Browsing through the Ermita antique shops on Saturday mornings is a bad habit I picked up when I was in college in the early 1980s.
Prices were reasonable then and there was much to be found even for a student on allowance. The other “early bird” on Saturdays was then Education Minister Jaime C. Laya, who would sometimes turn up shortly before opening time and peer through the shop windows. I was on a limited budget then and couldn’t buy paintings by Juan Luna or Fernando Amorsolo like those I enjoyed in museums. I couldn’t afford religious images in ivory or church silver like those I enjoyed in San Agustin, Casa Manila and the innards of Puerta Isabel, then used as display and storage by the Intramuros Administration. I wouldn’t give ancient Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai ceramics a second look, the same with ethnic artifacts; those I enjoyed in the National Museum. In the 1980s all the good stuff was always “reserved for Gob.” I learned later this insatiable collector named “Gob” was Doctor Laya whom dealers always addressed by his earlier title as Central Bank governor.
Now that I have disposable income, there is not much to come by; and if you do find something good, prices are steep. Nevertheless, Ermita provided many of the books, pamphlets and curiosities that now make up my modest Filipiniana collection. My first purchases were pre-war photographs at P5 each; you bought a few and you were made to pick from a bilao full of fossilized crablets that were over a thousand years old. Books and periodicals arrived by the sack and I would prepare myself to get dirty, thrilled to find one or two good items in a junk heap.
Dealers tolerated the persistent student, thus I never left empty-handed. I always found needles in the proverbial haystack. Once I found a box of old records that were small and run on 75 revolutions per minute on reconfigured gramophones the dealers called “grapopono.” I set aside those with record sleeves that had the Rizal monument, and when I examined the labels closely these were pre-war recordings made in the Manila Grand Opera House. I ignored the foreign music and chose music by Filipino composers or performances of Western classics by Filipino artists. Poet Michael Coroza has a machine that can play these records and transfer the music to a disc. Unfortunately, I hid the records so well I cannot find them!
Searching for these records I came across sheet music, mostly kundiman, by Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Buencamino. These were printed in Manila and were sold in the music shops in Platerias Street in Quiapo. The prize acquisitions were piano music by T. Araullo and J. Estela, whose covers were in art nouveau style. These were printed abroad, in Europe and the United States. What fascinates me is the idea that unlike archival documents that provide bits and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a piece of sheet music can be played, making the tune and art of a previous era come alive again.
One of the music pieces I hope to find someday is the 1899 copy of Julian Felipe’s march that has since become our National Anthem. I photocopied one in the United States, and listening to the solo music on a piano recreates how Emilio Aguinaldo first heard it in 1898, before it was arranged for a brass band that played in Kawit on the day the Filipinos declared Philippine independence from Spain. The second on my wish list is a habanera or a danza Filipina titled “Recuerdos de Capiz,” composed by Julio Nakpil in 1891. It was awarded a diploma of honor in the Exposicion Regional Filipina in 1895. The cover of the piece depicts a beautiful Filipina strumming a guitar, with a bahay kubo in the background. Contemporary copies of the piece can still be found, but it is the 19th-century edition printed in Paris that I wish to find.
Nakpil was the composer of the Katipunan, and the martial tune “Marangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan” would probably have become our national anthem if Andres Bonifacio had not been deposed as supremo of the Katipunan and later executed for treason in 1897 by the revolutionary government that succeeded his own. Listed on the back are other compositions by Nakpil: “Ilang-ilang,” a mazurka de salon; a piece for four hands titled “Luz poetica de la Aurora,” a pas a quatre “Exposicion regional” and two pasa-dobles “Pasig Pantayanin” and “Biyak-na-Bato.” For the morbid there were two mazurka funebre “Pahimakas” (based on Rizal’s poem “Mi Ultimo Adios”) and “Sueno eterno” (Eternal dream). All these and more were then available in the Manila music store of Oliver y Trill that is no more.
The only other piece of revolutionary music made permanent in printed form was “Jocelynang Baliwag” which has been dated 1896 and was described as “musica de Legitimo Kundiman Procedente del Campo Insurrecto” (music of the legitimate kundiman that proceeds from the insurgent camp). A sample of this sheet music was for sale in a Quezon City antique shop in the late 1990s, and those being the heady days of the Philippine Centennial, I just enjoyed handling it, wondering what it is like to hear rather than read Philippine history. Music is part of the Filipino struggle for nationhood. Significant tunes, other than the National Anthem and “Bayan Ko,” should be taught in schools so young people can hear and experience history outside of books.
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