NAMCYA 1973
by Dennis T. Bautista, Voice 3, Erste Stimmen
CCP Main Theater. Backstage. Gather. Prayer. Onstage. Three rows. Three risers. Tita Remy at piano. Mom Rivera bows. Applause. Silence. All eyes on Mom. Don’t move, don’t scratch, don’t cough. Smile.
Mom signals. Synchronous with piano we count in our heads:
“One two three four five six, one two one two…”
And sing:
“Ang kawayan, kung tumubo, matayog na langit ang turo, Nguni’t kung masunod ang anyo, sa lupa rin ang yuko …”
And count:
“Two-three-four-five-six, one-two, one-two-three-four-five-six…”
And sing …
In 1973, the UP Cherubims joined the National Music Competitions for Young Artists (NAMCYA) children’s choir category. Participating in a choral competition was actually not on the fledgling UP Cherubims' agenda, having been formed only two years earlier on September 21, 1971. The decision to join was made out of Mom’s own sense of competitiveness: the La Salle Greenhills Songsters, the 1972 winners had applied to join the NAMCYA again, and Mom (our founder and director Prof. Flora Zarco-Rivera, who treated us all as her children) felt that other good choirs should join to inject a serious element of challenge to the competition.
The repertoire included three songs: a contest piece “Love Came Down on Christmas,” Johannes Brahms’ “Sandmännchen,” and a work Mom commissioned for this competition composed by Prof. Ramon P. Santos, “Dal’wang Sawikaing Pilipino,” which we referred to as “Ang Kawayan,” for short.
The contest piece was relatively simple. We learned to stagger, breathing seamlessly to sing the lines whole, and rounded our tones making it sound full.
“Sandmännchen,” a German lullaby by Johannes Brahms, was arranged for us by Prof. Lucio D. San Pedro as a three part a capella piece. The lyrics were German, so we sang it in German. Prof. Aurelio Estanislao (then UP College of Music Voice Dept Chairman) was our German language coach. “Tito Reli” had a unique method of teaching how to shape our mouths in order to produce an umlaut. Ask any of the Erste Stimmen batch. Pronouncing German was not a big problem. Doing this song a cappella was. Some of us recall Mom Rivera’s frustration as she kept telling us that we were going flat and to think high, think high.
Of the 3 works, it is Prof. Santos’ composition that burns most in my memory. It was an avant garde piece, a piece never performed before, with no prior recording to listen to for a guide on how it should sound. We had to keep our eyes glued to the score while we were learning: pay attention to each measure whose meter varied, the beats per measure changed and changed again and then again; keep an eye on the rests which may appear any time; take note when to sing soft, loud, louder, softer, loudest, softest; remember the accents, when to punch and pummel each note in succession … and on and on. It is a piece that is stupendously difficult but, when sung well, quite beautiful. But to behold that beauty we had to learn it and learn it well.
The question crossed my mind: why were we singing this piece for a contest? It is so hard to learn. Are the other choirs performing songs just as hard? But I never asked those questions out loud. Our forming sense of discipline told us to just follow Mom and do as she asked. We practiced, we counted, we watched our pitch, we didn’t breathe before the line was up. We paid attention, no extraneous talking, concentrate, listen, sing, repeat. Every day we chipped away at the errors, adjusted the drifting pitch, tightened the tempo, held the note till as long as we were asked (even if we were turning blue). We were being honed and finely tuned and came out “choral tough.” It was intense.
UPCS at the CCP, 1973
Competition day semi-finals.
It was perfect, my entirely unbiased opinion (alright maybe I am a little biased, but in my mind’s eye it was perfect). We hit every note on time, at the right time, held each only no less and no longer than its value required, layered in the dynamics, and accented the eighth notes of “sa-lu-pa-rin-ang-yu-ko!” We steadied our pitch in “Sandmännchen” and completed its long lines unbroken. And we finessed the contest piece.
We learned that we were highest rank in the semifinal elimination with something like a score of 98 or 99. That was good.
But the finals was another matter.
Finals results:
1st place: Silliman University Young Singers Choir
Tied for 2nd place were Isabelo de los Reyes Choir and St John’s Institute Children’s Glee Club of Bacolod
Tied for 3rd place were three choirs: The UP Cherubims, La Salle Greenhills Songsters and San Roque Boys’ choir
I asked myself:
How can this be?
How could the highest rank in the semifinals round end up in 3rd place?
How could last years’ winner also end up in 3rd place?
How could 1st place go to Silliman University when they didn’t join the semifinals elimination round? (The reason given related to the 1973 oil crisis happening at the time. They said the ship they had to ride from Dumaguete was unable to procure enough fuel in time to get to the eliminations. So, the organizers, hoping to encourage more provincial choirs to join in the future, gave the group some extra leeway.)
One comment that leaked out to us was that one judge pointed out an error of ours: we had faulty breathing. What? How? She explained that she could not hear us take a breath while singing. Faulty breathing? We were staggering perfectly keeping our lines and phrases intact, and that was a fault?
Another comment was that they could not understand our Tagalog. But a large part of the song was in Bikolano so, of course, it could not be understood by someone who did not know the language. I could and still cannot wrap my brain around these bits of information today.
And so we learned about competitions. Winning competitions lies in the hands of judges -their inclinations, whims, biases, weaknesses, and even their political leanings. Adjudication is a subjective experience, at best.
So, Mom decided to bow to the decision of the judges. Very early on, we learned about humility, and humility tempered our toughness.
After the announcement of the winners, Mom gathered us together and told us not to mind the results and that we were the best. And hers was the only opinion that mattered to us. We celebrated at Merced Bakeshop the next day. We joined no competitions after that save for one that was held in Vienna in 1979, but that is another story.
But were we the best? Was Mom just boosting our spirits? Looking back, I think she was not.
Consider this:
The U.P. Cherubim and Seraphim is still singing to this day, continuing to train the grandchildren of some of us in the first generation, performing new songs by Filipino composers to new audiences as it heads towards its 50th anniversary on September 21, 2021.
The best. Mom knew. And she still knows. And she’s smiling now.
(We should celebrate. Is Merced Bakeshop still open?)
UPCS members with Mom Rivera, 1973
Footnotes
(1) Mrs. Remedios Trota-Jose, mother of three UP Cherubims members, wife of Prof. Regalado Jose
(2) The choir’s name at the time was UP Cherubims. Seraphim would be added when the eldest choir members entered high school in 1973 giving rise to the UP Cherubim and Seraphim. The ‘s’ was dropped from Cherubims as Cherubim is already a collective plural noun
(3) NAMCYA was organized in 1972 as a quasi-governmental organization and became affiliated with the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) a year later in 1973. The CCP website will thus indicate NAMCYA as starting in 1973 however the first competitions were actually held in 1972.
(4) Tito Reli would ask us to form our lips “parang kupet ng puwit ng baboy.”
(5) Erste Stimmen or First Voices, the name taken on by the first batch of UPCS members encompassing the 1970s.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Edit Assistance: Ricky Zarco
Memory Assist thanks to Erste Stimmen members:
Aura Castillo-Matias (V2), Rae Anne Jose-Valenzuela (V1), Eric Nera (V2), Kenneth Esguerra (V3), Edgar Tordesillas (V3), Ricky Zarco (V3), and Mark Zarco (V3)
Elena (Lennette) Rivera-Mirano, Choir Director
