National Artist Ryan Cayabyab Is The Author Of Well-loved Filipino Love Songs

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Untouched and unadorned except for a white iPad perched on its music stand, a Steinway baby grand plays “Iduyan Mo” all by itself, its keys registering the notes confidently, at full tilt and in full trill, as though it were showing itself off to us how much it knows about Philippine music. Or, in fact, about music itself. Because this is not your garden-variety baby grand sitting in the middle of the mall hallway junction robotically throwing “Greensleeves” or “Autumn Leaves” at indifferent passersby. The folks at Steinway tell us that they had to fly the composer himself to New York to record the piece on the piano, which, thanks to arcane digital technology, captured not just the notes and their duration, but the more priceless human minutiae that today makes all the difference in all things.

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So it is gradually noticed, as it plays, and sends the vast and busy showroom into a hush, and dispatches our very last doubts about the value and price attached to each Steinway, that the piano at hand (or out of it, as it were) plays with strange sense of spirit and self-possession, as if, in fact it had been possessed by the composer himself.

But the composer himself, alive and well, a full generation younger and sprightlier than most National Artists, enters the room, filling it with the glint from his glasses and his bright smile. Everyone notices him, of course—even those casually passing the showroom’s display window. Someone discreetly touches the iPad and the song—his song—abruptly stops, mid-note, as if turned off by its own redundancy.

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Ordinary people must realize that this is a rare thing—not for Ryan Cayabyab, composer and songwriter, and recently-minted National Artist to walk into a room full of pianos (in fact, music is almost expected to follow him wherever he goes)—but for ordinary people to easily recognize a composer as easily as they might recognize any of the many stars who have performed his compositions. We might say it is uniquely a Ryan Cayabyab thing, for the writer to command the same spotlight and stage as the personages they write for.

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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A large part of this may be attributed to that popular TV show that aired for almost a decade in the post-EDSA era which followed a simple format, featuring the composer sitting at a piano playing songs for local and international guest artists, in a two-shot, that most basic of camera framing modes, that showed the audience how deceptively simple, almost facile, the art of making beautiful music was—just play something unforgettable and let someone incredibly talented sing it.

A personal encounter with the composer confirms that beautiful deception. Ryan Cayabyab is energetic, eager, and disarmingly modest, matching, note for note, his popular image as a smiling, bespectacled, and ageless talent. “Mr. C,” by which he is known equally to those who know him personally and those who don’t, in fact, works as a perfect contraction of two things—an honorific reserved for those whose genius firmly lies beyond reach, and a term of endearment for those whose said genius never gets in the way of their approachability.

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In fact, Mr. C is the first to make the approach—not just toward the interviewer, but also to the hulking Steinway grand, larger than anyone who has never seen one might imagine it to be, bathed in special light like a concept car or an operatic diva, that has been waiting for him at one end of the room. He immediately takes to the keys and plays and sings a handful of bars of “Iniibig Kita,” before stopping, just as abruptly as the first piano did, and turning to us.

“Anytime!” he tells us, and apologizes. “Ang ganda kasi ng piano. You’re drawn into it!”

To still be eagerly drawn toward one’s tool of the trade at the age of 64 is no act of simple instinct. It is a moment that is drawn from a lifetime of acknowledgement and love.

His mother Celerina was a teacher at the University of the Philippines and his father Alberto was a government employee. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

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Celerina was also an opera singer, who played, among others, Aida in the Verdi Opera 'Aida.' PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

Like most of us, Cayabyab was drawn first toward his mother’s piano at an early age (four), at a time when having an upright in the living room was de rigueur for every middle-class family. Except that the young Ryan’s family was not ensconced in the middle class, and his mother was no ordinary mother. Celerina Cayabyab happened to be an opera singer and a professor who taught Voice at the College of Music at the University of the Philippines, and they lived, as it remains the privilege of UP Faculty to this day, in a house made of sawali and G.I. sheets on the University Campus. But plain as it was, the house was large, and filled to the rafters—with their family of six and a complement of 10 lady boarders who all happened to be enrolled in the same college.

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“So you can imagine, every hour, every minute, somebody was practicing or singing, or playing the flute, or the violin,” he recounts. “No escape from music.”

