![]() ![]() Tibuan’s cover of “Sintang Pangarap” likewise puts a funky spin to this already irreverent song of courtship. “Istorya nang Raffy Balboa” by Chilimansi, stuck close to the original treatment, but this version has more drama to the narrative. “Sibul ning Arayat” has been given an upbeat reggae makeover (band: 5 Against The Wall), so refreshingly light and lilting. I still find some of the songs too loud for comfort, but the arrangements are interestingly fresh and engaging. But when I played the RockKapampangan CD, I found myself listening to the entire 16 tracks not once, but twice. I confess, I am not exactly a rock fan-Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody are the only valid rock songs that I can listen to in their entirety. Now a gang of young Kapampangan rockers have taken his songs (including adapted traditional tunes) and given them a contemporary rock beat, in a new CD co-produced by the Holy Angel University Center for Kapampangan Studies and Kalalangan Kamaru (19 year old Jason Paul Laxamana, also the CD project director). That’s what makes his music so appealing, a spoonful of humor does make the medicine go down. When he belts a song in a familiar style that harkens back to the “polosas” of yore, Totoy doesn’t just sing the lyrics but also speaks the truth, often sugarcoating it with his seeming flippance and frivolity. A legendary name in the local music scene, Totoy Bato, accompanied only by his guitar, sings just about everything: from his favorite Kapampangan places, about love gone wrong, the loneliness of a Saudi worker to the wayward lives of OFW’s. Totoy Bato (real name: Rodolfo Laxamana) is Pampanga’s foremost minstrel man, an itinerant singer of bawdy Kapampangan ballads, folk songs and English pop hits reworked with Kapampangan lyrics. ![]()
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