Better 'Leyte Idol' than never
MANILA, Philippines - It was a clear and cool Sunday evening last March 21 in Tacloban City, Leyte. The streets were still full of summer light at 10 minutes past five. In front of me, in a long queue that stretched down the pavement in front of the Leyte National High School gymnasium, were two teenage boys wearing T-shirts and jeans. They were engaged in a comic routine: after glancing at the gym’s marquee, they would look at each other and repeat a carefully stressed mantra, “We are going to hear Leyte’s idol, our i-dol.” When I asked why they were going to hear Leyte’s idol, one lunging forward and placing himself in front of his friend, as if television cameras were trained on him, replied, “It’s Regie, isn’t it?”
It was in part Reginald Detabali, or Regie. He is the 20-year-old singer from Baybay, Leyte and one of the eight grand finalists for this 5th season of Leyte Idol, a provincial singing competition and local version of American Idol sponsored by the provincial government under the leadership of Governor Jerecho Carlos “Icot” Petilla. Regie, who already had become a fairly favorite among the audience members even during the semifinals must have done a remarkable job (though not an easy one) of getting teenage pop fans from different parts of Leyte, especially from Baybay City, into a gymnasium for the grand finals night.
Regie, (like fellow finalists Melnie Tejano, Janine Creer, May Obando, Julius Modesto, Mary Rose Modesto, Jessa Tagulino, Kristine Ricarte) chooses his songs from a menu of melodies offered by YouTube or cable TV. When asked about what makes him original, he casually quips, “Perspective.” Long mired in situations of poverty, uncertainty in employment, social disorientation, loss of self worth and confidence, Regie sings about his struggles in life through music. He has long taken on a vocation of teaching poor but talented children in Baybay the art of singing as a hopeful option for a better life among the desperate and poverty-stricken.
To Regie’s credit, his repertoire for the grand finals night was neither an aggregate of pop songs that people already know nor an attempt to garner highbrow nods through imitations of more sophisticated music. His interpretation of Right Now, Martin Nievera’s Ikaw and Send in the Clowns from the Broadway hit A Little Night of Music was a delightful hybrid that mingled Broadway and movie soundtrack vibes and upbeat sound effects with the repetitive fecundity of most popular contemporary Filipino performers who have greatly influenced Leyte’s popular soundscape. A music scene characterized by nights of experimental music, rock shows soaked in hipster attitude, pop idols cavorting on monitors in bars, etc.
With a baritone voice and chivalrous approach to romance, half-Rivera/half-Valenciano, half jazzy stylings somewhat in the manner of Gerswhin, Regie managed to mingle genres that may have the healthy effect of integrating his “perspective” of music and life into the wider pulse of his audience — the young, the ordinary, the voiceless.
For many in the audience, this is what brought them into the gym that grand finals night. For Loloy Polistico Loreto, one of the Leyte Idol team leaders and musical director of many concerts in the province, the provincial singing competition was conceptualized for those gifted with musical voices but have long remained “voiceless” in our bigger social landscape.
Judges who flew in from Manila — Jonathan Manalo, Bituin Escalante and Joy Viado — chose May Obando from Ormoc City as their grand champion. Regie was chosen a close second. Kristine Ricarte, also from Ormoc City, took the third spot. But judging from the thunderous applause and arresting screams from the audience coming from the different towns and cities of Leyte (filling up the gymnasium to cheer their favorite performers), whoever the judges chose did not matter. What did matter was their choice: their own singing idol, their own symbol already made even during the semi final stages. Regie was one popular choice.
In the Chinese Li Chi, or Book of Rites, it is written, “The music of a well-ruled state is peaceful and joyous… that of a dying country is mournful and pensive.” All three genres of music intersected in the performances that grand finals night. What Regie, his fellow finalists and a host of organizers of the Leyte Idol have created is a lingua franca of pop culture; a visual and sonic shorthand that anyone, anywhere, can understand. This kind of universal legibility is at the heart of Leyte’s pop music and burgeoning musical scene — a genre that Regie and his fellow finalists may help to redefine simply by ignoring it.
