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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Perfect Harmony

“If music thus carries us to heaven, it is because music is harmony… Harmony is perfection. Perfection is our dream… Our dream is heaven.” – Author unknown

Music touches us with a magic we cannot explain. Since time immemorial people have used music hoping to make conquests victorious – whether to win hearts, to expand a territory or to entertain themselves. Music softens the pangs of defeat but it intensifies the joys or the pains that may be felt when one is attuned to it.

In those days when wars were fought face to face in designated battlefields, the warring parties used to have with them their own musicians, rather, young boys who beat the drums according to the tempo that informs about the heat of the battle; those who blow the bagpipes to arouse or accentuate the courage of the fighters, and those with the trumpets to announce the attacks or it signals their distressing retreat.

In the Holy Bible even God taught His people a song through Moses that will, in the future, be easy to remind them of their only Lord that they must not forget to honor and love when they reach the Promised Land. Revolutionary movements have their song of encouragement as much as nations have their national anthems and lovers have their own theme songs too. Often these express the feelings and sentiments in them.

I remembered Mama Paok, a gay old woman I knew who always hummed a tune - while playing the solitaire or on her way to the farm. She chided the helper once who went about her chore of cleaning the broken pots and soil in the terrace thus: “So, what has your anger done to the dog? That will just increase your headache and makes your work heavier. If you whistled instead, you’d have found it lighter as it lightens your heart too.” Right! However you sing your tune or how you interpret your song, the face brightens when you hum.

Three months ago, someone in the neighborhood played the ‘Internationale’ over and over in one day alone that I can almost memorize it when the evening came. Later that night, I suffered the ‘last song syndrome’ so I hummed it too. The day after a neighbor told me that her friend’s son was rebellious when both parents won’t allow him to attend the high school JS Prom that he kept playing the Internationale so loud as he grieved the day. What happened next? Well, he’ll be attending the Prom that February 14th. Hahaha! Hans Christian Andersen states, “Where words fail, music speaks.”

There was a time when I had to leave the house for work so early before my girls were up and come home late from work when they were almost ready for bed because of the traffic and the distance from our place. One week-end, the eldest was carrying a small bag with biscuits and choco drinks while the younger one was hugging two dolls. They pulled me to a chair and they sang me an old folk song, Dandansoy. They never knew that it opened my eyes to the fact that children need their mothers more than mothers need to spend more time in the workplace. Music power… indeed!

Here’s the part of the song in Hiligaynon that they sang haltingly as pre-schoolers could:

DANDANSOY

Dandansoy bayaan ta ikaw
(Dandansoy, I’m leaving you)
Pauli ako sa Payao
(I’m going home to Payao)
Kon ikaw gani ang hidlawon
(If you should ever miss me)
Ang Payao imo lang lantawon.
(Just look towards Payao.)

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