A singer losing his voice? He’s wowing them anyway at the Cebu Music Festival in California this weekend
Joel Illustrisimo catches it right away—a hoarseness in the voice, a string of notes barely hit, the singing and accompaniment gone somewhat awry. Wrenching his right hand off the rhythm guitar he’s playing, he jabs his pointy finger up in the air. Tall, with an athlete’s build and bearing and a chiseled face with that darn, impish mole, Joel inadvertently cuts quite the John Travolta pose, and the music stops all at once.
Beside him, vocalist Tata Danao trails off mid-song.
Jay Montecillo, working the bass guitar in the middle of the room, hurries over to huddle with the two. Staying put at the keyboard but absorbing the goings-on is Lloyd Alganion, probably the youngest and undeniably the eye-candy, cool-cat rocker of the bunch. At the far end, robust, masterful Alex Atillo puts the drums on hold.
“We’re playing in a higher key,” Joel says quietly, diplomatically, obliquely referring to Tata’s rendition. Joel finds it somewhat strained and not quite spot-on, but he keeps this thought to himself.
Tata nonetheless gets it and feigns a look of surprise—with exaggerated Garfield eyes—that quickly melts into a guilty grin.
He has, in fact, gone to see the doctor a few weeks ago.
He complained that, since late last year, he would wake up at daybreak with a weak, raspy voice—or with hardly any sound. He gargled with warm water and salt. He’s been drinking warm water with lemon and honey.
His primary doctor said it may just be acid reflux and gave him a prescription. The EENT specialist agreed and gave him a higher dose of the same medicine.
Tata was also sent in for “speech therapy.”
But his voice troubles persisted. He could no longer post his usual live feeds of himself singing on social media, afraid of being derailed in real time.
Soon enough, the big thing is coming up: the third edition of the Cebu Music Festival—USA. Happening today, Sept. 19, in Roseville, a thriving hub of new development in the Sacramento area, within the ambit of California’s capital, the festival showcases the best of Cebuano culture.
For festival founder Rolly Wagas, it begins with music. He is counting on G2, the most sought-after band in the milieu, to headline the evening concert together with selected bands. The festival’s video ad culminates with an image of Tata coaxing viewers to join the fun.
And why not? Tata is from Cebu. So are many of the medical practitioners from the Philippines now working in Sacramento—like the G2 band members or their spouses, who are mostly nurses at Kaiser, Mercy General Hospital, and the University of California in Davis, among others. Everyone knows the Sacramento area offers the highest pay for nurses in the entire US.
Jay, himself a nurse, has been shepherding the G2 band since it was formed two years ago, a spin-off from a church choir. Looking homey in a sleeveless shirt in muted seafoam aqua in tonight’s rehearsal, Jay shares Joel’s concern about Tata’s voice.
And so Jay turns to a band member manning an iPad and, in his affable yet no-nonsense way, says, “How did we do it the last time? Let’s check out the video.”
The band members have always been trooping to Jay’s house for practices. He and his wife, Grace, had long ago converted the receiving room into a music den, where Hazel Rodriguez is now hunkering down in a chair. An occupational therapist, she also does vocals for G2, her shoulder-length hair shimmying with nonchalance at showtime. She has been flashing lyrics from an iPad to an outsized screen suspended overhead but is suddenly going over the device’s archives, heeding Jay’s directive to retrieve performance videos.
But without missing a beat, Joel gets into the action immediately. He draws his guitar back into a familiar embrace—and begins strumming in a lower key. Jay follows suit. Alex and Lloyd spring back to life. Tata, whose larger-than-life performances almost always electrify audiences and even his fellow band members, belts out the number once more, at the same pitch he delivered earlier, and just like that, the band manages to shift gears and deftly makes another go of it.
What a ruckus it is, G2’s take on Ayaw Pangihi (Don’t Pee). It’s a raunchy Bisaya ditty that displays Tata’s signature swagger. Alex and Lloyd throw in an ad-lib instrumental accent when Tata utters a certain phrase, while Jay and Joel follow Tata’s lead as he quivers in mock demonstration of what’s happening in the song.
In a music den in the back streets of still-secluded suburbia, Tata’s full-bodied, playful voice blasts on, albeit in a vocal register his cohorts navigate around delicately, in all generosity.
And so the night rolls on, as it always does.
