Basil Valdez’s reflections on life will make you hear a different song

The mall is proving to be the most mundane location for this tete-a-tete with Basil Valdez. The balladeer is waxing philosophical about life and all I could think of is: Why am I not drunk?

This is the kind of conversation that often accompanies long-winded inuman sessions, when at about 3am, slurred speech takes center stage, making hebigat points on life, love, God — and if you were a practicing Catholic, maybe on the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

“Nung nadinig ko yung kantang ‘Alfie’, it was 1968 and grabe yun,” Basil begins. “Napaisip ako kasi very philosophical ang kantang yan.

"Parang, tungkol saan ba ang buhay? Is it just for now? What’s it about? What you sought it out, Alfie? Are we meant to take more than we give? Or are we meant it be kind? Diba ang lalim,” he exclaims.

Courtesy of Viva-Vicor

And then Basil goes on to debone the lyrics further: “If only fools are kind — sino ba ang fool? Bakit kind ang fool? ‘If life belongs only to the strong? What will you lend on the old golden rule? As sure as I believe there is a heaven above.’ Yun ang sinasabi ng kanta.

“‘I know there is something much more, even non-believers can believe it.’ They don’t necessarily have to be a Catholic, or a genius. ‘I believe in love. Without true love, we just exist. Until you’ve found the love you’ve missed. You’re nothing’.

"Kung susuriin mo ang kanta, yan ang lalabas. Sabi ko, maybe that’s the way the Spirit guides and moves composers, without them realizing it. Like George Canseco…”

The late great songwriter George Canseco would go on to compose 25 songs for Basil, including his 1977 breakout hit “Ngayon at Kailanman.” The duo had established a peculiar songwriting process that often begins with George, a little tipsy from alcohol, phoning Basil to give him the most basic of lines and/or melody.

“He’s very gifted, although most of the songs he composed for me, naka-alak na yan. Sabi ko talaga, the Lord has his mysterious ways,” Basil narrates, smiling widely while shaking his head.

“He’d call drunk and dictate on the phone. ‘Basil, isulat mo ito. Minsan one verse lang ina-aral ko — cassette pa — tapos pa-isa-isang melody lang ibibigay niya. ‘Basil pagkasyahin mo to dun’, pati phrasing ako na! He gives me the freehand.” In the studio, they would put the song together, Basil proving to be the perfect vessel to George’s genius.

The two met in 1977, when George and Vic del Rosario attended one of Basil’s gigs fronting the folk band Love Life. “I didn’t know them. Lumapit lang sila. Sabi ni George, ‘I have a song for you’. That song was ‘Ngayon at Kailanman’.”

Back then, Basil was preparing to head out to Belgium to take up his masters in Philosophy. But the lure of having a record to his name was so handsome, he decided to record “Ngayon at Kailanman.” Basil never got to leave for Belgium. Instead, he became a balladeer who would go on to record 10 albums.

These days, at 66 years old, Basil would wake up at about 4:30 in the morning to prepare for his daily exercise: walking. “While walking, kailangan ko mag-rosary. That’s the way na nakakalma ako. Sobrang laking tulong sa akin [ng rosary]. Parang dumali ang buhay,” he says of his devotion.

Basil says he’d do a minimum of three rosaries and a maximum of 12 a day. It’s a habit he picked up in 2009. “I have never missed a day since January 1, 2009,” he smiles proudly. “Even after a concert, at 2am, kahit pagod na pagod ka na and you just want to sleep, I’ll need to pray the rosary, pero makasalanan ako ha? Hindi ako yung…I even miss Sunday mass,” he would often make clear every time the conversation would make him seem like the perfect Catholic.

But he is more interested — and perhaps even better versed — in God and religion than the average Filipino.

Raised a Catholic, Basil’s interest in God and/or religion grew and turned deeper at the Ateneo de Manila University, when he shifted from Business Management to Philosophy on his senior year of college. 

“After two years [of Business Management], sabi ko this is not my life. Ayoko yang debit credit na yan, assets and liability. And then when we took up Philo 101, sabi ko ‘wow’.”

He shifted to Philosophy in his senior year of college  and would’ve wanted to do what most Philo students often did — also get into Theology — but there was still too much on his mind.

“You’re always searching. You’re always wandering. Ang dami ko pang gusto malaman pa. I had to answer the questions I had in my mind.” Which was: What is life really all about?

Basil clarifies, “It’s not a problem, ha? It’s just, oo nga ano? Ang ganda ng buhay.”

It’s an insight that would reveal itself over and over again in Basil’s life. As a young child residing in San Juan, sitting on their banister and looking up at the trees and the clouds. As a young man, perusing song lyrics. As a balladeer who eloquently expresses the thought in the Canseco-penned “Ngayon” — “that song is about temporality, di ba?” — often performed as a finale for his recent shows.