Ryan admits his luck in having become an uncommonly public personality as a composer.

“When my mother died I was six years old. She told my father not to allow any of the children to take up music as a career. As an opera singer, she knew how difficult it was.”

This was 1949, and Cayabyab recounts how the atmosphere of post-war Manila—a city in the throes of rehabilitation after almost total destruction—compelled Filipinos to be more practical.

A young Ryan grew up with 10 lady boarders, who were taking up various music courses. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

As a teenager, he looked for odd jobs to help complement the income of his family. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

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It was perhaps in this spirit that even in his youth, Cayabyab found himself applying for odd jobs.

“Third-year high school, I applied for a job as a radio announcer—in ABS-CBN! Pumila ako talaga!” he tells us, recalling how his hopelessly pubescent voice broke midway into the audition. “Come back when you’re 18,” they told him.

To the young Cayabyab, it more than about just being pragmatic; it was his way of seeking to complement his parents’ income.

“I saw my dad was having a hard time being a government employee,” he remembers. He also recalls the debts they incurred at their corner sari-sari store, and the day they needed to send their nursemaid home because they could not afford her salary anymore.

Cayabyab recalls the hard times of his youth in great detail—from the meals they made out of the vegetables they grew in their backyard patch, to all the making-do and making-the-most-of that they did to survive. He also recalls, in the same spirit, trying his hand at painting—even joining a national art competition—by using old, stiffened paint brushes left behind at their home by a couple of aunts, and painting old canvases with whatever colors were available: “violet, green, and white!”

The upshot: “I won third prize!”—and Cayabyab emphasizes this by slamming down a dissonant chord on the keys before him.

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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Cayabyab’s youth is filled with such pursuits and endeavors, all made in an effort to supplement the family income and become the post-war pragmatic Filipino everyone from that generation wished to be. But perhaps that is not what most Filipinos are when they are true to themselves, and especially in Cayabyab’s case, thankfully so. In his case, the truth crept up gradually—right after he graduated from high school.

“I would ask my dad for one peso. There was a street called Plateria dotted with music score shops.” That one-peso excursion involved taking a 25-centavo jeepney ride to Quiapo, having a hamburger for 35 centavos and a Coke for 15 centavos; the remaining 25 centavos was for the jeepney ride back home. In the afternoon between, Cayabyab would stay in the Rhapsody Music House—and play as a music demonstrator for the scores they sold, for free.

“That was my ploy,” he confesses, “because I was thinking someone might hire me after seeing me play.”

Cayabyab was 15 at the time, and a music score cost all of 14 pesos—way out of reach for someone who was on summer vacation before college. But his ploy allowed him to play memorize entire scores without having to buy them—among them, appropriately enough, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

“I can’t even play it anymore,” he tells us. Then his hands fall onto the keys, right into the concerto’s most memorable part—“and that’s how I saved 14 pesos,” he says, lifting his hands.

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This happens all throughout the interview, Cayabyab’s hands again and again instinctively finding their home on the keys, settling into the natural position, a finger on the middle C, followed by a chord, a little ditty, a quick burst of melody—as if he were playing a soundtrack for the life that he plays out from memory.

That time he hung out at Rhapsody was also the time he got his first playing job, at 15 years old, auditioning to fill the position of accompanist for a choir, coached by his referrer to lie about his age—“I said I was 18”—and even about his name, since his mother was known among music circles and they wanted to make sure he would be hired on his own merit. “Ryan Soriano” thus became his first stage name—the first time he used Ryan instead of his childhood nickname “Cip,” short for “Cipriano.”

Ryan became a professor of Music Theory and Composition at the UP College of Music. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

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With composer and musician Willy Cruz. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

With balladeer Basil Valdez. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

With singer Celeste Legaspi. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

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Ryan Soriano got the job, thanks to his ability to sight-read, something he had learned after his mother died. The Cayabyabs were compelled, by University regulation, to move out of the campus and into even sparer living conditions: a tinier house, a smaller household. But one thing travelled with them—a box his mother owned that was filled with piano pieces. This allowed him to learn to further his talent by himself, “from easy—until I got to Beethoven, Mozart, and all that, with help from my sister, who was a better piano player.”

