Manny Lapingcao: Hello leaders, hello citizens!

In my youth, I hosted the nightly radio program “May I Sing to You”. The opening spiel carried that Eddie Fisher signature song. One night, someone called to say his appreciation of the chosen records we played that time and asked the technician to relay to me a saying that went something like this: “Music is the language of the soul.” I did not know if that was taken from any writing but I liked it for its seemingly obvious literary profundity such that I always prepared the records to play before getting “on board”. Even at home, today, I carefully choose the records that I play on my antiquated components. Believe me, I also receive, every now and then, beautiful songs through my messenger account from ardent music lovers like Judge Jun Leyson and Mr. Brady Lucero.

I have just heard a Bisrock song titled “Tingali’g Mobaha” which, in all honesty, I have come to like. Bisrock, I suppose, stands for Visayan rock music. This song was composed by that popular Cebuano bandsman Manny Lapingcao. The first time I listened to it was a new but wonderful experience because my genre of music is the “old standards” of such great balladeers as John Gary and Vic Damone. The beat is comparably faster and the lyrical lines, written by Manny himself, are unquestionably the language of modern human’s soul.

The opening lines of the song (in my own humble attempt at interpretation) portray the baldness of our mountains. Manny is perceptively grieving. In his touching melody, he sighs out his language of sadness that our green cover is lost (sinaw pa sa opaw). Man has indiscriminately cut trees down resulting in horrendous flooding.

Woven in the lyrics of Lapingcao’s song are two sources of action to address his concern of “Tingali’g Mobaha”. I believe we share in Manny’s thought and so it is not difficult to actuate. The first includes government leaders. Ordinary citizens compose the second.

The first is the area where local government units can fill in. Our leaders are aware that cities and towns differ from one another in their terrains as well as in their capabilities and needs. The specifics of their problem are not identical. In that light, their approaches have to vary necessarily. No one set of programs can be applicable to all. For example, Lapu-Lapu City, being practically a flat land does not have the topography of Cebu City. There are no mountains, hills and forests in Mactan Island that need to be rehabilitated. Indeed, the situation in Cebu City where there are mountain ranges that need to be reforested and rivers and waterways requiring desilting, the challenges are different. But if Manny Lapingcao talks about the need to plant trees, there is no doubt that Lapu-Lapu City needs to have some kind of vegetation although perhaps not of the same character and nature as that of our city.

Lapingcao laments, in his song, the proliferation of garbage. It is seen most everywhere. People do not seem to know where to deposit or throw their refuse. Manny is right. Many of us think that we can just dump our waste anywhere. The way Lapingcao composed his song; he wanted us to be conscious of our societal responsibilities of helping clean our environment. He is somehow right to put the blame upon the citizenry each time flashfloods occur because whether we like it or not our irresponsible way of disposing our garbage comes back to us in the form of floods.