Songs Our Mothers Sang: A Journey to the Inner Universe
By Charina Sanz (Newsbreak. Vol. 4 No. 7, April 12, 2004)
A hush fell upon the crowd as the lights began to dim. Here, inside a room in the Grand Men Seng Hotel in Davao City, psychology professionals and students were about to start a workshop called “Making the Unconscious Conscious.” In one corner of the room a duyan (hammock) hung from a panel; in the middle was a painting of a tribal woman lulling a child to sleep. But all eyes were riveted to a young woman sitting on a rocking chair, her eyes closed. Moments later, the first bars of Lucio San Pedro’s haunting lullaby, “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan,” filtered through the room. A voice began singing: “Sana’y di magmaliw, ang dati kong araw, nang munti pang bata, sa piling ni nanay….”
It was the voice of actress Chin-Chin Gutierrez, who sang as she walked slowly toward the woman in the middle of the room. As Gutierrez stood behind the woman, she rocked the chair gently. Her voice was lyrical, plaintive. The young woman in the chair wept. ”I never heard my mother sing me lullabies,” the young woman later told the crowd of about 80 attending the workshop, which is part of the Mindanao-wide Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) conference held in Davao.
The woman, named Leah, is a teacher and the mother of a young boy. “My mother and I were never close,” she said. What broke her heart was the thought that “like my mother, I also do not sing lullabies for my son.” Work had kept her away from him. “He calls me ‘Ate’ (elder sister), and he calls his yaya (nanny), Mama.”
Another woman, a psychology professor, spoke of the lightness in her chest as she listened to the uyayi (lullaby). “I see images of my husband singing a lullaby for each of our children. In his own way, in the lullabies he sang, I now remember after 26 years how much he really loved them.”
Throughout the sharing, more stories were told, emotions poured out, stirred by the singing of uyayi and the swinging of the hammock. “There is in each of us a longing for that space and time when we first learned how it is to be loved,” Gutierrez said.
The uyayi evokes tender feelings in us because we were all children once, she mused. “The child knows her mother’s inner universe¾her heartbeat, laughter, sorrow, and joy. We all remember, but it is so deep within. But the child hears them, and so does the inner child within.”
The actress is the executive producer of the double CD album Uyayi: A Collection of Philippine Lullabies. She had been invited by Jesuit priest and anthropologist Albert E. Alejo to assist in the experimental psychology workshop that he designed for the conference.
Plumbing the Psyche
Alejo, author of Generating Energies, a National Book Award finalist, believes that the uyayi is an untapped resource that can be used to plumb the Filipino psyche. In our culture, he said, there are resources, energies, springs, and ways to bond with our hearts, connecting us with our roots.
What motivated Gutierrez to produce the double CD? “My desire was to find the uyayi. I wanted to seek…. I wanted to find my ancient song,” she said.
The search for uyayi took Gutierrez away from showbiz and brought her into the baybayin (coastal places), patag (plains), burol (hills), and bundok (mountains), where she did field research and recordings. It turned out to be a rewarding experience for the actress who starred in such films as Rizal and Maalala Mo Kaya, which earned her an Urian ward for best supporting actress
She trekked to places like the highlands of Bukidnon and Cordillera and the central plains of Maguindanao, particularly in the towns of Upi and Carmen. At least 19 of the 29 collected lullabies came from Mindanao from such tribes as the Teduray, Ata Lumad, Matigsalog, Subanon, T’boli, Mandaya, Talaandig Bukidnon, Arumanon, Maguindanoan, Maranao, and Tausug.
In her travels, she came in contact with “kindred spirits”¾shamans, village folk, tribal elders, and mothers who shared with her their people’s songs and stories.
”Each time I asked these kind and gentle souls for a lullaby, something intimate was revealed,” she recalled. “It was as though the songs had always been there, playing in their hearts, silent and unheard¾until a stranger asked to hear them.”
The journey gave her glimpses of a sacred culture, she said. “Imagine this tribal elder (Timuay Custodio Saliling, an Arumanon-Manuvu) saying, ‘I have offered you a puhugan’¾an anchorage in the once-upon-a time.”
River, the Big Brother
Then there was the Subanon shaman, Balian Tukong Tuabi, who called her “the sister from the other side of the river.” Gutierrez was told: “Don’t forget our big brother, the River, where nobody is lost or forgotten.” She mused that if that river was where we could all understand each other, “I think when we sing our own lullabies, we return to that space where we’re all together.”
Let us then go back to lullabies, she said. Let us learn from the mothers who live close to nature¾where do they get their lullabies? “Not from the radio, but from the air, from the forest, from the earth…climbing up the mountain with the baby in the back, they are humming a song.”
Now standing before the crowd in the experimental psychology workshop, she told the participants in a voice that was almost a whisper: “Close your eyes.” Pause. “Then cover your ears.” A moment of silence. “Do you hear the bukal (natural spring) inside? May umuugong ba? May naririnig ka bang ugong?” (Is there humming? Can you hear the humming?” The crowd nodded.
The uyayi, she said, had taught her silence¾to quiet the mind, to listen to the bukal inside that had been longing to speak but remained unheard. “I don’t want to call it soul, I want to call it bukal. Soul has kept me in the abstract world for years.”
She tells the story of the bukal that “came with the flow” one night as she walked in a forest. “And there I was walking when I saw a puddle, wet and muddy.Then I noticed there were bubbles so I stepped on them and saw a spurt of water came out. Ay, bukal! Nagpapasuso ang Inang Lupa! (Mother earth must be nursing.)
”Then I thought to myself, I want to share this nectar. So I chopped a bamboo that got separated into three to let the water flow. Hmmm. It came across to me that the three pieces are like Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. I went to the far ends of that bamboo and learned that while they carry different sounds, different rhythms, all still come from one bukal.”
This bukal is her philosophical allusion to the creative energy that has found its way to the making of the Uyayi album.
Social Change
Alejo said he had tried to tap this resource for personal healing and therapy. He extended it by exploring its possibilities for social transformation. A poet, he recently wrote the lyrics of two lullabies, one entitled “Walang Hihingi” (to the tune of “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan”) and the other, “Meme Na O Mindanao” (to the tune of “Meme Na Aking Bunso”). “Walang Hihingi” (No Asking) is an electoral slogan urging people not to ask for cash, gifts, or alms from candidates to dissuade them from engaging into corruption when they assume office. Both songs were well received by the workshop participants.
”Meme na o Mindanao” (Sleep Now, Mindanao) is an uyayi of hope and dream for
peace in Mindanao, for an end to conflict. “Damguhon mo ang kalinaw, sa umaabot nga adlaw (Dream of peace in the days to come),” a line from the song goes.
“What if in entering the unconscious, the traumas are the traumas of war?” he asked. “What if the journey within is the journey of the evacuees? What if the pain is the pain of losing your childhood because you have to run away as a child?”
Alejo recounted the story told him by a Muslim woman leader whose uyayi had been snatched by war: “The uyayi of my childhood was shattered. We were always on the run because of war…. [War] took away my childhood, my innocence.”
The woman continued: “But you are right. We must be able to sing the uyayi to remember once again what we had been as children. Let the child in us hope and dream again, and wish that the dreams be allowed to take wings.” (Newsbreak, April 2004)
