It was during a 20-minute train stopover at Iriga station in Bicol when he heard applause somewhere, and when he came closer to investigate, his highly attuned ears for music heard a melodious voice that rose above the din.
After asking around about the girl with that voice (“Sir, laging panalo sa local amateur contests ‘yan”), he approached Nora’s mother and told her to bring her daughter to Manila. Once Nora was in Manila, he got her to perform in Tawag ng Tanghalan, where Nora went on to be the undefeated champion. The rest is history.
I met this man who discovered Nora serendipitously four years ago in 2019. I was bored stiff, waiting to meet with people who were said to be interested in investing in a new TV show. I noticed a senior citizen about my age who was in the same room, killing time, waiting for his turn as a DJ in a radio station. He turned out to be a funny and spellbinding storyteller and conversationalist.
His name: Mar Lopez.
It didn’t ring a bell at first. Then as we began to talk, I learned that Mar Lopez was one of the biggies of the D’ Big 3 Sullivans and Tatlong Pinoy (Bindoy, Mar and Ding), the musical trio known for their novelty songs during their heyday in the 1960s and ’70s. I suddenly became more interested.
Mar started his career as a performer when he joined the Top 3 with Apeng Daldal and Bebing Santos who became the top drawer of the Grand Opera House in Avenida Rizal.
Remember the songs “Butsiki” and “Magellan?” Yoyoy Villame sang them, and they became big hits, but it was Mar Lopez who composed them. For “Butsiki,” Mar revealed the lyrics were nothing, but a meaningless compilation of names of hardware, commercial retail stores and restaurants he randomly wrote down on a piece of paper while walking around Chinatown in Binondo, Manila. The “Magellan” version of D’ Big 3 Sullivans was as riotous as Yoyoy’s and it was a wonder why it didn’t make as big a splash.
It was Mar who also gave our pop culture such naughty songs as “May Pulis, May Pulis sa Ilalim ng Tulay,” “Pinagbigyan,” “Ang manok Kong Texas,” among many. They are now embedded in the Filipino people’s memory from Manila and Cebu to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
I didn’t ask about his age because he is so zestful, but I reckon he is in his 80s. He said he was working as an “auditioner” (his own term) of TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) for applicant-performers going abroad. His approval was the passport to high-paying stints in cities, such as Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and other cities outside the Philippines.
His gauge points as an auditioner are timing, rhythm and musicality, aside from, of course, voice quality. He said that to be a great singer, one must master breathing to be able to hold high notes and make them last.
Auditioning has been a main part of his professional career, in addition to composing songs in a jiffy and performing onstage with the D’ Big 3 Sullivans. As an auditioner, Mar claims to have given breaks to a gallery of big-time talents including Nora Aunor, Diomedes Maturan, Ogie Alcasid, the Apo Hiking Society, Sarah Geronimo, and others whose names now have slipped from his mind.
It was during his days as an auditioner for the top-rated Tawag ng Tanghalan TV show when he discovered Nora Aunor (originally surnamed Villamayor).
Even as we were talking, Mar professed his admiration for Nora. “She is one of a kind. She is a natural-born musical prodigy. With just one hearing of a new song and in 20 minutes, she can perform it superbly even without rehearsal.”
Many of Mar’s compositions became top hits for such artists as Eva Eugenio, Imelda Papin and other celebrities. I was surprised to hear that he was the composer of Nora Aunor’s “Pearly Shells.” The list of songs he composed is a long one and he can’t even remember them all. One time, he heard a song and he was impressed with it. It turned out it was one of his compositions. But he said he never profited much from them. Many of his songs are performed without him getting a centavo from his royalty fees, no thanks to Filscap, the Filipino Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. But he just shrugs his shoulders.
“Bigay ko na sa kanila [I’ll just give it to them],” he commented. He is contented with knowing that his compositions are making people of all ages happy. Bless his generous heart.
He became more animated when the conversation shifted to the days when he was buddy-buddy with the triumvirate of Buddy de Vera, Vic del Rosario and Orly Ilacad when they were still “nobodies” in the burgeoning days of the local recording industry. Their office then was a cheaply rented bare room somewhere in Avenida and Azcarraga with only one chair and one table. Mar said that it was he who came up with the name Alpha Records, inspired by the name of the snack they used to eat on the ground floor. Soon Vic and Orly went to put up Vicor Records. He partnered with Buddy to set up a new recording label, coming up with the name Mayon Records because Buddy de Vera came from Bicol.
