Filed under: Human Rights, history, music | Tags: anti-mining, gangsa, hudhud, ifugao, kasibu, nueva vizcaya, oceana gold mining, pattong, resistance
Apo, naimbag nga rabii
Let us in, we are tired and soaked by the rain
Your hearth is lively
Welcoming us with its warmth
Inang, this watercress soup is delicious
We do not have this back home
Your upland rice is sweet
Ours are soft yet tasteless
Ading, please move over
Forgive us but we must rest
Do not worry, our feet are clean
Washed by your cold water outside
Tomorrow, apo, inang, ading
Tell us your story over coffee
We know that people of the hudhud
Have many to tell us lowlanders
Play the gangsa, dance the pattong
Look into the camera
Speak to the microphone
For we do not know much
Tell us of the time when the mountains were green
And the streams were clear
Show us where the wild boars roamed
Where you picked gold from stones
We will be back some months from now
We hope to bring good news
More importantly, we hope to see you
Still home, up here, among the clouds
We shall dine on watercress soup
Drink coffee, eat red rice
We will dance to the gangsa
In solidarity, in victory.
May 16, 2009
Alimit, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya
2:25 p.m.
* Apo—a salutation to elder persons / Naimbag nga rabii—good evening / Inang—mother / Ading—younger sibling / Hudhud—Ifugao folk song sung by Ifugao women while harvesting rice / gangsa—brass gongs / pattong—traditional Cordilleran dance
This is so hard!
There are times in one’s life when hard decisions need to be made. This early Saturday morning, I am going through one such agonizing time.
Through the years, I have built a respectable collection of audio CDs that could make a music radio station or a record shop feel insecure. I admit I have been to Hidalgo Street in Quiapo that often, which is saying I am a pirate CD freak.
Name them, I’ve got ‘em—from Matt Monroe to Michael Bubble. But I must hasten to add that I am quite picky with the albums I buy. I skipped most of the late 90’s and the new millennium music—you know, Backstreets, Christinas and Hales. I have Nirvana, E-heads, Yano, True Faith and other local bands, however. What I am dying to have is a CD of Weird Al Yankovic. It’s been more than a decade since I lost my cassette copy of Weird Al. I miss him so much. And progressive and underground songs? Got them, too—from Asin to songs produced by Armas.
But my problem really is this: I don’t think Creative or iPod has a mobile music player that could take in all of the songs I want saved. If they can’t do it, my Quiapo iPod sure can’t either.
Since I attended the Radio Journalism course at the Ateneo I have become fairly good at picking songs from my CDs and converting them into wav, mp3 or wma files. So far, I have converted all of my Beatles songs (the hundreds of them), New Wave (New Romantics they call them in Britland), The Jerks, Tambisan sa Sining, Sining Lila, The Hotdogs, Pinoy Rock and other classics and underground songs. In the pipeline are Queen, Bob Marley, E-heads, Yano, Beach Boys, The Platters, Sinatra, and many others.
In the next months, I will try to edit their sound qualities. Remember that most of these songs were recorded and edited using manual equalizers that rely solely on the technician’s ear. Digital editing software makes it so much easier to eliminate pops, hisses and noises.
What I find hard to decide on is which songs to put in my portable player. Songs go in and out as fast as Erap’s girlfriends enter or exit his bedroom door.
I tried converting all of them to wma. While the level of compression is great—imagine a 160 kbps When in Rome classic shrunk down to only 12 kbps!—sound quality is hopelessly compromised it is unacceptable to my fine-tuned ear. I can’t let Chikoy Pura sound ngongo like gloria, can I? So I settle on mp3 at the least. What’s the use of insisting on stereo earphones with very wide ranges if the audio files sound as muffled as CBCP statements?
Ancient Greeks said that the more you know the more you don’t know. It is certainly true in this case. The day when I learned audio editing is the day I was confronted with so many new problems I don’t have a clue how to solve.
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07-17-2006
