THERE IS an intriguing photograph of our National Artist for Literature Amado V. Hernandez in a huddle with the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Both men have cigarettes in their hands and seem to be discussing something important.

To find out more about the photograph, I asked Hernandez?s widow, Honorata ?Atang? de la Rama, also a National Artist, and got this curt reply, ?Kapag lumabas sa bakuran namin ang asawa ko, wala akong pakialam. (When my husband is out of the house I don?t care).? Taken out of context, this quote seems unfeeling, almost hostile, but that may have been one secret of their marriage.

Hernandez participated in the 1966 International War Crimes Tribunal organized by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to investigate the US intervention in Vietnam. If Hernandez?s papers in the National Library are complete, the proceedings of this tribunal would be of historical interest for those studying the Vietnam War. There must be other photographs taken during the two meetings that were held in Stockholm and Copenhagen, maybe one of Hernandez with Russell.

The National Library Special Collections is in the Filipiniana Division and preserves collections of books, papers, photographs, clippings and memorabilia from various people: Amado Hernandez, Lope K. Santos, Higino Francisco, Raymundo Bañas and many others. It is a gold-mine for researchers. For example, it was here that Dr. Buenaventura Medina recovered ?Orosman at Zafiro,? a long lost three-act komedya by Francisco Baltazar, who is better known for ?Florante at Laura.?

Atang de la Rama was a great storyteller and I regret not recording the regular Sunday morning conversations we had on the phone. It would have made an engaging read like the best-selling ?Tuesdays with Morrie.? Atang would not talk of her personal life nor that of her husband, but she remembered much more.

Once she talked about occupational songs, those sung by coconut vendors, fishmongers, mataderos, etc. She not only remembered the lyrics, she actually sang these over the phone. Those songs are now lost unless some of them can be found in the papers of anthropologists H. Otley Beyer (now in the National Library of Australia) and E. Arsenio Manuel (presently unlocated).

Another time, Atang de la Rama told me stories about Nicanor Abelardo and how he drew music from everyday Philippine life or the experiences of his friends. The story of a friend?s tragic love life was the inspiration for ?Nasaan ka irog? and when Atang told him of the bawdy songs sung by the boatmen ferrying commuters on the Pasig River, the composer spent hours on a banca to catch the tunes and the lyrics of these songs. While sitting in the banca, Abelardo caught the rhythm and sway of the river that became a musical theme in the famous ?Mutya ng Pasig.?

Today Abelardo is a name we associate with the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theater (Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo) and the UP Conservatory of Music in Diliman (Abelardo Hall). It is unfortunate that Abelardo is best remembered for a handful of iconic tunes, the romantic kundiman that he once called the true form of Philippine music and the academic hymn of the University of the Philippines ?UP Beloved? that many students refer to as ?U.P. Gilagid.? While Abelardo is often associated with the kundiman, he outgrew this and composed ?modern? music that is rarely performed today and not readily available on CD or on the Internet.

While going through my old notebooks in search of a column topic, I found my Abelardo interview notes with Atang de la Rama and Col. Antonino Buenaventura who would later become National Artists for Music. I also interviewed then UP College of Music dean Ramon Santos who was recently selected as National Artist but was not confirmed by the former President.

Then there was the short story writer Arturo B. Rotor, who turned out to be a medical doctor whose name is immortalized in medical literature for the ?Rotor Syndrome,? and also in botanical taxonomy because there are orchids that bear his name. Rotor took up music in UP and knew Abelardo as a teacher. Some of his students remember him taking alcohol as a stimulant before class thus Rotor narrated:

?Under his instruction, abstruse rules in harmony and counterpoint became clear and reasonable. What enormous patience he had. For although he knew all of them by heart, he was never too tired or too busy to explain them all over again for the twentieth time to the dullard. It was in the classroom that I first witnessed his extraordinary ability for harmony and counterpoint. He would take any exercise in our textbook, look at it once, and write it on the blackboard from memory without mistake. Then?what was the lesson about? Seventh chord harmonization? With chalk in hand, he would go from the first note to the last and harmonize that completely. Not for an instant would there be a break or pause in the march of his thought. Or?did we want a four-part counterpoint? In three minutes, that eight-part exercise would glitter with contrapuntal devices, perfect in every detail.?

Browsing through my notes and files made me realize that this mess needs to be organized so that future researchers will benefit from the stray bits of obscure information I have gathered over the years.

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