All of them went on to reap profits from the compositions and the talents Mar discovered or auditioned for, while Mar continued to beat his own career path. Mar admitted he is nowhere near their level in terms of financial status. But he said he is okay with that as long as he is recognized for his contributions to their success.
Besides being a composer, performer, comedian-actor, an auditioner, and talent discoverer, Mar also dabbled in radio broadcasting as an anchor host of radio programs.
It was propitious that we met in a meeting to discuss a show about innovation. For Mar was indeed, an innovator in the entertainment field. His novelty songs paved the way for Lito Camo and other singers of mass-rousing ditties that children love to sing nowadays. His compositions changed the game.
Mar regaled us with one juicy anecdote after another. He had a way of mesmerizing us, making us guffaw as in “laughing out loud” with his tics and antics, and without us realizing it, one hour or so had passed. It was a masterful act. In the sports lingo, this ole dude still got game.
But there is something more beyond the image of a natural born comedian that Mar projected onstage and screen. Listen to his songs more carefully as I did after meeting him, and humor aside, you will discover a deeper sub-stream to his lyrics. You will realize that the songs, in fact, are mini stories, full of trenchant social observations of the life and travails of the ordinary Pinoy, with moral lessons that affirm old-fashioned traditional values.
Indulge me and google D’ Big 3 Sullivans and press the play button on “Buwaya sa Kalsada” (A day in the life of a jeepney driver), “Manok Kong Texas” (the cockfight aficionado who loses everything), “Sugar Daddy” (lament of a dirty old man whose pockets are emptied by a materialistic girl who only wanted him for his money), “Senior Citizen” (an inspiring tribute to elderly people), “Negro” (a dig into the Pinoy’s racist attitude), “Utang ng Inay Mo” (a plea of recognition for the plight of struggling single mothers with a family to raise). Or take the most familiar of them all, “May Pulis, May Pulis…” which on the surface sounds like a whimsical, funny nursery song, but if you give serious thought to the words may bayong ang pulis sa ilalim ng tulay, you can see that the song is really a “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” way of hinting at police corruption, colloquially known as kotong in which bribes are surreptitiously handed in places away from the public eye.
Another seemingly bawdy song “Ang Buserong Mang Gusting” is actually a caveat against sexual psychopaths. And there are other appealing tunes of his that subtly convey social messages.
Funny or even bawdy, these songs reveal not a flippant shallow-minded clown, but a brilliant song composer with the astute, observant mind of a social commentator. Indeed, in several of his songs, it hurts even as you laugh at the funny slices of life painted by his lyrics.
In fact, Mar’s other songs such as “Magellan” and “Tayo’y Magbugtungan” can be categorized as “educainment” music. They dish out mini lessons in history and social studies much more effectively than an hour of lecture by a classroom teacher.
This is one reason why his songs deserve a second hearing and why I believe Mar Lopez must not be allowed to be discarded and swept off to the dustbin of our cultural past. You may disparage Mar Lopez as just a frivolous second-rate comedian, but mind you, his impact on popular culture is as equally, if not more, pervasive than other highly revered Filipino artists. It reminds me of Andy Warhol’s retort when critics bashed his silkscreen paintings: “Why not this? Can’t this be art, too?”
It was with pangs of sadness and regret when I recently came across this announcement: Mar Lopez, a Philippines institution in novelty song writing and founding member of the famed trio Big 3 Sullivans, died at age 85 on November 5, 2021.
There’s just one critical mistake in that message. From my humble 60-zen’s perspective, Mar Lopez was more than just a novelty song writer. He deserves to be recognized as a living treasure of Philippine pop culture.
And without him on that fateful day during a train stop in Iriga, where would Nora be now?
About the author: NICK TAYAG is a multi-media writer and communications specialist. His special focus is scriptwriting for audio visual presentations and documentary videos, creative conceptualization and writing think pieces. Now in his early 70s, he is the Creative Consultant of a digital production and event management outfit. He also writes a regular column for the Business Mirror called “My Sixty Zen’s Worth” which comes out every Saturday. His most recent script for a bio documentary on Filipino master filmmaker Gerardo “Manong” de Leon entitled “Salamat sa Alaala,” was nominated for best documentary in the 2016 URIAN awards. As an advertising copywriter in the 1990s, he won recognition from the Creative Guild of the Philippines and the Public Relations Society of the Philippines for ads he wrote for corporate clients. He also won a UNICEF-PPI Award for Outstanding Story On Children. He is presently working on a book on creative conceptualization as well as inspirational booklets.
Nick Tayag’s columns “My Sixty-Zen’s Worth” are published in Business Mirror… https://businessmirror.com.ph/author/nicktayag/