Mindful of Music

Joey Ayala

What is music?  Convenient definition: organized sound.

This may be a cold and simplistic way of describing something that moves us to the high heavens but it’s accurate and flexible enough to accommodate the whole range of music from most popular to the weirdest compositions.

Music is extremely mathematical, emotional, abstract, and concrete.  This may sound like a mass of unresolvable contradictions but consider -

On National Artistry

Madalas na akong ma-tawag na “National Artist” kahit ‘di (pa) ako nagagawaran nang pormal. Masarap ang pakiramdam sapagka’t ito’y katibayan na may nakukuhang halaga ang taumbayan sa aking buhay, diwa at gawa.

On Awards

Sadyang may limitasyon ang award. Ang antas ng kamalayan at pangangailangan ng nagbibigay ng kahit anong award ang siyang nagiging batayan ng kung sino ang inaabutan ng award. Maraming karapat-dapat kilalanin at bigyang-pugay, mga kilala’t ‘di-kilala. Nguni’t, tulad ng isda sa dagat, ‘di lahat ang nakikita, at kung mag kasamang salapi ang award, ‘di lahat maaambunan.

On the National Artist Award

http://www.ncca.gov.ph/main.php - Joey Ayala music and lyrics commissioned by NCCA, voices of Onie and Tapati there...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeyayala - Joey Ayala photos on Flickr.

On the last day of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts' window for membership applications to its committees I faxed in my application Music Committee upon the prodding of mentor Prof. Jun de Leon.  What's in this for me, I wondered.  An adventure, at least, whispered the optimistic angel.  Headaches, growled the other angel.

My application made it in.  I attended my first meeting and got elected vice-chair to Ka Jun's chairmanship.  A few weeks later he resigned (!) and I became chairman-by-default of the Music Committee.

In 1981 I sat in front of 2 microphones and served as a test sound-source for the guerilla studio of the Development Education Media Services (DEMS) Foundation in Davao City.  It was a simple setup, the 2 mics fed into a 2-channel mixer that led into a stereo cassette deck.  That first session led to many others, resulting in a debut album entitled Panganay ng Umaga.

Today I have a home studio that’s low end relative to what others have but is capable of doing so much more than the DEMS studio 27 years ago, and I find myself doing to others what was done unto me. 

Many Christmases have come and gone

From narra floor and grandfather clock

To concrete home on digital block

From CFC-propelled snow and papier-mache belen

To tropical hail and zero-waste kitchen

From real dead pine trees and cracked tinsel balls

To real pine scent and mammoth malls

From mountainous nights and silent songs

To spastic lights, to smoke

From thousands of birds flown away at last

From forests growing in the past

Teacher:  (Pointing to a letter “a” on the blackboard) Maria, what is this?