The traditional Filipino serenade, popularly known in this Southeast Asian archipelago as harana, is slowly fading out.
This part of the country’s culture, in vogue and in crescendo in the 1950s up to the 1960s—when Elvis Presley was wiggling his hips with “Jailhouse Rock,” and the Beatles dishing out their “It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night,” has now been overtaken by a different key and scale.
The inroads of the cell phone technology and the spread of social networking services have helped erase from the manners of today’s generation of Filipinos the erstwhile cherished tradition of their grandparents and grand uncles and aunts.
In some provinces—like Quezon, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Cagayan, Nueva Vizcaya, and the whole Ilocos region—the sight of a man and his friends, the classic Spanish guitar in hand, was most familiar by the window of one woman being courted at past dusk.
The men in their late teens or early 20s, in their sometimes scented evening best, hair combed with aromatic pomade available from the nearest town store, belted out several love songs when the night was young and the moon was yellow.
In some of the provinces, particularly in rice-growing Nueva Ecija, the men would be politely invited inside where they would engage, alternately, in sort of competition with the woman being courted with the number of songs sung till past midnight.
But those in the Ilocos, even if they were still awake, would never let the men inside—high in the belief the modest Ilocana should never show the man courting her he was being considered, if at all.
It seemed they belonged to the old school of thought that Ilocanas, as were many Filipino women in other parts of the country, were basically shy and secretive.
Fast forward to the later decades, the culture of ang-angaw among the Ilocanos and tuksuhan among the Tagalogs flourished.
This was common among teeners and young adults, a way of matching people who may have mutual admiration or affection for each other and may end up in romance or avoidance of each other if the scenario became embarrassing for both individuals.
The presence of other men during the evening serenade, most notably very close friends of the one courting or one who is interested in the woman next door or in some other barangay, was at that time a psychological boost.
In the Ilocos, the men would blend voices and sing the ballad “adayo pay nga ili ti naggapuanmi, ‘diay ili a Santa Fe…”
That only means, even while the men and the woman being serenaded knew it was not true, that the men had come from a distant place—the town of Santa Fe in far Nueva Vizcaya across the imposing Caraballo mountains.
Among those that evoke poignant memories is the Tagalog harana, popular in Bulacan and Laguna and other surrounding provinces of Metro Manila, particularly the one being sung today, “O Ilaw (Oh Light)” where the man compares his beloved to a star in pitch dark sky.
The song lyrics particularly ask the woman to open her window and look out at the man, who is dishing out his heart and affection.
But the modern “Harana” of Parokya ni Edgar can be a bit facetious.
Notice the lyrics: “Uso pa ba ang harana? Marahil ikaw ay nagtataka/Sino ba ‘tong mukhang gago, nagkandarapa sa pagkanta…at nasisintunado sa kaba. Meron pang dalang mga rosas. Suot nama’y maong na kupas at nariyan pa ang barkada…”
Its loose translation: “Is serenade still the trend to date? Perhaps it makes you meditate. Who is this looking like a fool alone, singing piteously out of tune. And he has a rose in his hand. What he’s wearing are denims old in the company of friends so bold.”
Singing the harana, in provinces near the metropolis or those in the far-flung countryside, had its origins during the Spanish colonial period that started in 1521.
That was the year Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator sailing under the flag of Spain, brought the Catholic Cross to these far eastern islands, 141 years after Arabian missionary Sheik Karim ul-Makhdum established the first Muslim mosque in Simunul in Tawi-Tawi.
Today, with modern gadgets easily available and convenient—without having to learn the lyrics of an appropriate ballad or love song—a loved one may just be a text message away.
Or the loved one may just be an email away, in an email protected by the account holder’s password none of even his closest friends may know.
And the wonder of it all is the text message may no longer come from just one direction.
If there is mutual understanding—or MU in the language of the 21st-century generation of Filipinos—the text messages can clog the two-way street.
(Photo from Wikimedia/Markytour777)
Every day, every week of the year. Or, in the language of the now generation, “24/7.”