MANILA, Philippines – They've been going in and out of style, but their shows are always guaranteed to raise a smile.
It’s been twice as long as when Sgt. Pepper first taught his band to play, but 39 years after they first started to sing together, the Apo have finally lived up to their name. They are now Apo, the wise and wizened elders of the tribe, and musicians who pick up a guitar in the name of Original Pilipino Music should first bow in the general direction of Loyola Heights to acknowledge their debt to these ancestors.
“When we started, we felt that individually we were not the best, but we felt that we really had a vision,” says Jim Paredes. “It was the ’70s, the time of protest, and we actually wanted to write songs for our generation. We had a goal that was bigger than the band. We wanted to write songs for Filipinos.”
And they did. The Apo’s hits have become OPM standards, and their body of work has become a pop canon, a manual of instructions on how to weave words and music together with wit, style, humor, wisdom, and most important of all, relevance. The singers may now be getting on in years, but the songs remain forever young and perennial as the proverbial grass.
How else explain the smashing success of two fairly recent tribute albums, “Kami nAPO Muna” and “Kami nAPO Muna Ulit”, in which the top-selling bands of today covered Apo songs? There are kids today who think “Doo Bidoo” is a Kamikazee song, and “Ewan” an Imago song, kids who hum the tunes but have never heard of, nor heard, the originals.
In a word, the Apo have been institutionalized.
“Hindi pa naman sinisimento (but not as memorials),” protests Danny Javier. “Pag sinabi mong ’institutionalized’ parang naka-formalin ka na (not like we’ve been pickled in formalin).”
“I’ve always looked at what we did as a rebellion,” adds Paredes. “Maybe now we’re an institution because the kids sing our songs, I guess that’s what it is.”
Strangely enough, the Apo have never performed by themselves at the Araneta Coliseum—still a psychological benchmark for Filipino performers. They’ve performed as guests at other people’s concerts there, they’ve filled bigger venues such as the ULTRA, they’ve even performed in Carnegie Hall and at the World Expo in Brisbane, Australia, but they’ve never had the Dome all to themselves.
Until now.
Billed as “Apo of the Philippines: Finally… at the Big Dome,” the Apo will take the stage at the Araneta Coliseum on September 20. It’s not exactly a comeback concert—they’ve never really gone away, although Paredes now makes his home in Sydney, Australia—but it will be a chance for younger audiences who know the group only by their songs to finally see them live.
“If you look at the history of Apo, our connection with our audience, the really strong bonds happened on stage,” says Javier. “The height of our popularity was when we were on TV. We got the highest rating on daytime television with our Sunday show. But what we were doing on TV was very far from our core capacity. We weren’t singing our songs. On TV you’re an object that the audience watches; you’re not a performer that they can relate to.”
The concert at the Dome will be a chance for the group to renew this connection with a new generation of fans.
“We have this thing where we ask the audience who among them are seeing us live for the first time, and in the last nine shows we did we’ve averaged 60 to 70 percent first timers,” reports Boboy Garrovillo. “Nakakatuwa (very heartening) because these people are just discovering us, and these are not necessarily young people.”
“It’s probably not very hip to say it, but we have discipline as far as our performances are concerned,” says Javier. “We practice like we didn’t practice before. For 90 per cent of the shows, we discuss exactly what we’re going to do before the show, at what point we’re going to do it, and we always have this objective that before we go on stage, we are ready to give the audience the best that they have ever seen. And somehow, because of the discipline, because of the awareness that we have to be at our best, what happens is ‘magical.’ We manage to surprise and delight the audience. Even though we’re a musical group, I feel that what we do on stage is magic, in the sense that although you might have seen it before, you’re still amazed. Paano nila ginagawa yon? (How do they do it?) And when you surprise and delight people, you surprise yourself—wow, nagawa ko uli ito. That’s always been our strategy— surprise and delight.”
It was in 1969, the year of Woodstock, that the Apolinario Mabini Hiking Society—a play on the initials of their alma mater and a foretaste of the ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor to come—was formed. From the very beginning, the members were composing original material, but in their early years they were better known for covering the hits of the day.
“We’ve always had original songs but it was hard to play them in those days,” says Javier.
“We learned to make audiences laugh with our repartee because they would boo our originals,” recalls Paredes.
“We were never known for our vocal prowess,” adds Garrovillo. “To the college audience we were just a fun group that cracked jokes onstage and could harmonize.”
Never one to do things by the book, the Apo Hiking Society (later just Apo) launched their recording career by breaking up. In 1973, member Lito de Joya (ever since known as “the fourth Apo”) was leaving the group to work, and Paredes was to go to Turkey as an exchange student. To bid goodbye to their fans, the Apo gave a farewell concert at the Meralco Theater. The performance was recorded on two-track tape, more as a souvenir for the band members and their fans than anything.
But the following year, Vicor Records picked up the recording, and released it as Apo’s debut album, “In Concert”.
The landmark “Collector’s Item” followed in 1975, and the group began to enjoy their first hits, such as “Pumapatak” and “Show Me A Smile.” They formed their own record label, JEM Recording. “Pinoy rock” had been launched earlier with the Juan de la Cruz Band and Anakbayan, and the poppier Hotdog was promoting the so-called “Manila sound.” The Apo needed to situate themselves in this musical ferment. It was Javier who came up with the perfect catchphrase.
“It was Danny who coined the term ‘OPM,’” recalls Paredes. “We couldn’t get shelf space in Shoemart for our releases, but we wanted to create excitement with our Filipino catalogue, so we called it Original Pilipino Music.”
Apo songs formed the soundtrack for the generation that grew up during the martial law years of the mid- to late ’70s. Even if they had broken up in 1980, their legacy would have been secure. But it was during the social upheaval of the Ninoy era, when the members themselves were approaching middle age, that Apo reached maturity.
“That was when the true personality of Apo emerged,” says Garrovillo. “In the ’70s, it was purely musical, but in the ’80s we started singing about the political situation of the time.” So much so that Apo soon gained the attention of the other “Apo” in Malacañang, and for a while it was rumored that their names were on some secret order of battle of “enemies of the state.”
The Apo have since remained active in what has come to be known as “civil society,” while continuing to create music. They have to date recorded 22 albums and played countless concerts both here and abroad. But their most lasting legacy remains the songs, which have taken on a life of their own.
“You might say that the story of Apo is all about asserting our being Filipino,” says Paredes. “Today, there’s more acceptance, but at the same time, there’s still stiff competition on radio and reservations at the Dome from foreign acts. For me, it’s still all about being OPM.”
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