The highs and lows of OPM
COVER VERSIONS -- songs made famous by one singer that are remade by another -- are the trend in the music scene here and abroad. So it comes as no surprise that yet another album of covers has come out. This time though, the album offers more than the usual rehash.
Actor and singer Markki Stroem, for instance, made “Kaleidoscope World” jazzier, slower, and sexier. The other singers on the album of remakes are Princess Velasco, Thor Dulay, and Moira Dela Torre.
Jonathan Ong, who has written and arranged original songs for Maja Salvador, Gloc 9, and Abra, arranged the tracks in the album.
“OPM is reinventing,” he told BusinessWorld. “We are calibrating. Everyone is learning how to publish and distribute. We are more open and more diversified.”
He has nothing against covers, which is one facet in OPM reinvention -- he said he likes them. “But I also encourage artists to come up with original songs, unless we want to recycle forever and ever,” he said.
ROLES AND CHALLENGES
The new album is all about living.
“It is the soundtrack of your life phases: first kiss, longing, working abroad, friendship, family, etc. Dapat it evokes a feeling of personal experience,” said the album’s creative consultant and music icon Jim Paredes. Together with the Bloomfields band, he did the cover of “Tuloy Pa Rin Ako,” originally by Side A.
“I think the role of OPM is to induce an experience from somebody in Aparri and somebody in Jolo,” he said. “When you hear a certain song, [it’s like] yes!”
The question is, how viable is it to produce an album today considering the steep competition from online music sites like Spotify and iTunes? Mr. Ong said it is actually not viable to produce an album at all. Which is why he said they are thankful to Avida Land, which produced the album in line with its mission of promoting Filipino heritage.
Physical albums are competing against the invisible and invincible. “Now there’s mp3, replication, and piracy. As artists, we can feel that impact. Every time you want a song, you can torrent it. But what about respect to the artist and the songwriter?” said Mr. Ong.
In the day of digital replication, the physical CD is almost gone, he said. “Nakikita mo ’yung record bars natin unti-unting nawawala. One day mawawala na lahat ’yan. One day isang click na lang. (You can see that the record bars are slowly disappearing. One day they will all be gone. One day, all it will take is a click.) What does that mean in supporting our national identity? Where will it go? This is a reminder that we should celebrate tunog Pinoy (the Filipino sound),” he said.
OPM EVOLUTION
This is why OPM should heed the signs of the times and keep on reinventing the wheel. But to be truly successful in the long run, “we have to come in as Filipinos, before anything else,” Mr. Paredes said
“I mean that’s how the Koreans and the Brazilians and everybody else have done it. The more we write Filipino songs for Filipinos, the more we hit the international market. Nobody paid attention to K-pop until they were selling 500,000 copies in South Korea. We cannot come in sounding like LA or anything like that. We have to come in as we are. Music is a come-as-you-are party. No dress code,” he said.
“Look at the choir competitions -- there is where OPM succeeds. You hear a Czechoslovakian choir singing ‘Bituing Walang Ningning,’ a Korean choir singing ‘Bayan Ko.’ How did they know that? Because Philippine choirs competed against them and we won. [That’s why] we should come in as ourselves,” he said.
The Philippines is not short on talent, said Mr. Paredes, but on appreciation and pride.
“The more people realize the success formula -- which is to be yourself -- the more we’ll succeed. We have a lot of great singers like Leah Salonga… but they don’t sing OPM to the world,” said Mr. Paredes, who is a writer, a producer, and a photographer, but is best known as a member of APO, the successful OPM band that popularized multitude of songs like “Panalangin,” “Batang Batang Ka Pa,” “Awit ng Barkada,” and “Pumapatak Na Naman ang Ulan,” among others.
He said there are two elements to music: the hardware, which is the voice, the singer, the recording; and the software, the content. “Dapat, content provider tayo (We should be content providers). Right now, hardware tayo, we have good singers. What we need is to give total support to OPM,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment