When the Night and the Music Belonged to Pete Lacaba

By Joey Salgado

Pete Lacaba walked into My Brother’s Mustache, a folk house in Quezon City, just as Pat Castillo began her set. It was past eight, and word had gone around that he might not make it.

For a moment no one noticed him come in with his son, Kris. He could have been any silver-haired retiree, come to honor a man whose life and work is being celebrated that night. Then he scanned the standing-room-only crowd, waved at familiar faces, and the room stirred. People came up to greet him. Pete smiled, the fog of memory lifting with a firm handshake, a pat on the back, a familiar face, a name.

Call time had been five. By half past five, the place was nearly full, and extra tables and chairs had to be brought out. Most of the crowd have gone silver: faces behind the bylines, faces you see on television or in movies, faces from one underground meeting or another, faces one had known by other names. It was a mini silver revolution, and Pete’s songs were the background music.

Table talk turned to his work and vignettes from his life. Romy Bohol and Vince Pozon, once advertising’s bad boys and former activists,  recalled “Prometheus Unbound,” the 1973 poem Pete slipped past the censors under a pseudonym, published in a crony-owned magazine, its first letters spelling out MARCOS HITLER DIKTADOR TUTA. Romy, then based in Catbalogan, asked for a copy of the magazine from a news vendor. “Wala na. Kinumpiska ng military,” was the reply. Photographer Lito Ocampo, detained for five years during martial law, volunteers that he shared the same detention center with Pete, at Camp Crame. Nick Joaquin made Pete’s release a condition for accepting the National Artist award from Marcos.

‘Sangandaan’

Salinawit - from salin, translate, and awit, song - began as a simple idea. Jazz standards and a few pop hits rewritten in Filipino, as adaptations rather than literal translations. Pete would have the lyrics photocopied and given to friends. With Pete, these songs, part of the typical piano bar boomer playlist, became classics in their own right, performed in Salinawit gatherings held, on and off, since 2007.

Some of the singers who had carried those songs came back to sing them again. OPM icons like Leah Navarro and Castillo. Navarro sang Pete’s adaptation of “One Note Samba” and “Love Me Tender.” Castillo sang two original compositions from Pete, Sangandaan and Aling Pag-ibig Pa, both from the Mike de Leon movie Sister Stella L. which she originally recorded for the soundtrack. Pete sang along to Sangandaan, and when it ended, Pete wiped away the tears from his face.

Cooky Chua, a Salinawit regular, sang Kulay-Rosas, Pete’s take on “La Vie En Rose.” Bayang Barrios joined her for Kahapon Lang(“Yesterday”), then sang Sya(“She”) alone. Mich Valdez sang Yun Lang (“That’s All”). Joey Ayala and Noel Cabangon closed the program’s musical set. 

Between the songs came the other Pete Lacabas. 

Jackie Lou Blanco read from Sister Stella L., which Pete co-wrote with De Leon, about a nun, played by Vilma Santos, who leaves the convent’s quiet for the picket line. This was Lacaba the screenwriter.

Atom Araullo read from Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage, Pete’s classic reportage on the First Quarter Storm of 1970. This was Lacaba the journalist, taking you inside the tempest. In this book, compiling articles he wrote for the Asia-Philippines Leader magazine, Pete breaks the old-school rule that a reporter should be a passive, neutral observer. With each demonstration he covered, his convictions surface and harden on the page.

The night ended with a rare request. Pete was asked to sing. 

Cooky Chua, Jo-Ann Maglipon and the writers who had been long-time friends with Pete and his late wife, Marra Lanot, helped him choose the songs. Princess Nemenzo sang "La Vie en Rose" in French while Pete answered in Filipino. Those in the room who had shared piano bars and karaoke nights with Pete had heard him sing countless times, but never because someone asked. This evening belonged to him.

This article also appears in Rappler