Composing for "Bintao"

The prospect back then of oil hitting $100/barrel pushed me to say yes to Ferdie when he asked me to compose the music for the play, Bintao. I dabble in music, but I only have the guts to compose music for myself.

Truth is, after composing the songs songs for my plays, "Taguan, Habulan, Patintero" and "Pangarap", I would fiddle with my guitar once in a while, or pound on a piano whenever one's available, and I really thought there's nothing left in me as far as music is concerned.

So I said yes. I will do it. 12-15 songs. In a month or less. I scanned the script of Efren Yambot, and asked if I could re-write some to give it a meter I could easily work with... I was given permission to re-write as I please.

Some of the songs reminded me of some of my previews compositions... thanks to Roman reminding me that this song reminded him of that song from "Pangarap " or "Taguan." Well, I never really exerted any effort to make this sound like or different from any previous compositions. I just wrote and played them as they came to me. So there.

I don't read nor write notes so "writing" music for me entails humming a tune and hoping I don't forget it until I record it, or at least until I've taught the melody to the actor who's gonna sing it. In one of the pieces in this collection, I asked Ethan to help me with the vocal arrangement - and he notated the song for me.

I should learn how to read notes.

Here they are. Hope you enjoy listening to them as much I did making them:

http://altomonte.multiply.com/music/item/32/Bintao_-_The_Songs....

PS: Bintao opens on Jan. 26 at the University of the Cordilleras... for more info, checkout: http://bintao.multiply.com/

Idiot

After working through the holidays, the tickets to Jovianney Cruz's concert at the Baguio Country Club were heaven sent - needed the break.

We got there a minute late at 5:31, the tickets showed a 5:30 showtime, which meant we were just on time. There were less than twenty people when we arrived, and by the time Cruz began Mozart's thing in C Major, there were only about 50.

And there they were: two photographers clicking away. It was a piano concert, I could here myself breathe, and the sound of their shutters was competing with Cruz's wonderful performance. But, I thought, that's a guy sitting infront of a piano - on a proscenium stage: take a few shots from stage left, move on to stage center, and then a couple from stage right, and that's it: I really thought they'd realize how much their camera sounds (plus the sight of them moving around the ballroom during the performance) were ruining it for everyone (it was soooo annoying and I can only imagine how much more annoying it was for the performer himself) and that they'd get their precious shots done soon and sit down and be quiet like everyone else.

Wrong.

They clicked away throughout the performance. And just when I thought it couldn't get worse - an ABS-CBN crew arrived, noisily the door was opened for them and noisily they settled themselves at the back - all this in the middle of a Copland piece. And then: the ABS-CBN cameraman turned on his video camera and started shooting, first from the sides and then (!) he went right infront of the stage blocking everyone's view of the pianist (!!!)

And then the unthinkable: The guy went up onstage, got so close to the pianist that the camera was practically right in Cruz's face. He didn't stay there 5 seconds, he didn't stay there 10 seconds, he hovered and hovered and went around the piano and got his camera as close to the guy's face as possible. This was worse than Manila Pen, I thought.

And I thought, too, this is how art and artists are treated in Baguio - with utter disrespect.

I couldn't help myself, right after the show I went to the ABS-CBN reporter and told her what an idiot her cameraman was, and just as I was telling her that, I saw the cameraman coming towards us, so I decided to tell him that too - that he's an idiot.

And as for the photographers: I hope you got photos worthy of your arrogance.

PORTRAITS DVD

PORTRAITS: History of a Hill Station DVD now available. For inquiries email us at portraits.baguio@gmail.com or call mobile (63) 920.631.9593 or visit http://portraitsbauio.multiply.com

A Walk In The Park

The path laid out before him began in the classroom of a prestigious educational institution where people like him – standing below five feet tall, dark skin, less than aquiline nose – gets derided, mocked, discriminated against. Then that path went on to a few years in Europe where his eyes opened to a much bigger world, other worlds where friars did not rape women nor seize lands from the people, where governments worked for the people and not the other way around. Then that path made a u-turn back home, where courageously continued on bringing with him two books that would open the eyes of his people, and earn him the ire of an abusive government. He walked on and the path ended with a short work from his cell and ended at an open field where he faces a phalanx of soldiers with rifles pointed at him. And Jose Rizal was dead, martyred and now revered as this country’s National Hero.