After that, he found himself quickly getting hired from stint to stint—notably, at one time, as a back-of-house accompanist for the UP Madrigal Singers. By this time, he was in the middle of a stint as a Business Administration major in UP, true to his compulsion to be a practical contribution to society.

“My class would end at three, the rehearsals would begin at six o’clock at the CCP. I’d be there at four o’clock.” At four o’clock, he had discovered, he would have the entire orchestra pit to himself—and the Steinway grand open and available for him to play as much as he could, as loud as he could.

It was in this manner that he was discovered as a natural talent who could play anything at the drop of a hat, and at first sight of a music sheet. Cayabyab soon got gigs as accompanist and musical director for the singer Cocoy Laurel, whose father, Doy Laurel, was a senator at the time.

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PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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“One afternoon, the Senator calls me to his office and asked me—what are you doing, taking up accounting? …You’re a musician. That’s your specialty. That’s what you should give to your community.”

Right then and there, the young Cayabyab was offered a scholarship to any music school of his choice.

“I had Juilliard in mind!” he erupts. And he would most certainly have been accepted to Juilliard too—had Martial Law not been declared shortly after that, and directly interfered with his plans and situated him firmly where his roots lay: the UP College of Music.

“My first teacher was (legendary composer) Eliseo Pajaro…my second teacher was Lucio San Pedro, National Artist. My third teacher was Ramon Santos, National Artist. My fourth was Francisco Feliciano, National Artist.”

Cayabyab’s roots, therefore, also lie firmly in Philippine soil, where he is one of our few true homegrown and home-educated talents. This may seem an irrelevant detail to the casual career observer, or, more precisely, listener of music, but a quick review in our memory of Cayabyab’s compositions will reveal the clear and proud difference.

On his show Ryan Ryan Musikahan, the maestro collaborated with musicians and friends, including Johnny Manahan, Mitch Valdes, Katy de la Cruz, and Celeste Legaspi. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

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Mr C and Geneva Cruz receive a Gold Award for Smokey Mountain. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

Ryan shifted to composition, and then began his career as an arranger, working with industry greats such as Willy Cruz, Pilita Corrales, George Canseco, and more. PHOTO: courtesy of Ryan Cayabyab

This is another turn in Cayabyab’s path that distinguishes his career: that he was a piano major who chose to become a composer.

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“After finishing Beethoven level, I said ‘goodbye, piano. I don’t want to be a concert pianist!’… I’m so far from a Cecile Licad, from a Raul Sunico,” he confesses. Cayabyab shifted to composition, and then began his career as an arranger, taking every job and opportunity the music industry could throw at him, learning hard and earning fast, from all corners and players: Willy Cruz, Pilita Corrales, George Canseco.

“And then it struck me—when you hear a song, the first thing that you ask is ‘who’s the singer?’ Maybe you go to the second tier and you ask, ‘who composed it?’ But you never get beyond that: ‘who arranged it?’ No!”

Cayabyab decided to write music in the late 70’s, that age that charted the birth of OPM and Manila Sound—and the rebirth of Ryan Cayabyab from musical director, pianist, and arranger, into Ryan Cayabyab, composer. Having learned from the greats, he would write for the greats. Later on, Cayabyab did return to ABS-CBN—19 years after his first audition with them, to host a show that would be named after him: Ryan Ryan Musikahan. He would write not just love songs and pop songs and movie theme songs, but full film scores, modern musicals, entire operas—as if the sweep of his career had naturally played itself, and as if every composition of his had simply written itself out to sound deceptively easy and natural and instantly memorable.

Just like the deceptively simple, difficult, and complex talent of sight-reading, whose secret he reveals to us shortly:

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“The technique,” he tells us, “is to look at the entire piece, and identify where the hard part is.”

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

In this story: Photographs by Joseph Pascual • Styling by Clifford Olanday • Grooming by Muriel Vega Perez • Production assistants Kyle Lorenzo Subido and Ednalyn Magnaye Garcia • With thanks to Steinway Boutique Manila, Shangri-La Plaza East Wing

From topmost: Printed shirt and Repp tie; plaid sport coat and striped shirt; and gray suit, striped shirt, and paisley-print tie; all by Van Laack, Greenbelt 5.

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Rhapsody in C