguilar would in no time gather Mang Tino and Mang Romeo (who’d bring along his own guitarist) to jam, if you will, at Lola Zeny’s place. Joining them midway through the meet up was a Mang Pablo.
At least five harana songs would be brought to life on this one evening, two of them by unknown composers: Iniibig Kita (I Love You) and Aking Bituin or O,Ilaw (My Star or Oh, Radiant Light). Sang, too, were Kung Hindi Man (If Not) by National Artist for Music Nicanor Abelardo and Maruja (a lady’s name), written by Tony Maigue. A brief gig at a five-star venue in Malate, Manila would follow, with Mang Tino and Mang Romeo already in tow. Then the three would proceed way up north to Pasuquin, Ilocos Sur where localharana enthusiasts there would share their own Ilocano ( another major Philippine language ) haranas. A lady among them, Maria Paglagan,would volunteer that her choice of a husband had rested largely on his being able to play the guitar well when he serenaded her. Aguilar would engage Paglagan to sing a harana song and it would turn out she knew how, delivering a gently moving rendition of the plaintive Tengga Ti Baybay (Out in the Open Sea). Sample the heartbreaking lines from this song by an unknown composer: “A life of unparalleled sorrow, as one to soar the skies, yet incapable of flight when the heart is bleeding. Your pity, I beseech. Withered happiness is my lot, all for the fury of love. And in the name of love, unrequited love, I am bestowed. Out in the open sea, abandoned with lamenting heart. Oh, pity, for this forsaken heart. Misfortunes abound, all hopes extinguished. The result of love is relentlessly selfish, bestowed upon me, out in the open sea.”
One more instance in the film where a woman is not just seen but also heard, this time not through song but a recollection of the old harana days, takes place at the beginning of the film. Standing by her husband, the matronly grandmother Liwayway Espino lets us in on how the feminine end of the harana ritual might regard the whole exercise: ” I vividly remember those days… I no longer see it done nowadays…I wish it would happen again…those days remain very much alive in my thoughts, the songs bestowed upon me by the harana. Even when they disturbed your sleep you didn’t mind being bothered and awakened by the haranistas because of the tender and twinkling sound of the guitar wafting through the night. This was the only way we expressed our secret love: through glances, song and conduct. There was no such thing as dating in those days…From the still air to the farthest reaches of our barrio, it was heard and everyone talked about it the next morning.’ Liwayway was serenaded ! It was such a beautiful harana ! ‘ they said. This is the experience I will never forget from my youth. ” Espino was last serenaded in the 1930s.
In historic Vigan, also in Ilocos Sur, Aguilar would find his third and last coveted haranista, Felipe Alonzo. Born on May 1, 1934, he hails from the village of Balaleng, in Bantay, Ilocos Sur. Like Mang Tino, he is no stranger to poverty. He remembered a time when life was most difficult and all that people ate was the poor man’s corn. He also recalled that at one point, when the price of gold was considerably low, he had crafted jewelry to earn his keep, while singing at weddings on the side. Along the way he would also establish some following among the avid listeners of a very popular local radio station which aired his harana singing. Alonzo, it’s worth noting, also accompanies himself with the guitar. From 1971 onwards driving a passenger tricycle would become his main source of income.
While in Vigan the three discoveries of Aguilar would also learn more about the dynamics of singing as an ensemble. One evening, right in the middle of a street paved with Spanish-era flat stones, they performed another iconic harana song, Hindi Kita Malimot (Never Will I Forget) by Josefino Cenizal. Their captive audience discretely watched their performance from large windows of ancestral houses in the neighborhood.
In Vigan they’d also be introduced to Brian, a young local swain who’d prove cool to the idea of wooing the girl of his heart’s desire via the harana. After an exchange of queries and recommendations Aguilar, our three chosen haranistas and Brian would agree to go for the amorous kill. And it would come to pass that Brian and the harana team behind him would achieve their end goal with flying colors. The very familiar O, Ilaw (Oh, Radiant Light) as sang by our trio, as well as Mang Felipe’s solo rendition of Napusaksak Ka Nga Sabong (A Blooming Flower) proved more than enough to clinch the deal as it would also reconnect our three ace haranistas, along with Aguilar, back to the past that they longed for. As for Brian, and the generation he represented, he had his proper introduction to this past as well. The next time that Aguilar would reunite with his handpicked haranistas would be after a year, in scenic Tagaytay City, Cavite, where further bonding and preparations for upcoming major performances would take place. At this point the significance of the three elderly gentlemen’s shared vision with Aguilar would sink-in even deeper.
Mang Tino would once more remember feeling stunned by Aguilar’s seeking him out right in the fields where he toiled for a living. He looked up to the younger man as an expert in his field and felt grateful that he was trusted with the task at hand, and certainly he did not intend to disappoint. Romeo for his part would remark that the whole experience was beyond his wildest dreams, especially happening as it did towards his twilight years. He found great joy with the thought that he’d leave this realm having had the chance to share what he knew about harana singing. Mang Felipe on the other hand would articulate a more collective sentiment: “Even though we are exhausted, we are happy. We don’t feel tired at all. This kind of thing fills you with pride – being able to record…Of course we wouldn’t have been asked to record if they didn’t think we had the ability to sing.” Curiously, Mang Felipe’s past accomplishments would be revealed only in parts and almost by chance, as when the father of the girl Brian was courting would excitedly recognize his name as belonging to the famous harana singer who sang over the local airwaves. On another occasion, Mang Felipe happened to sing a few lines fromDarderepdep (Dreams) by Remigio Peron, and the song would immediately make Mang Tino, and probably Aguilar, too, wonder how he became familiar with it. Pressed for an answer, Mang Felipe would explain that the song’s writer, Peron, and him had in the past worked in zarzuelas. Peron, confident about his musical capabilities, asked the zarzuela director then to assign him to sing the song, he said. The zarzuela, by the way, originates from a “Spanish lyrical dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating opera and popular songs.” The Philippines having been under Spain for over three hundred years, couldn’t have escaped the influence of this performance art form. The same Spanish connection may explain the habanera rhythm of the harana, and probably, also the use of the guitar to accompany it.
And so the long-awaited, long-dreamed-of day would finally come when these three outstanding voices from the harana’s illustrious past would be heard at major network ABS-CBN’s Dolphy Theater and at the Cultural Center of the Philippines as well. Clad in elegant barongs, Mang Tino, Mang Romeo and Mang Felipe, accompanied by classical guitarists Florante Aguilar and Michael Dadap, would quench the thirst for harana music in its purer form of discriminating audiences before them. Thunderous applause along with national pride would fill the air after each performance. In the said venues they’d sing the endearing Dalagang Pilipina (Filipina Maiden) by Jose Santos , after which Mang Felipe would render Darderepdep, followed by Mang Romeo and Mang Felipe singing No Duaduaem Pay, a traditional Ilocano song; next the very popular Ikaw (You) by Mike Velarde, Jr., sang by Mang Tino, andDungawin Mo Sana (Here’s Hoping You’d Look Out From Your Window) by Constantino de Guzman, performed by all three.
Next stop would be at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) in Silang Cavite, before a select group of young students. Aguilar would, on this occasion, render a fine classical guitar solo of Sing Sing (based on the Ilocano folk song Atin Cu Pung Sing Sing). But it would be on the lawn outside the performance venue that our three newly-minted celebrities would experience up close the exuberant response of their young audience to their art. On that particular day, they were accorded their ‘ rock star moment ‘. Their young admirers, having been energized by their just concluded performance, would sing Freddie Aguilar’s Anak (Child) in unison. The said song, written in 1977, is not really harana material as it was composed in western style, though according to an expert, it contains aspects of the pasyon, the local version of the Spanish narrative of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In its prime Anak had earned not only a national following but an international one as well, having been released in 56 countries and translated into 27 languages. Even the world-class Philippine Madrigal Singers would make it part of their repertoire. Understandably the youth at IIRR would have more familiarity with this song than the haranas of old.
Another song popularized by Freddie Aguilar but which in fact was written by Filipino general Jose Alejandrino, in the original Spanish, when Spain still ruled the country, is the kundiman (a genre of Philippine love songs in 3/4 time) entitled Bayan Ko (My Country). Freddie Aguilar’s latter-day version of it in the mid 1980s would evolve into the protest anthem of the movement opposed to the dictatorship of former Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos. We mention the song Bayan because early in the film, Florante Aguilar, upon the ardent request of a young man in the largely hoi polloi crowd, performs it ( he was at the start playing the much loved Dahil Sa Isang Bulaklak by Leopoldo Silos, Jr.; the title in English means ‘ Because of One Flower ‘ ) at the historic working-class section of Tondo, in Manila – right in front of a monument honoring the locale’s most revered son, National Hero Andres Bonifacio. It’s a scene awash with deep felt emotion, what with the crowd singing the song they knew by heart, accompanied by Florante Aguilar’s finely rendered guitar strains. LikeBayan Ko, Anak is what is within reach for a generation largely unaware of the country’s rich pre-modern pop music past.