Andres Bonifacio’s path ended with a climb up a mountain where it ended with a bullet not from the enemy’s gun, but from a fellow Filipino’s. Macario Sakay’s path led him to the gallows. Ninoy Aquino’s path ended with those few steps from the top of a plane’s exit ladder. The farmers who fought for what was rightly theirs found the end of their path at the gates of Malacañang where they were gunned down by the same government forces who were supposed to defend them.

The path to heroism is sometimes fraught with terrifying challenges, ends, but not always. In fact, a lot of times, it’s a walk in the park.

All a policeman needs to do is to not accept that five hundred peso bill, do his job and issue that ticket, and there would be much less accidents on the road, much less smoke belchers and a much cleaner air. All a mayor needs to do is do what he’s mandated to do – serve the people, and make decisions that would result in a better life for his constituents and not in a fatter bank account for himself and his cohorts at the expense of the very same people who put him in office. All a president needs to do is to defend the constitution, as he or she has sworn to do, and not trample on it just to cling to power, or even simply let the wheels of justice turn as they’re supposed to, so as to let the world know that there is hope for justice in this country, instead of letting a monumental crime go unpunished, letting the world know instead that this country’s justice system can be circumvented by those who have enough money, never mind if that money is the result of plundering the coffers of a country where majority of its people are literally starving to death – where even a child can see the hopelessness of it all and end her own life to escape living the rest of her life in misery.

And as for the rest of us, all we need to do is cross the street where we’re supposed to, stop our car for a few seconds to let other people cross the street, not park our cars where we’re not supposed to, throw that cigarette butt in a trash can and not at the gutters where millions of other cigarette butts await that single one.

We can gripe all we want about how wrong the city government was in insisting on collecting only segregated garbage without a thorough information drive to educate the people on how it is done and what the benefits of doing it are, or we can also just begin simply segregating our garbage at home, and start telling our neighbors who don’t that a cleaner, healthier city for our children is surely worth the extra effort of putting biodegradables, recyclables and residuals in separate trash bags.

For some, it’s a journey that ends in death, for others, it’s a walk in the park – and we can all be heroes.

With just a little extra effort...

Discovery to evolution

Words of warning and desecrated graves

Shooting footages for our second episode, which portrays life in Baguio from the early 1900’s to the coming of Word War II, we visited the grave of one of the city’s most esteemed mayors, Eusebius Halsema, who served the city as its chief executive for 17 years. We were given general directions to the exact site and a description: nothing fancy, Eusebius’ grave lies next his wife’s, flat on the ground, no mausoleums, no imposing structures. We search in the general area where it’s supposed to be and after going through the names on tombstones for more than half an hour, we still haven’t found it. There were men playing basketball at a makeshift hoop near the Baguio’s cemetery’s entrance, and exasperated after a half-hour’s search, we approached them and asked if they knew the exact location. They lead us to a secluded site, and pointed to an area overrun by weeds and grass. We clear the area a bit and there were the graves, desecrated: the bronze headstones of both graves were missing. According a caretaker at the cemetery, they were stolen just recently.

After less than a decade of construction frenzy and overcoming criticisms from various sectors of Philippine society – the Americans eventually succeeded in realizing their dream of a hill station in Benguet. After only a few years since they discovered Kafagway, they have built a road that would connect it to the lowlands, a hospital, a hotel, schools, a few government and recreational structures, in the present site of Baguio. This amidst calls for the abolition of the project, particularly coming from the locals who felt that the government was wasting a lot of public funds, Filipino funds, in fact, for the benefit of the Western elite, which is not very different from the opposition just a few years ago to the development of a former military rest and recreation center into a world-class tourist hub.

The construction boom in Baguio in the early years of the 20^th century was guided by a general blueprint by renowned city planner, Daniel Burnham. An urban site that can function as the country’s summer capital, a major health and recreational resort, and a significant market center. While Burnham provided expansive spaces for the construction of private residences and relevant public public and commercial structures, he strongly opposed dense settlement in Baguio. In his recommendation, Burnham stated that “The placing of formal architectural silhouettes upon the summits of the surrounding hills would make a hard skyline and go far toward destroying the charm of this beautiful landscape.” He added, “The preservation of the existing woods and other plantings should be minutely looked after, not only on the eminences immediately contigous to Baguio proper, but also for the surrounding mountains; and the carrying out of these precautions should be one of the first steps in the development of the proposed town.”

The early builders of the city, buoyed by the enthusiasm and hands-on direction of Governor-General Cameron Forbes, religiously followed the Burnham plan, and the result was one of Asia’s most beautiful hill stations.

Looking at the city today, the mountain skyline replaced with one of G.I. sheet roofs, commercial billboards and concrete buildings, it is not entirely to wrong to conclude that Burnham must be turning in his grave.

