My first happiest encounter
with Magellan and Philippine history was through a popular musical genius named
Yoyoy Villame.
If we are going to believe Yoyoy and many of distinguished historians, today is exactly the 500th anniversary of “discovering” the Philippines. The iconic Pinoy crooner has this line in his song “Magellan”: “On March 16, 1521/When Philippines was discovered by Magellan/They were sailing day and night, across the big ocean/Until they saw a small Limasawa island.” Well, the song is about the Portuguese explorer who is sailing for Spain, who named the islands after King Philip. They were then called Las Felipinas. It starts with the arrival of soldier Ferdinand Magellan on 16 March 1521, and then moves on to his meeting with local leader Humabon in Cebu, to the baptism, to the battle between the soldier and Mactan leader Lapulapu, and it concludes with Magellan’s death. As we all know it, the song is about the attempt to conquer the islands, at least from our forebears’ perspective.
Well, Yoyoy’s true name is Roman Villame and the song became his main vehicle to stardom. He first recorded Magellan in 1972 and the rest is history (no pun intended!), so to speak. Remember, in 1972, songs in English are the most popular in the country. Yoyoy defied that.
Villame was born in a fishing community of Calape, Bohol, Villame was the youngest of ten siblings. He was once a soldier-trainee of the Philippine Army and a jeepney driver. He joined many amateur singing competitions in Manila but always to no avail, reportedly due to his strong Visayan accent. But Yoyoy did not lose hope and finally hit the mainstream music industry in 1977 and became a national figure 5 years after his recording of “Magellan”. Later, he became a movie actor, a standup comedian, and a councilor in Las Piñas City.
Yoyoy’s first on-screen appearance was in Isla Limasawa, where "Magellan" was used as theme song. The movie was top billed by then ace comedian Chiquito and Pilar Pilapil, the Binibining Pilipinas Universe 1967-turned actress.
Since the time of Yoyoy’s “Magellan” what happened to the Philippines? Well, our geographical and historical attributes remain after his singing of “Philippine Geography” while Filipinos in general never give a damn if this administration wants to give the West Philippine Sea to China. Filipinos still live in the pages of Orwellian piece of literature where “animals” take the main stage like in Yoyoy’s “Hayop na Kombo”. The Philippines of today is eager to find a new language to everything we are experiencing. Like in Yoyoy’s “Butchikik”, we intend to invent languages that we do not even understand.
There are many inconsistencies in the late Yoyoy Villame’s “Magellan” compared to Antonio Pigafetta’s writings. The latter is the Italian scholar and explorer who actually witnessed the Battle of Mactan. In Yoyoy’s song, Magellan was hit on the neck but in Pigafetta’s account, Magellan was hit in the leg. And lastly, Magellan neither cried nor stumbled down during the actual combat. It was actually a poison-tipped arrow that killed Magellan. Was Yoyoy a historical revisionist?
According to Jocelyn Pinzon in “Remembering Philippine History: Satire in Popular Songs (2015), “Like other colonized countries, the Philippines has a history that makes the remembering uncomfortable, even obnoxious. …. The rhetorical devices such as burlesque, parody, irony and code-switching facilitate an amusing and humorous remembering.”
Maybe that is why I remember Yoyoy today, March 16, 2021.
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References:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.5367/sear.2015.0273
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyoy_Villame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJIUZapWUvs
Photo: Pocketmags
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