The friends Basil made as a Philosophy student — most of them are priests now — became a fixture in the singer’s life, and when times turn strange and weird, the Jesuit priests would prove to be a refuge. Sometimes, they’d have dinner in Basil’s house, other times, Basil would visit them in the Jesuit Residence, or wherever they were assigned. They’d celebrate mass with and for him, and in the ‘90s, they guided Basil as explored a most unusual gift he accidentally discovered in the ‘90s: healing.

He discovered the gift while visiting a friend, who had been suffering neck pain, following a whiplash. Basil touched the said friend’s neck, and “then I could feel something on my hand. Parang heat na gumagapang. I just followed it. I could feel it go out of his ear, and then nawala daw yung pain niya.” 

The news of newfound gift spread by word of mouth, and then slowly, other people came to him for healing. “My Jesuit friends told me, ‘malaking responsibility yan’. I really had to be spiritually guided because kasi hindi mo rin alam, baka ginagamit ka na pala ng demonyo. Nakakatako din,” Basil says of that strange time in his life.

He sought their council, went on a 40 day-40 night retreat, and attended to the people who would come to him. There were a lot. “Every day, people would come, sometimes, may mga terminally ill,” he says, making clear that he never accepted a single cent from it all.

Basil would describe the ‘90s — the decade when the gift revealed itself — as chaotic and tiring. On top of his newfound gift was a career that was also seeing changes. From performing love songs, Basil started singing inspirational songs.

In 1993, he released “Salmo”, an all-inspirational album that included “Lift Up Your Hands” — which the recording company initially rejected as it was too religious — and “Ama”, George Canseco’s poetic version of the Our Father.

The duo processed the song in the same manner they’ve processed all their other songs — except “Ama” took 10 years to come into being.

“The Lord has mysterious ways talaga,” Basil starts narrating. “George [tipsy from alcohol] called me, dictating the lyrics on the phone. ‘Basil i-record mo yan. Napapanaginipan ko yan na parang may sumusulat sa blackboard ng mga letrang yan’. It was perfect talaga, the rhyme, the meter.” But it wasn’t until 10 years later when Basil would record it. “Wala kasing vehicle nuon,” he explains.

It was only the start of another phase of Basil’s career and of his life. He would eventually drop healing — he was so exhausted by the practice, he said — and get back to music full-time.

He credits a random stranger who came up to him at the Ateneo for helping him snap out of it. “I was so tired, physically and emotionally from all the healing that I took a walk at the Ateneo. There was this student who came up to me and asked ‘aren’t you going to sing anymore?’ I said eventually and she said, you should. ‘It’s your singing that heals a lot of people.’ I snapped out of it. I reflected on what she said, and realized it is in my singing that people are healed.”

And it is in music too, Basil believes, that he’s become closer to the Lord. “I heard ‘Hindi Kita Malilimutan’ being hummed by a nun in Baguio and I asked her ‘ano ba yang kantang yan? Ang ganda ganda ng melody?”

Basil sought the songwriter out, Father Manoling Francisco, recorded a version of the song, and learned about another one of his songs, “Tanging Yaman”.

“Grabe yung lyrics nun. I think it’s about God. ‘Ikaw ang aking tanging yaman, na ‘di lubusan masumpungan.’ Hanggang ngayon, hindi ko siya masumpungan nang lubusan. We only get glimpses of him, diba?”

Again, Basil peruses the lyrics. “’Ang nilikha mong kariktan, sulyap lang ng ‘yong kangandahan’. Nasusulyapan lang natin siya, hindi ganap na ganap na nakikita. And it makes me wonder: ‘Oo nga ano? Ang ganda ganda ng buhay! And unti-unti, haba kang tumatanda, unti unti ring nabubuksan ang mga pinto, nakikita mo ang ganda, natatahimik ka.”

It’s surprising that Basil doesn’t really observe Holy Week. “Yun na naman ang buhay ko na eh. Holy Week na ako nang Holy Week the whole 52 weeks [of the year],” he laughs. “Pero natutuwa ako kasi wala masyadong tao sa Manila.”

He likes it quiet, perhaps to hear his thoughts. He lives with two helpers who takes care of him — “I take care of them,” he laughs, saying he considers them his siblings.

It’s almost a solitary, monastic life — but Basil doesn’t really want to call it that. “Parang ang lungkot naman”. When he gets bored, he goes out malling, or calls his inaanak Daniel, or go walking in Greenhills. He prays, too, and still he reflects.

“Lalong lumalalim ang mga tanong ko, humihirap. Iba na kasi matanda ka na,” he says, saying these days, death is on his mind. “Naruon na ako sa sunset of my life… Paano ba i-approach ang kamatayan mo? Gaano ka na ka-close sa Panginoon? Haharapin ka ba niy eh ang dami mong kasalanan? Ayoko naman magkamot ng ulo and tell him, ‘patawarin mo naman na ako’. Gusto ko, pagmamatay ako, I’m sure that I’ll see him.”

But in the meantime, he is seeing God in music. And for many of Basil’s fans and listeners, they are hearing salvation in his song. — LA, GMA News