A change in administration came in 1913, and the new Governor-General, F.B. Harrison, initially was not as big a fan of Baguio as Forbes. The annual tradition of transferring the seat of government to this summer capital was discontinued, for the in the view of the new administration, this practice not only was costly, but downright inefficient for every year, when for a few months government officials would discharge their duties from up in Baguio, communication between the national, provincial and municipal offices was being disrupted.

But it took only a couple of visits to Baguio for Harrison to soften his stand against this mountain resort - he himself was eventually was captivated by the beauty of hill station. Consequently, his visits to the city became more and more frequent, staying longer and longer each time, and perhaps even exceeding the time spent up in Baguio by his predecessor. So while Harrison gave in to the call for the abandonment of the summer capital concept, he nevertheless supported its further development as a place for rest and relaxation.

In 1920, with the appointment of Eusebius Halsema, a civil engineer, the city’s development went into higher gear. Among Baguio’s achievements under the watch of Mayor Halsema were the city’s extensive well-paved roads, which, towards the end of his term as Mayor in 1937, totalled close to 110 kilometres. Baguio also boasted of having, at that time, the most modern street lighting system (sodium vapor lamps) at the market plaza, 3 hydro-electric plants and 600 telephone lines. The Loakan Airport, built to arrest the constant airplane crashes at Burnham Park and the plains of La Trinidad which served as temporary landing areas before, also came to be under Halsema’s watch. From a small city of 5,000, Halsema oversaw the tranformation of Baguio into a vibrant city of 25,000, said to be its maximum holding capacity.

Thus, in the early decades of 1900’s, the Carinos, Suellos, Caranteses, Camdases and Molintases, among the first settlers in Kafagway, together with other nameless Igorots, nurtured the land; Worcester and Wright planted the seeds, Kennon, Burnham, Malcolm, Forbes, and even Harrison, encouraged its growth; and the guidance and efficient administration of Mayor Eusebius Halsema all contributed to the fruition of the “American Dream” of a major hill station in Benguet – a fully developed city in harmony with its natural environment.

Today, all 300,000 of us, as we scratch our heads at what have become of this once highland oasis, let us be reminded by one of Burnham’s forewarnings:

“…unless early protective measures are taken, the misdirected initiative of enthusiastic lumbermen will soon cause the destruction of this beautiful scenery.”

If the desecrated grave of Mayor E.J. Halsema is an indication of how much we value our past and what it tells us, then may God have mercy on this city.

“A century since… the early years,” the second episode of “PORTRAITS: Tales From A Hill Station,” airs Sept. 30, at 4:00PM on SkyCable-Baguio Ch. 12. Replays every Monday and Friday, 7:00PM.

Looking back and up ahead

Welcome to Baguio, today: a bustling cosmopolitan of roughly 300,000 souls – though on certain days the number may seem so much more than that. A melting pot of different cultures, Baguio is home to people coming from the different parts of the country – and the world. Among those who have made this once quaint summer resort town their home are Chinese, Americans, Indonesians, Indians, Iranians, Australians, British, Afghans, Argentines, Arabs, Brazilians, Danes, French, Germans, Greeks, Jordanians, Mexicans, among others. And more recently and significantly adding to the ever growing Baguio population – Koreans. The city has gone very far from being a densely vegetated, mostly uninhabited pasture land to becoming an American rest, recreation and recuperation resort to a highly urbanized city bursting at the seams.

PORTRAITS: Tales From A Hill Station, is an audio-visual portrayal of the city – all its fascinating facets as told by its rich historical and cultural heritage, and its people.

Among the most common gripes of Baguio citizens these days is the seeming “invasion” of the city by “outsiders.” In a conversation with some locals recently, one lamented that the true citizens of Baguio, perhaps by true citizens he meant those who were born and grew up here, have become a minority in their own city. It is true that in recent years there was a sudden influx of migrants to the city – young families from Manila who wished for a better environment for their children, foreign retirees who took advantage of the city’s invigorating climate and a place where their dollar pensions went a much longer way, entrepreneurs who want to cash in on Baguio’s rapid commercialisation, and foreign students who take advantage of the lower cost of education here, among others. All this happened in what felt like the blink of an eye – one day everywhere in Baguio is less than ten minutes away and you wake up the next morning stuck in traffic and it took you an hour to cover a distance of four kilometers. This “invasion” happened quickly, and so easily, and this is quite interesting: while today all it takes is money and a willing dummy for a foreigner to own land in the city, the once mighty Spanish colonizers did not have it quite as easily as the city’s current “colonizers.”

