For someone who takes pride coming from Cagayan de Oro, a small but progressing city from down south in the Philippine island of Mindanao. It has always been a mystery that we have never written a song in our local Visayan dialect. For sure, Thoughts And Notions co-founder Wilbert Tan had written an album worth of Visayan songs. But as Thoughts And Notions, there was never a material written in our native tongue. The fact is, we've even written more "Tagalog" songs (two) than Visayan songs. So it had always remained on our things to do for quite some time. Something that we had long carried in our bucket list. Until now...
Our closest brush of a Visayan song released (besides that commercial jingle for a sardines brand that was written by one time drummer of the band Adonis Berongoy) was actually in the form of a Visayan translation of a previously released song called "Safer in My Heart". The lyrics of the song was written by me, and with music composed by Adonis Berongoy. During the period of the band's hiatus, Adonis reworked the song with his other band Brandibelly by translating my English lyrics to Visayan lyrics. But, I could never take credit for that reincarnation of the song because you can never do a straight word for word translation of the English language to Visayan language. Sometimes you have to take liberties with the translation just to keep the original idea of the song intact. So it is his more than mine. You can check out the song here:
But before I proceed with my story, please do check out the more in depth history of Visayan Music and its rise in the national consciousness on this link. Personally, I was introduced to the beauty of Visayan Music in my younger years through the likes of Visayan Folk singer-songwriter Yoyoy Villame. And as I grew older and my musical tastes started to vary, I stumbled upon some Visayan Indie Rock bands that were experiencing their own band explosion in the late 90's to early 2000's. For sure everyone knows about Urbandub, arguably the most popular Rock band that broke out from the Visayan Queen City of the south, Cebu. Or the equally talented and underrated Indie band called Sheila and the Insects with their 80's new wave music influenced sound. But there was also a burgeoning Bisrock (short for Visayan Rock) music scene emerging in the indie music circuit in Cebu.
Way back in 2006, we were even lucky enough to share the stage with such prestigious Bisrock bands such as Budoy and Jr. Kilat, Powerspoonz, and Smooth Friction. Cebu was truly the hotbed for Bisrock Music. And along with that burgeoning Visayan creativity juiced up, decent recording studios began to mushroom in Cebu. Something that us, Cagayan de Oro musicians could only dream of having access to back in the day. In fact, for those who had the financial budget, Cagayan de Oro bands would travel to Cebu to record their stuffs. And one such band from Cagayan de Oro did make that trek to record an album worth of songs. That band was Southrace. The band who I consider as the purveyors of Bisrock Music in Cagayan de Oro. (Hey, we were even lucky enough to share the stage with them during their Second Album Launch).
Southrace is one of the hardest working bands in Cagayan de Oro. And their stature is even legendary in the sense that they have been in the local music industry for close to 20 years already. And even if we go a long way back, we only reconnected recently (specifically with rhythm guitarist Nilo Quitoriano) and had been in close contact as we tried to figure out this Digital Music era. So that constant communication would yield an idea about doing a collaboration. Just not with the entire band, but one half of Southrace. Or to be exact, Nilo's side project band that he named Oquilla.
And this is how our first ever Bisrock song came to be. I've never really written Visayan lyrics before. But somehow for this effort, the words flowed naturally. It felt like I was crying out to God, asking for his help to give me strength in these trying times. "Kusog nga gi hinumdom" was the chosen title of this song. Taken from the lyrics that I wrote that expressed a genuine longing to ask God to strengthen me. To help me not to give up in the times when giving up is the easy way out. And to put my full trust and Faith in God's promise that his Love will help us endure.
Of course the lyrics are just one part of it, Nilo took care of the music part. Inspired by the lyrics, he managed to come up with a very strong Bisrock music that brought life to my words. Though not exactly as Southrace, but the sound and influence are unmistakenly what Southrace would sound like if they were the ones I did the collaboration with. And as I have shared too many times already here in this blog, of which our current setup of featuring revolving vocalists to interpret our songs, it was only natural that Nilo will have to take up the vocal chores for this song.
This production is then capped of by the able hands of Wilbert, who did the final mix and master of the Radio Edit version of the song. Kusog nga gi Hinumdom will be released in two versions. One version honors the Bisrock sound of Cebu bands that we look up to. While the other version is a Radio Edit of the same song, but mixed and mastered with how a Bisrock Thoughts And Notions song would sound like. And, in order to maintain the feel of how an Indie Bisrock song would sound like in the early 2000's, when most Cebuano sound engineers were in the process of perfecting their craft. We made the conscious decision to have the song's production to sound like being a little rough around the edges. We wanted to make you experience how Bisrock music used to sound like years ago. We'd want you to hear the authentic sound of Indie Bisrock Music. The kind of music that ignited the hopes and dreams of musicians from down South in Visayas and Mindanao. Where opportunities with Music wasn't that plenty. But still, we trudged on.
I'm proud of this song. And I'm doubly honored to be able to share the authenticity of this song to my fellow Visayan folks. And with that, I'll end this blog entry with these words...
Maski unsay mahitabo, ayaw gyud kalimti ug sambit sa Ginoo. Ug hinumdumi nga siya lang ang dapat pagkuhaan nato ug kusog. Kay ang iyang gugma gi saad na niya sa ato sauna pa. Ang atong kinabuhi, ihatag para lang sa iya ug wala nay lain pa.
Help us Pre-Save the song on the link below...
https://bfan.link/kusog-nga-gihinumdom
