The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
It takes a thorough study of music to make one not only a National Artist but as a professional musician as well.
Especially if one is in pursuit of excellence and social responsibility in a chosen field of expertise, the more it requires a deeper understanding and sharing of one’s career to the public, commercially and artistically.
This is the massage being sent, modesty aside, by NA for Music Ramon P. Santos.
It took almost a lifetime for Dr. Santos to be able to come to terms with his erudition on Filipino ethnic music and other Southeast Asian musical influences before he could assess and qualify himself as an artist worth his salt.
This octogenarian academic has devoted his life in intensive and extensive researches on ethnomusicology.
For him, a musician in the industry—studio or independent–must study the multi-faceted art.
When I got to talk to Dr. Santos about music, in general and ethnomusicology, in particular, I asked him the embodiment of popular, bordering on indie spirit singing, like Joey Ayala, Grace Nono, Bayang Barrios and their ilk in projecting Filipino ethnic music, the NA, without batting an eyelash, acknowledged them and retorted: “Kulang pa sila (They still lack some things). They should study more.”
These words should pose challenges on Ayala, Nono, Barrios et al. (Boy Villasanta)