31 YEARS OF CEBU POP: Picking Potential Hits

It’s no small kick to hold a songwriting competition. Especially a major one where the songs are to be presented in a flashy public performance for the final judging. The cost of production alone is already huge; the prizes could add up to much more. That’s why such competitions are uncommon. Plans are often foiled by funding concerns, often to oblivion. Those that are lucky enough to be launched don’t last very long; like, for example, the Metro Manila Popular Music Festival, the country’s pioneering and once foremost songwriting competition.

On the other hand, original songs for the competition run out quickly. Within a few short years the song entries begin to sound the same, like some rehash of the same songs over and over. The songwriters get all burned out, and the public gets fed up.

Making songs to enter in competitions is quite a challenge, indeed. The melody shall breathe of the yearnings of the soul and the lyrics engage the imagination. Each song shall come out original, with qualities superb enough to excel over the other contenders.

Songwriters joining the Cebu Popular Music Festival go through the same hurdle every time. From the hundreds of songs that are entered in each Cebu Pop, only twelve make it to the competition night. Only one becomes the grand prize winner.

Pop songs are those whose words and music fit the musical taste of the general population; hence, popular, or pop for short. On victory night, though, the Cebu Pop winning song has so far only wowed the judges; technically, it’s not really popular yet. The song that wins is usually one that speaks of the present life realities, which people can easily relate with and, therefore, has good potential of becoming popular. 

A song entered at the Cebu Pop can be anything its songwriter wants it to be. Yet, it’s an advantage for the song to bear some semblance of what Cebuanos have come to identify as a local tune. It is a way of upholding the integrity of the Cebuano musical heritage and for evoking a kind of sentimental affinity with the local public.

I personally don’t mind that the characteristic wailing orchestral sound that had for so long been a customary feature in local song recordings – the ballads especially – is now hardly there. The new musical arrangement and instrumentation styles are a welcome innovation, as they effectively adapt our local music to the times, which is essential for promoting the songs.

Local songs now sound fresh and contemporary, not stale and dated like they used to. These past years the Cebu Pop songs have been recorded with a rich layer of synthesizer sound. I find this to have given the songs a present-day feel, which boosts their chances for popularity.

New words and colloquialisms are tolerated in the lyrics of the Cebu Pop entries. But since the whole undertaking is also aimed at preserving and nurturing the local language, proper use of Cebuano words is encouraged. For instance, kagubatan is an awkward alternative for the Cebuano panggubatan if what is meant is battlefield. Kagubatan is a Tagalog for forest.

Another example is the word banyagà, which is Tagalog for foreign. Cebuanos, however, use banyagà to mean cruel or heartless. This local word must have originally meant foreign, all right; but its meaning has since completely changed among Cebuanos, hence the present popular connotation should stand. While songwriters may invoke poetic license in their use of words, they probably should not use words that, in the light of the present general usage, depart from the sense of what they want their songs to say.

Another important thing is proper syllabication and phrasing. The verbal element shall flow very well with the tune, for it to come across smooth and clear. The breaking of the sound components of the words shall properly match the rise or fall of the music. Matud Nila would not have become a Cebuano classic that it is today if its lyrics were structured like “Matud ni… la, ako di… lì angay…”

It’s really quite a task separating the intrinsic qualities of a song from the singer’s interpretation of it. Cebu Pop is a songwriting competition, not a singing contest. Although a special award is given for the best performance of a song entry, the quality of the singing has nothing to do with the value of the song itself.   

The contest criteria are well defined. Every once in a while, though, there comes a song so powerful that it transcends the rules. Both its words and music are way too universal to be considered as particularly reflective of the local experience. Such a song is hard to ignore, and hard to put aside that there’s nowhere else to put it but at the very top.

The Cebu Pop board of judges is composed in such a way that it represents today’s music-loving public. Often the mix consists of artists and professionals who have a known expertise in or fondness for music and local arts and culture. The variety includes songwriters, singers, music professors, Cebuano language advocates, journalists, businessmen and so on; people young and old.

The judges are not known until competition night. They are individually contacted just a few days before the final judging, which is on the Friday closest to the Sinulog. They either don’t know each other personally or have no prior knowledge that they’d be sitting together in the board, so that no judge may influence another by comparing personal choices beforehand.

Every judge, however, is given a recording and the corresponding lyric sheets of the finalist songs a day in advance, for him or her to keenly scrutinize. It can be said that the winning songs are, for the most part, picked before the competition night. What usually remains to be judged on the Cebu Pop stage is who among the interpreting singers performs best.

Cebu Pop has been consistently running for a very long time now. It survives despite the fact that it has since become a personal project of Congressman Eddie Gullas, an ardent Cebuano arts patron. And new songs continue to flow in abundantly every year.

The 31st Cebu Pop took place last January 14. As always, the Cebu Coliseum was filled to the rafters with people whose love for local music couldn’t be restrained by heavy traffic or threat of a downpour.

The fact that the dense crowd keeps coming year after year could be proof of Cebu Pop’s popular appeal — and probably so because all these years its picks have always been right.

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