Though most of Baguio’s written history seems to begin with the arrival of the Americans, it was the Spaniards who first stumbled upon this mountain paradise and realized its potential as a health and recreation center. But conquering the mountain people of the Cordilleras was definitely not a walk in the park, not even for a mighty country like Spain that for centuries was able to build and maintain an expansive empire covering parts of the Americas, Pacific and Southeast Asia. But, from the time Miguel Lopez de Legazpi claimed the whole archipelago in the name of God, his king and his country in 1565, up to the late 1700’s, the Igorots of the Cordilleras humiliated the conquistadores – despite numerous attempts to subjugate the highlanders, they remained free and unconquered. In fact as early as 1630, Fray Juan Medina, a Spaniard, conceded that the mountain people are the most unconquerable of all the natives of this country.

The Spaniards weren’t actually the first foreigners to set foot in the Cordilleras, certain historical accounts claim that the Igorots had a thriving trade relationship with the Chinese back during the Tang dynasty, or about 500 A.D. The Chinese were all over the Cordilleras – passing through Cagayan to reach the Kalingas and the Apayaos, via Vigan to Cervantes to get to the Tingians of Abra and to Bontoc, Mt. Province, and Pangasinan to reach the Igorots of Benguet. The Igorots had access to a much coveted commodity: Gold – among the main reasons the Spaniards just couldn’t turn their backs and ignore the highlanders’ continuing defiance of Spanish authority. So for two hundred years, they made several attempts to get their hands on that gold, but the Igorots prevailed – Governor General Diego Salcedo, towards the end of the 17^th century, described the enduring freedom of the Igorots “a scandal, a mockery, a cause for derision among foreigners that right in the heart of the colony, in the main island of Luzon, this group of people remained pagans, and their gold remained out of reach.”

In the late 1700’s, the highlanders dipped their hands at something that was very dear to the colonizers – they defied the Spanish tobacco monopoly and maintained a clandestine trade of the product in Northern Luzon. This gave the colonizers’ resolve to subdue the Igorots a boost, which led to a proposal for a full-scale invasion of the mountains in 1796.

A series of unrelenting offensives were conducted, and, having to fight both the Spanish military might and diseases like small pox brought in by the invading foreigners, Benguet eventually fell into the hands of the Spaniards. It was not an absolute conquest: though most settlers in the area were forced to move deeper into the mountains of the Cordilleras, throughout the rest of the 19^th century the Igorots bombarded the Spaniards with sporadic uprisings – and by the time the Spaniards have settled and fully established a commandancia politico-militar in what is now La Trinidad, a bigger storm was already brewing in Manila which would spread throughout the country, including the Cordilleras, and result in the demise of Spanish domination in the country – the Katipunan uprising.

And today, we ask, hundreds of years since their defiance of foreign domination, a century since its birth as a city, 50 years or so since surviving World War II, more than a decade since rising from the rubbles of the 1990 earthquake, what do these tales from a hill station amount to? The city’s centennial is fast approaching, and there’s no better time than now to look back and see where the city is now, what it has gone through, where it’s headed, and, hopefully, we may know where we really want it to go and what the best way is to get it there.

Today, as some of us lament the loss of Baguio’s original beauty, its charm, its pine scented air and sunflower covered mountain sides, we may ask: how did the people of these mountains manage to preserve their culture, protect their land and environment, guard their most valuable resources through the ages in the face of mighty colonizers? Perhaps it’s quite simple, really: past generations cared enough.

PORTRAITS: Tales from a Hill Station, presented by local multimedia production group Open Space Projects and sponsored by The Rural Bank of Itogon in cooperation with the Office of the City Mayor, premieres today, Sunday, September 23, 2007 at 4:00PM on SkyCable Baguio Ch. 12.

Created, written and directed by Karlo Marko Altomonte and hosted by Kelly Erin McGurk, PORTRAITS: Tales from a Hill Station is being produced with a purely local cast and crew including RL Abella-Altomonte, executive producer/narrator; Emiloone West Fianza and Ana Badon, researchers/production assistants; Jojo Lamaria research consultant and still photographer; Boybi Sarmiento, technical director; Andre Soriano, assistant director; Katherine Ebba and Freida Fernandez, marketing and promotions.

For inquiries: Mobile 0920.631.9593, e-mail portraits.baguio@gmail.com, or visit our site at http://portraitsbaguio.multiply.com.

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