Banneux, Belgium
Immediately after our evening prayer last night, the school director announced that there would be a concert in a village called Louveigné at 8:30 pm. The village he said was just a kilometer away from our school. He was looking for interested people to go with him and his wife to the concert. I raised my hand to indicate my immense interest. Three more others raised their hands.
Long lines had already formed when we reached the concert venue. It seemed that the whole village was there – the children, the teenagers, the adults, and the gray-haired ones. Even those on wheelchair also fell in line. Louveigné (caution: just read the name with your eyes, don’t try to vocally pronounce it. he he he. French has a weird pronunciation) is a rural village which is about as big as Gun-ob but the population is just as little as the whole of Sacred Heart Village. Because everyone was exchanging pleasantries with everyone, it seemed that everyone knew everyone else. More than anything else the concert gave me an opportunity to be with the whole population of Louveigné in one setting.
The concert started thirty minutes late. Yet not a single soul complained. Or maybe some did, and I just didn’t comprehend since everyone spoke French. The concert venue was microscopic compared to the vast tracts of flat, open and grassy spaces that characterize Louveigné. My personal space was so tight that if I wanted to dance I would only be able to move my head and shoulders. I could not move without hitting another person. If, say, I’d go to the restroom it would be impossible for me to find my way back. Yet fortunately we were very near the stage, just about 10 feet from it, and we could see everything and everyone on it. Unfortunately we were very near the stage, just about 10 feet from the speakers, and our ears got blasted because of it.
When the performers went on stage the audience shouted so loud that a deaf could hear it. Or at least feel the roar with eyes closed. Belgians, or at least the villagers of Louveigné, danced generally in the same way – jumping up and down. I thought it was simply due to lack of danceable space, it was actually because the Belgian national dance involves lots of jumping and thumping. Taking cue from how they danced last night, it seemed that the Belgians were headbanging since the Middle Ages.
The band was called Urban Trad. Its rhythm was a mix of modern rock, new age, jazz, celtic, and belgian traditional music. The main man of the band never sang a word. Instead he played different kinds of wind instruments – a bag pipe and around 6 flutes of various colors and lengths. Sometimes he played three different flutes one after another in a single song. Aside from the drummer and the bassist, another man played the accordion, another the violin, and a woman played two traditional drums with bare hands. Two lady back-up singers provided the vocals. I don’t know if you’ve come accross with something like that before, but the singers’ voices were really just back-up to the flutes.
Urban Trad is for now the biggest band in Belgium (big in the sense of being famous). The band represented Belgium in this year’s intereuropean songfest called Eurovision. Turkey got the first price, and the second went to Belgium. So Urban Trad does not only enjoy staying on top of the Belgian music charts, it has also become a symbol of pride to all Belgians.
You might be wondering by now why I seem to be writing a review of a concert, rather than telling you an interesting part of my day. Well, Urban Trad was the most interesting part of my day yesterday! What is so curious about Urban Trad is that they write songs no one can understand. Literally. Not even the band members themselves can understand a word of their songs. They invent all the words that they use in their songs and add notes to them. In fact the only memorizable part of their hit song is “ohhhhhhhhh”.
When I learned of that fact, all I could think of was Yoyoy Villame’s Botsikik. You see there are songs that become popular because of their rhythm and melody while others become so because of their lyrics. Botsikik has got no melody nor rhythm, not even discernible lyrics. And precisely because of its incomprehensibility that it became popular and unforgetable. You can even hum it yourself. Come on, the neighbors aren’t listening, sing it. He he he.
Well, Urban Trad has a sophisticated melody and danceable rhythm but it doesn’t sound unique. What only makes it unique here in Belgium is the incomprehensibility of its lyrics. And to think that Yoyoy can bring sophistication to his Botsikik too. He can opt for a more rhytmic drumming, more complicated bass playing, add some scratch and guitar riffs here and there. Or maybe a full orchestra should do it.
What I want to say is that we Filipinos are as good and creative as they are. Or probably better. And I am in the opinion that we Filipinos are at our best when we are original. There is nothing original about Urban Trad’s incomprensible lyrics – Yoyoy did it decades ago. When I am with well-meaning people here in Europe I am always proud to say that I am Filipino. The usual pleasantry I get to hear from them is that Filipinos sing well. And by that they don’t necessarily mean Regine Velasquez or Gary Valenciano – they usually refer to the usual Filipino whom they get to meet in their own homes and in some chance encounters.
We Filipinos sing a lot. We sing when somebody is born and when someone dies. We sing when we are heartbroken as well as when we are happy. We sing when there is a good reason to. And we also sing even when there is no reason at all for it. When I landed at Brussels International Airport two Sundays ago I was met by my cousin Gloria and her Belgian friend named George. Of all the things he could have surprised me with, George handed me a CD of Regine Velasquez as a welcome gift. He said he began liking Regine’s songs since the first time he heard them. There you go, a proof that Regine is not only popular among the hordes of Reginians in the Philippines but also among Europeans.
The Urban Trad concert ended around eleven in the evening. Not until the band had to do two encores. It was rejuvenating to see a sky overflowing with stars and to breathe fresh air after two hours of being flooded with artficial light and having a breathing space limited to a few centimeters. Our school director, accompanied by his wife, drove us home. We capped the night in their about-to-be-finished apartment with Croatian white wine and Belgian beer.
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