Musicians Guild

Year 2004 when I decided to quit my job as a part time instructor in Forways Computer School Inc. and giving up what I love most, my night job as a musician. In one of the band I was with, my bandmates were inviting me to try our luck as entertainers in other countries. A bandmate from another band (I have 3 gigs/week with 3 different bands) was telling me that he can find a job for both of us as musicians on a cruise ship but my decision was final. I have to look for a stable job with a better salary, so I decided to return to my hometown and apply in PSCA (Polytechnic State College of Antique), where I finished my high school. I got lucky and was hired as a part time instructor, “again”. Well at least the salary was twice bigger than that of my previous employment.

Music was really in my blood even when I was still in elementary. I miss performing in front of the audience, I miss playing my solos in every song, especially performing with my mentor playing Latin-jazz music, I shouldn’t have left the city. But after a few weeks of fine-tuning to my new environment I met this speed talker student (arsenio), a younger brother of my classmate in high school, we talked about new school music and he’s quite impressive with those kinds of genre. He was just one student whom I have talked to who seemed to have a good understanding of music. Sometimes I can even see some students bringing acoustic guitars to school. During one of our conversations, I blurted out the idea of gathering all these students who can play music and put up an organization. And he agreed. So together, we planned everything, wrote letter to the personnel in charge for the approval of putting up an organization, (prof. Sixto Sibugan, the person who supported us from the very beginning).

After submitting all the requirements we were finally ready, but where should we start? What shall we do? Anybody might be interested but are they qualified? We don’t want to have members who were just pretending to be musicians.

So we came up with an idea, a live audition. There were 15 of them and only 9 were qualified. After a few weeks of briefing and a little of workshop “thing” (well, actually it only happened once) we tried to look for a gig, even to the point of helping candidates for student council office, in exchange of a single exposure once they were already in position, but we were duped (I was really naïve to believe that school politics can be clean!), after that, we decided to go independent, stand on our own, organize an event without the help of other organizations, even if some expenses came from our own pockets.

I had to select the fast learners so I can easily prepare them for gigs on big events and some school activities but still, I had to perform with them on stage, these kids still need more experience and guidance in performing in front of the audience, yeah, damn audience it took us 3 years before our efforts were totally appreciated and this time, I enjoyed my part being the host of our event and not being a performer but still, I grabbed some moments to jam with them (thirst quencher)… hehehe.