4th place

In a world where pretty much everything seems mundane and Lady Gaga suddenly becomes a pedestrian humdrum, God knows exactly how to spice things up a little. Tweak some routine here and enter an unexpected stint there, and He’s already done a pretty good job. He may have even thrown in a whole week’s worth of a province-wide merrymaking to ensure not a dreary moment passes by— and everything’s done without skipping a beat in the rhythmic hustle-bustles of all the revelry going on.

Tha Kannawidan Festival "arc"

I would have readily called “overboard” for the latter ‘intervention’, but it would have been rather brazen on my part to do so. Rather, I'm feeling pretty thankful. Have it not been for the events that transpired for this week, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve another milestone in my musical career; I wouldn’t have been able to take a step further in my never-ending quest for independence; I wouldn’t have been able to get my long-awaited vindication; and I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy some pretty good music.

And it all started with a downer.

January 30, 2012—I was feeling pretty nervous. Suddenly, all that confidence I've been carrying around has been sucked into a vortex of absurdity. What the hell did we just get ourselves into?

I entered school feeling a little woozy. My stomach was cramping like hell, probably due to all the stress I've been through the week before, plus all of thinking about what might be happening within a few hours. My High School Chorale will be joining the Open Category of the Kannawidan Chorale Competition—an event I would’ve just taken the event easily, if it were not for the intensity of the competition. We were expecting to be up against some big-time choirs from La Union and Manila—choirs with National titles and International exposures to boot.

Then suddenly, I had a flashback of the conversation I had with my mom a few days back.

“We can’t join the Kannawidan choir competition and expect to win. We have a set list to abide to if we want to join the secondary category... and we haven’t practiced a single song,” my mom would argue with me whenever I would remind her of this competition. I’d just roll my eyes.

“But isn't there a way that we can join? Come on! This will be the last competition the kids will be joining for this year; and it’ll be the last one I’ll be conducting them in... ever!” I’d rebutt in an air of seeming defiance and bitterness. So okay, I was a little bitter. “And besides, if we’re up against them choirs we were up against last time, I bet we could pull off a good showing despite only 2 days’ worth of practice,” I’d state with a pompous air of buoyancy. My mom would then shake her head, and then decided to call up the organizers if there was some way we could actually join without having to adhere to required set pieces.

“We could join the open category,” my mom would eventually tell me. I jumped for joy at the thought of an assured victory. “All we need to do is to prepare a set list consisting of 1 Ilocano piece, 1 Filipino piece, and 1 English piece.” I rejoiced all the more. Couldn't we be any luckier? We had one Ilocano piece and one Filipino piece ready. The only question that remained was if we could learn an English piece for only two days before we’d tackle the competition.

“YES, WE CAN!”

Back then, all I saw were the possibilities of defying the odds... proving that talent alone could suffice for the nonexistent practice time. Now as I look back, I sounded like a total douchebag. When we sat backstage waiting for our turn, listening to the Don Mariano Marcos State University Chorale and the Ramon Magsaysay High School pull off some attention-worthy show, I felt the jitters. Man, they’re good, I would tell myself. I got pretty scared, yet I tried to shake off the feeling. Fear is contagious, and I could feel it creeping down every nerve that racked for the worst case scenario in this event. In an attempt to rid them of such feeling, I would try to pep up my choristers who suddenly felt that they hit rock-bottom.

“You know what, we can do this,” I told them with the same air of confidence I spoke with when I was convincing my mom to join the competition. “We might not be able to win this thing, but trust me, the experience itself is all worth it. Just charge it to experience. Who knows?” I would wink and say in dismissive reassurance, “We might snag the 2^nd place.” Their faces lightened. It warmed my heart when I saw some of them chanting, “Believe in yourself!” for each second that drew closer to our performance time. Huh, I told myself, Maybe we can win this thing after all…

We didn’t.

We ended up flunking to the 4^th place, a fact I couldn’t easily accept because I deemed our performance was way better than that of the 3^rd placers. We were unfortunate to have been the victims of a technical error that cost us the audibility of our harmonies. At first I shook my head in utter disappointment. I set my expectations too high. I wallowed in my utter regard for our innate ability as a singing group. That's it, I thought, I have failed them as a trainer and a conductor.

That night, when I decided to break the news to them, I braced myself for the most violent of all reactions. I usually have a difficulty accepting other peoples' disappointment, so I had second thoughts. Then again, my kids weren't as upset as I thought they would be. When I announced to them that we landed on 4^th place, they tried to cheer me up.

These kids are awesome. 

My eyes welled up with tears. Now I remember why despite all the pressures and the challenges of training these High school students to become the choir members that I envision them to be, I never tried stopping, and I never stopped trying.

I love these kids. I'm totally going to miss them.

And that, my friends, was the milestone in my musical career that I've achieved: The SPCIS High School Chorale, with its humble beginnings that trace back to only 4 years ago, has finally got to join a National level choir competition.

I still get shivers whenever I repeat that.