As the Tondo footage comes to view one hears Florante Aguilar shed more light on where his art’s loyalties lie: “As a musician I’ve always believed that it’s more meaningful if you bring your music directly to the people in their element.” An opinion expressed by a classical guitarist/luthier Raul Manikan, whom Aguilar visits in the same area, after a thirty year absence, would resonate with his own position on art. Manikan said: “…If you start talking to your environment in musical form, your sincerity and your person will be revealed.” Aguilar would play some strains from another iconicharana song, Maala-ala Mo Kaya (Might You Remember) by Constancio de Guzman and the erudite Manikan would respond to it with this observation: “You have to give it a kind of slow death…in harana you’ve sort of exhausted all the things that you have inside, in outpourings, it’s like saying to the girl, ‘This is all I have, and this is all what I am’ “. Aguilar, outside his obvious earnest pursuit of the remaining living practitioners of the harana (whom originally he may have just wanted to record in an album) strews around some rather mystifying details about himself in the early part of the film; for instance, that detail about him coming back home after a twelve year absence because his father had passed on. It all sounds logical at first until you hear him say, “…I returned to the U.S. a changed man, or so everybody around me said. After years and years of studying western classical music, all of a sudden I started playing nothing but Filipino music. “That’s quite a mouthful. One kind of holds on to those words and seek manifestations of it in the film. Or at least one is left curious if his relationship with his father had anything to do at all with his ” suddenly…playing nothing but Filipino music” (Aguilar in fact dedicates the film to his late father) or perhaps his coming back home after more than a decade of absence to bury his father was more incidental though it would lead him to spending more time reconnecting to his culture in a deeper, more long-lasting kind of way. What did he really mean about returning to the U.S. “a changed man,” and why does it sound like he’s not even owning up to that last statement (“…or so everybody around me said…”)? On one hand you see him practically throughout the film pursuing the harana dream, on the other hand you kind of sense that he has kept some kind of emotional, maybe professional distance even while being right in the the very middle of this whole harana adventure. For instance, in the film, one sees the palpable bonding that had been formed among our three haranistas but what about Aguilar, one wonders, how far did he bond with them (for that matter, the other people he encounters along the way in the film) ? The thing is Aguilar is inevitably also part of the emotional fabric of the film’s narrative, especially because he had dropped hints here and there about his own personal life, including solitary shots of him in a number of locations.
But even though our questions will remain unanswered the fact remains that Mr. Aguilar has remarkably taken on quite a challenge. Not only did he conceive the film, he also wrote, co-produced, musically scored it as he gathered a ace team of co-workers: ‘director-for-hire’ Benito Bautista who was assigned to document the search for the still living proponents of the classical harana while Aguilar focused on the musical journey itself: Mr. Bautista proved to be a faithful servant to the film project without a doubt; co-producer Fides Enriquez, an ethnographic expert specializing in documenting Philippine vanishing traditions, who led in the research, fundraising, day-to-day operations and providing creative input; Peggy Peralta, Director of Photography, who clearly turned the film into a rivetting, no-fuss cinematic experience (her technique does not appear to call attention to itself but only to the discreet charms of the so-called average Filipino subjects, the man-on-the-street, if you will, capturing them during so many poignant , even humorous unguarded moments; impressive multi-angle shots); Editor Chuck Gutierrez, for whom connecting-the-dots, making aesthetic sense of this huge tapestry of native scenarios, must have been quite a challenge, especially considering that the film covered at least fourteen major destinations, also trying to seamlessly connect one place and time to another ; Raffy Magsaysay, Jason Galindez, in charge of Sound Production and Design: hands-down to these guys for achieving a superb job of not only showcasing the musical intentions of the film but also gently picking up all the day-to-day sounds in the various locations; and last but certainly not the least, once more, kudos to the prolific Florante Aguilar for his most engaging musical score plus his having shared in the film his scintillating passing classical guitar strains from such classic compositions as the haunting Ili Ili Tulog Anay (based on a traditional Hiligaynon folk song), Dahil sa Isang Bulaklak (Because of One Flower), Payapang Daigdig (Peaceful World) by Felipe de Leon, Bayan Ko, Maala-ala Mo Kaya and Sing Sing.
The eventual parting of the three gentlemen of the old harana school would not be easy, especially for Mang Felipe. As his two fellow-haranistas embraced him to say goodbye at one point, he tearily said, “I hope we see each other again.” To which Mang Tino reassuringly replied, “If you like I’ll visit.” Mang Romeo for his part would sound more pensive when he remarked, “Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again. Up there.” These last words from Mang Romeo, probably said in light jest, to ease the pain of parting, would prove to be prophetic. Though not indicated in the film Celestino ‘Mang Tino’ Aniel passed on in September last year, about two months after this film had its world premiere at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Little Theater. He may have been the most frail of health. During their visit to IIRR – and this is of course captured in the film – he had to exit at one point during their performance to take his medication and to cool off before a fan in an adjacent room. His last full moment in the film shows him back in his hometown, at a videoke joint singing to another Constancio de Guzman composition, Lumang Simbahan (In the Old Church), off the music machine, of course. He defends his presence there: “The reason I sing here in the videoke is so that I could entertain myself. The harana culture of the past seems to have disappeared. So this is what I do now. Because we no longer have harana. “Felipe ‘Mang Felipe’ Alonzo would also pass on in late March this year. Romeo ‘Mang Romeo’ Bergunio, fortunately, is still with us. He said he has stopped fishing for a living altogether because ” there’s no more fish to catch.”
But before all this coming and going would take place our three princes of the harana, through the vision-driven initiatives of Florante Aguilar, would realize what in the beginning may have felt more like a pipe dream: the recording of the first classic harana album after a deafening fifty-year lull. It can be said that Aguilar, his able production team, along with our three harana gentlemen beat an awesome deadline. Mang Tino and Mang Felipe had lived to see the film and the album completed.
Hopefully all this would lead to many more efforts to sustain institutional and public patronage of this eminent art form cum social tradition. Exemplary documentary films like Harana certainly bring renewed awareness – though bittersweet – to this most urgent matter of the fast vanishing traditions in the Philippines.