reinvention

Here are the songs from my album “May Panahon”, which I released in 1998.

May Panahon
Hanap Ko
Piso
Ka Ramon
Hatinggabi
Siya’y Tutugtog
Sa Kamay ng Kaaway
Pauwi sa Amin
Hinihintay
Paalam Mahal
Pagkatapos ng Digma
Himig
Pabalik na

I wrote these songs between 1978 and 1989. Most of them were written under the Marcos dictatorship and were my responses to those times. The songs were recorded on a 4-track cassette tape recorder in 1989, in Baguio and Quezon City, with Lingling Maranan-Claver, who performed many of these songs with me live in Baguio.

I made a demo cassette in 1989 but it was defective. I remixed the songs and released 100 cassette copies of the songs in an album called “May Panahon” in 1998. In the album notes, I explained that the recording had many weaknesses but I decided to release the album anyway as archival or documentary material about the times that inspired the songs.

These past years I have encountered MP3s of the songs from the album on the Net. Tabak also recorded their own versions of some of the songs, which are also available on the Net. This is perhaps why I did not hurry to put these versions online as the songs have been made available by others already (thanks to all who did). On 26-27 September 2008, I at last digitised the songs from the original 2-track master and posted them online. I should’ve done this many years ago; better late than never.

Performing on the album are myself on vocals and playing guitar, octavina, and synthesizer. Lingling Maranan-Claver sings on the album.

I intend to release a CD version of the album soon (in less than 10 years, hopefully).