by Joel B. Belinan
Imagine yourself traveling on a very wide almost flatland open space either on horseback or in those first railroad trains with some music connected to your ears via an earphone from either those 80s Walkman or the 90s discs playing country music. That was me in the late 80s and the early 90s when I used to travel for at least 20 hours or as long as 44 hours by train in the Indian sub-continent as part of my duty as Social Service Missionary of Ananda Marga. Those long train journeys through very wide rural areas and passing through several big cities would have been boring if not for those little gadgets we called our most important companions in our trips then.
And thanks to the Igorot passion for country music mostly set on the days of the Wild West in the United States which were almost the same as the rural areas of India. Dry flatlands with occasional views of cows, goats, and elephants grazing along train paths. While indeed we were yoga meditators and could spend a couple of hours meditating, still long hours spent on the train would have been hard to endure without the help of music continuously playing. Yes, it’s easy to lose one’s self in the songs of John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Dan Fogelberg, Joan Baez, Don Williams, George Strait, Randy Travis, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks, Alabama, Bellamy Brothers, Alan Jackson, Dan seals, Dolly Parton, Anne Murray, Niel Young, Willie Nelson, and those of Igorot country singers like my Tokayo the late Mr. Joel Tingbaoen, Elmer Hall and Lourdes Fangki, among others.
At first, those were in the form of cassette tapes then later on laser music discs that eventually evolved to VCDs, DVDs, and now in various forms of media. Igorots are natural country music lovers which can perhaps be attributed to the influence of the Americans especially the Anglican missionaries and maybe because of the pine forests and mountains of the Cordillera coupled with the romantic cowboy movies of the 50s, all the way to the 90s that may have captured the imagination of many Igorots. Our passion for country music was such that we have several Igorot country singers whose voices are at par or even better than those of American singers.
I remember one time in Singapore in our living quarters, an Australian monk hearing my music asked me who was the country singer in my disc player. It was Joel Tingbaoen, hence, I told him the name. Of course, he did not know the name so I explained that Joel Tingbaoen was an Igorot country and folk singer. He was very surprised as he was not expecting an Igorot voice can be better than those of traditional country singers in the US.
Back during my training journeys, when using a portable speaker instead of using earphones or headsets to listen while on the train, several foreigner tourists or even Indians would be cramped inside and around my cabin to listen to the music. For those who experienced Indian Train travels during those days, the trains had those loudspeakers installed on all the cars of the train continuously playing Indian music. After a few hours of hearing music that one could not even understand, it would be very irritating to the ears (no offense meant to Indian music).
Igorots’ passion for country music has been demonstrated time and again which completely showed our difference from the overwhelming majority of Filipinos who are more into pop and rock music. However, as described by many, it seems that country music stays much longer than other forms of music. Country songs from the 50s and 60s remain very popular these days. As one sociologist suggests, many people of today can use those old country songs to carry them back to a simpler life back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80, and 90s and escape momentarily the present complicated digital age.
In November of 1997, I was traveling through various municipalities in the Cordillera together with the technical staff of the office of the Social Reform Agenda (SRA). We were visiting projects funded under SRA a flagship program of the then Ramos government when the news came out of the death of John Denver due to a plane crash. John Denver aside from being a famous country singer was a licensed pilot. Suddenly, everybody was playing John Denver songs. As if there were no other songs in the world except John Denver’s which shows how he had touched the hearts of Igorots everywhere. **
