TRACK #1: Ang Pupuno Sa Akin

For most people, a lot happens within a single year. For me, I wrote a song.

It began as a musical strain that I couldn’t get off my head on April 14th, Good Friday last year, as I braved the streets of gloomy Manhattan alone. And on April 8, 2007, Good Friday once again, I was set to let Bukas Palad record ANG PUPUNO SA AKIN for our 20th anniversary album.

You see, BP was on U.S. tour last year, and Holy Week found us in New York City. Having performed on Broadway in St. Malachy’s Church (or the Actor’s Chapel) on Wednesday, the next few days served as time off for all of us.

Lui and I had been staying in the apartment of an old friend and classmate, Erwin de Leon, on 46th street, but on Good Friday, Erwin left early to start preparations for services in the parish where he was involved. Mid-morning and after just a slice of bread and cream cheese, I accompanied Lui to Penn Station on 34th; he, on the other hand, was headed for New Jersey in preparation for our Easter show in Toms River. That left me alone until the afternoon when I was supposed to meet other BP members at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on 53rd (or so I thought). And worse, rain had begun fall.

I no longer know if it was all that walking, or all that fasting, or maybe how hot I felt inside my jacket, which on the outside was terribly damp and cold, but I was beginning to feel heady by noon. Yet I trudged on aimlessly, weaving through Manhattan, dodging the rain, and stopping by every church in sight (there were a few).

It was almost 2pm though that I became conscious of a persistent melody playing in my mind. I nursed it as I avoided puddles on my way to the MoMA. By then, it had been confirmed that neither Rica nor Ali could join me at the museum. Great, it had also been confirmed that the queue to the museum was like 10 blocks long. With simply no energy to stand in line, I gave up the idea and settled for checking out the MoMA’s façade. There, however, a female pushed me in line until I found myself in the museum’s wide lobby. What are the chances?

I probably spent but 3 hours at the MoMA. Not enough, I know, even if I had been there before. Curiously, though there were tens of thousands crowding the many halls (admission was free that day), I heard not a sound. Maybe that’s the effect of being surrounded by the Picassos and Van Goghs and Matisses, and Klimts. Gazing at the canvasses there has a way of showing you the divine and reminding you of your human limitations (and inadequacies). Maybe we had all felt that and could only release a collective and quiet sigh. But in my head, the melody played on with even greater clarity.

By 5:30pm I was sipping some chowder in a tiny café, I think on 4th ave. I was the only diner. And by 7pm I was on the subway headed for Hudson St, where I intended to stroll around our office headquarters there. With the rain still pouring, I chanced upon another church and decided to step inside. Of course, the service was in Spanish and I understood very little, though I began to hear words now accompanying the music still lingering in my head.

In a place where family I had not, on a day when friends I had none, and surrounded by people whose language I knew close to nothing, it was relatively easy to write a song. With hardly any food in my system much less blood in my legs, you could say my body was running on empty. How easy was it then for anything to fill me on Good Friday. Today I look back and would like to think it was the divine taking over the humanly inadequate.

Many months later, though I had never written the notes to it, the music remained fresh in my head. I needed only to add a bridge to complete the song before I made a demo early this year. And because I knew I could never express eloquently the thoughts I had which accompanied the music, I sent the demo along with some scattered ideas and phrases to Lui—who after all was the only BP member I had seen on April 14, 2006. And so in February, he wrote:

Aanhin ko ang lahat
Ng yaman dito sa mundo
Kung wala Ka naman sa puso ko
Anong halaga sa buhay
Ng tagumpay at parangal
Makuha man ang lahat
Hindi rin sasapat.
Ikaw lang ang pupuno
Sa kulang ng buhay ko.

On Good Friday this year, I completed the song’s minus one. ANG PUPUNO SA AKIN will soon be recorded by two of my favorite BP singers.

ANG PUPUNO SA AKIN
Music: Norman Agatep
Lyrics: Lui Morano
Vocals: Cholo Mallillin, Ching Ching, and the Bukas Palad Music Ministry
Instrumental and vocal arrangement: Norman Agatep