THOSE privileged to have known Michael Jackson up close and personal remember a kind, gentle soul aching for a childhood denied by early celebrity status. The whole world saw in him a fellow caring human who, at the height of stardom, wrote and composed (with Lionel Richie) “We Are The World” as theme for that fund-raiser for famine-stricken Africa.
As media poured in details and anecdotes on the life and death in 2009 of the entertainment and musical genius – reminding us of our own mortality – they trigger flashes of our own encounters in life, however remote and far-fetched these may be to those of the King of Pop. So do the music of those celebrities assembled for “USA for Africa”.
Memory ricochets to our own quiet seasons in the sun with fellow lesser mortals who had since gone ahead, and to our moments with fellow ordinary people still with us. Their own, ordinary lives far from the limelight – we discovered - were and are as lyrical as those of luminous stars above us whose genius lies in their ability to set into song what we can only feel.
Like most up here in these mountains, I’m hooked on folk and country. My mind bounces to the lines of “The Fields of Athenry, a ballad set during the Great Irish Famine of 1945-50. It tells of a fictional Michael, a young man about to board a prison ship for Australia.
Down on her knees outside a prison wall, Michael’s wife laments: “Michael, they’re taking you away/ For you stole Trevelyan’s corn/ So the young might see the morn/ Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.” Michael replies: “Nothing matters, Mary, when you’re free/ Against the famine and the crown/ I rebelled, they cut me down/ Now you must raise our child with dignity.”
It’s one of Pete St. John’s notable contributions to the long list of traditional Irish musical jewels, topped by the famous dirge “Londonderry Air” we know as “Danny Boy”. Ireland’s national soccer team saw fit to adopt “The Fields…” for its anthem. After all, the piece subtly recalls the patriotism and rebellion of Irish resistance figures the likes of Michael Collins against England’s centuries of dominion over the Emerald Isle.
Pete St. John wrote his other hit – “The Rare Old Times” – after the Irish rover returned home to Dublin. In it, he mourns “as the grey unyielding concrete makes a city of my town”. We, the soon-to-be feeble (to borrow from “Maggie”, another Irish folk), can swear he could have written that lament for Baguio, a beautiful mountain city reeling from commercial progress and urban sprawl.
Soon, we might have our own breed of folk and country the likes of Bubut Olarte, March Fianza and Alfred Dizon perform it as the anthem for the feeble effort to save what remains of the old Baguio. Particularly, I’m referring to that tiny patch of balled pine beside the Baguio Convention Center that the Government Service Insurance System seemed at first, determined to sell to Shoemart. Shoemart had planned to replace the pinestand with a four-building, 13-storey condotel complex ironically dubbed “Baguio Air Residences”.
The city, however, was keen on keeping patch, with Mayor Mauricio Domogan keen on saving the space and the trees, sending me to dedicating to His Honor Billy Dean’s “If There Hadn’t Been You”.
The late Philippine Star columnist Art Borjal fell for the song the moment he heard it. His copy was a gift, from Nino Joshua Molintas, then an 11-year old Baguio boy whose deliverance from a congenital heart defect he had arranged.
Borjal printed in full the lyrics, in turn his own way of thanking those who contributed to the boy’s healing, among them pedia-cardiologist Emerenciana Collado and U.S.-based surgeon Serafin de Leon.
“A man filled with doubt, down and out and so alone,” the lines begin. “A ship tossed and turned, lost and yearning for a home/ A survivor barely surviving, not really sure of his next move/ All of this I would have been if there hadn’t been you.”
Wanting to pass on the lyrics and melody to the boy’s Samaritans, Borjal entered a music shop for all the copies to send. A salesgirl, thinking he heard it right, pulled out from the shelves an album and handed it to Borjal. It was “Thriller”, containing “Billie Jean”, one of Jackson’s platinum singles.
Nino, so christened for his uncanny resemblance to the Infant Jesus, was the youngest of four boys of the late Michael (Miguel) Molintas, a pony boy at Wright Park, and Maria Paz “Datsu” Infante, a Spanish mestiza and scion of a sugar hacienda clan of Bacolod.
The couple’s romance, the orphaned family’s triumphs over seemingly unending trials, Datsu’s might and courage to keep her boys intact, are the stuff movies, paperbacks and folk and country music are made of.
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