— rehashed article from August 2004.

l-r: Eric Gancio and Gary Granada

Last night, musician-composers Gary Granada and Eric Gancio, playwright and recent Palanca Awardee Arnel Mardoquio, theatre artist and development worker Lyndee Prieto, and myself spent hours discussing physics, politics, business, theatre, education, and life at Eric’s house. I was late for the small gathering and when I arrived, Gary was explaining to his captive audience the complexity of the atom. The atom, Gary said, moves so fast that scientists cannot figure out its exact location at any given moment. He compared this to a billiard ball in the middle of a pitch-black room. The only way to ascertain where that ball is, is to throw a second ball at it. When the second ball hits the first ball, one is able to APPROXIMATE where that first ball came from and where it went next. But because the ball has rolled to a new location, it is no longer possible to determine its EXACT previous location.

To make the long story short, unless one ascertains the exact previous location of the atom, one is not able to predict where it will go next. This theory, Gary said, is reflected in all of life’s movements. The future, therefore, cannot be determined. The group was not discussing physics per se. It was discussing political ideology because all political ideologies claim to know the future of their paths. The path of that “atomic discussion” led to various other thematic intersections: the importance of personal problems as against the urgent demands of social movements, independent films as against commercial films, comparisons of good and bad screenplays, musical sincerity vs. ad-driven musicality, among others. In the end, we reverted to the discussion of the project that brought all of us together in the first place—Salima. This project has been the subject of most of our night-long after-work conversations since we started it in July.

l-r: Icoy San Pedro, Maree Contaoi, Maan Chua, Joey Sison

It is not enough to write about Salima in one internet page. For Salima, the written document, can only be The Book of Salima, our next collaborative project for next year. Salima, as it is now, is a multi-media concert-theatre production slated for performance in November in time for peace week. Conceived by myself, and written by Arnel Mardoquio, Salima portrays the journey of an ordinary girl from a world of green fields and butterflies through bullets and bombs and into the dark and wet discomforts of her new home called Tent City. It is the artists’ musical call for lasting peace in Mindanao. What has made Salima our favorite conversation topic is the process with which we wrote the music for the production. The process I proposed was for 10 artists to gather to write the music of the play and finish the script together if the script isn’t finished by the time the music-writing activity started. When I conceived the idea together with Arnel and music director Popong Landero, it seemed very simple and straightforward.

l-r: Paolo Sisi, Gauss Obenza, Gary Granada

But when I defended the project for funding at the NCCA Committee on Dramatic Arts (CDA), Chairperson Lutgardo Labad, himself a prolific composer and arranger, suggested we do a Lab Production first because the idea of “writing the music together” was practically unheard of. In order for the CDA to endorse the 1-million-peso project, it needed to first understand what that process was, whether it was feasible, whether it would produce quality work, and whether it could be a model for future musical works. So the CDA, and later the NCCA Music Committee approved the release of P250,000 for the Lab Production and for the documentation of the activity.

l-r: Maan Chua, Gary Granada, Paolo Sisi

I initially felt slighted and shortchanged. It felt like Mindanao artists had to prove they were worth one million while NCCA easily dispenses 1-2 million pesos to Manila productions without a blink. In the end I felt we were lucky to have started a model of production work that could form a basis for future NCCA funding policies. Still awaiting word from the Music Committee and fast running out of time, I, Arnel, and Popong decided we had to start the Lab Production whether we had funding or not. We texted the other musicians, and met some. They were so excited with the project that they all agreed they would do the Lab Production for free.

On our first official meeting as a whole team on July 21, we got word that the NCCA approved the 250k. But the money wasn’t going to travel as fast as the call from NCCA. In fact, the money hasn’t arrived to this day. Maan Chua lent P15,000, Gauss Obenza negotiated with Eden Nature Park for a use-now-pay-later arrangement, Popong borrowed his sister’s car, Gary paid his own airfare, and Arnel and project manager Joey Sison did all the cooking. A few days later, a generous institution lent us more money, with interest, of course.

Popong Landero (leftmost), Paolo Sisi (rightmost)

While the lack of money was a serious issue, it didn’t derail the project. We all knew that if we didn’t do it NOW, the production would suffer. And so for three nights and seven days—on borrowed monies, soaring spirits, and flowing beer (paid out of our own pockets)— we of various musical and political persuasions burned our guitars to write the music for Salima TOGETHER. It was seven days of music and merriment. There was so much fun and laughter that our project manager worried if we would ever produce any legitimate output. During last night’s interaction at Eric’s place, Gary, still in high spirits, said that nothing like this has ever happened in the Philippine music scene—that music artists of various generations and genre came together in the spirit of joy, genuine collaboration, and CREATIVE DEMOCRACY to produce a soulful, exceptional work of art dedicated to a cause. And that is why The Book of Salima: the Making of a Musical needs to be written, in order that the world may know that such creative process exists, and that more creative possibilities can be shaped.

The artists involved in the making of Salima are like billiard balls of various shapes and sizes all rolling against each other and then dispersing, and then touching again—a variety and a oneness of sound and choreography in that same fathomless space called LIFE where anything and everything is possible.