It is not that I have nothing good to say about Arnel Pineda. Of course I do – and this would not be missed in my two previous posts by a careful reader. It is just that it was probably not sufficiently amplified to his fans’ satisfaction. But I felt a need to write this again nonetheless, since I have been obviously misconstrued by some.
I fully agree that he is a very good singer. I personally like the way he injects emotions in his songs just as I am awed by the way he delivers the lines and hits those vocal cords-straining notes with relative ease. That he is a Filipino is only incidental, an add-on even without which my appreciation of him would remain the same. That he is now the frontman of Journey is immaterial. I won’t think more of his talent with the luck or opportunity that came his way in the same way that I would not think less of him if he were still a small time gig player in some obscure bar outside the metropolis.
And I am happy for him as well – knowing the difficult and lonely – well – journey he has taken. It is a sweet fulfillment of a life-long personal dream – something we Filipinos love to identify with, like a modern day male cinderella of sort.
But this appreciation cannot and should not go beyond this dimension. And this is where we need to step on the brakes – to stop, look and listen.
So let us stop this proud-to-be-Filipino yadda-yadda. Let us refrain from the insane future-of-Journey declarations or the more insane better-than-the-original hype. Let us resist with informed intelligence this mad rush to equate his personal journey with national pride and identity. Let us by all means avoid calling him a “true filipino artist” when we cannot even appreciate in a much lesser magnitude Amado Hernandez or Lino Brocka.
By all means, let us sympathize with the fulfillment of his personal dream but without mistaking it as a trailblazing act of a great filipino musical artist. Let us relate to his personal success as we would to the rest of our struggling kababayans in their quest for a better life.
Let us do him a big favor by putting him in his proper place – as part of the Filipino diaspora’s lonely search for its own place in the sun. A search that will ultimately lead us back to where we came from, the unmistakable origin of our – yes – journey.
Posted by diego rojo banaag 
