Ryan Cayabyab: No trade secrets in music

MULTI- AWARD- winning musician Ryan Cayabyab would have been a broadcast journalist had he not been turned down by a television network when he applied for a job when he was 15 years old.

Because he was too young then, he was told to return after three years when he reached majority age. He did return, but it was 19 years later, and not as a broadcaster but as an established musician with his own ‘’ Ryan Ryan a weekly late night musical show, which aired from June 1988 to July 1995.

Born Raymundo Pujante Cayabyab to a music teacher and opera singer and a government employee, Ryan experienced hardships early in life, especially after his mother died when he was four years old.

He and three other siblings lived a modest life, and took on summer jobs to help pay for college studies.

Now 65 years old, Ryan was

Ramon Magsaysay Award in recognition of his compositions and

and inspired Filipino popular music across generations. Earlier, he was honored with the National Artist Award for Music.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has also cited Ryan for “his indomitable, undeterred

- tor, and promote young Filipino musical genius for the global stage; and his showing us all that music can indeed instill pride and joy, and unify people across the many barriers that divide them.”

In a lecture at the Ramon Magsaysay Hall last month, Ryan said he did not discover his talent for music early. Because he grew up in a family of musicians, everyone seemed to be either singing or playing an instrument. Music was part of his growing up.

Having a mother who was an opera singer, he grew up listening to classical music, opera, arias and traditional native songs. But his mother did not want him to take up a career in music because she said it

So, he took up a business management course and took on a side jobs as pianist or accompanist for musical artists until he mentored Coco Laurel, the son of the late vice president Salvador Laurel whose wife Celia was also a singer.

The Laurel couple encouraged him to pursue a degree in music and gave him a full scholarship. That was the beginning of his successful career in music.

Known to many as “the Maestro” and to some as “the music

music composition was based on a poem he found in the notebook of a schoolmate when he was a freshman in high school.

He was a teacher at the University of the Philippines College of Music in Diliman, Quezon City. The experience made him realize that he wanted to spend his life teaching music.

In 1986, Ryan and his wife put up a music school for those who did not like to take up music as a degree course. They trained young talents and eventually launched in 1988 a musical group called 14K, composed of 14 kids, whose performance matched the popular foreign boy bands like Menudo.

A year later, he launched Smokey Mountain, a singing group with four members, including Geneva Cruz and Tony Lambino, who is now an assistant secretary at the Department of Finance. Smokey Mountain popularized songs with the environment as a theme. One of its singles, ‘’ had earned several awards in musical competitions here and abroad.

One of Ryan’s wards in the music school landed in role in the ‘’Miss Saigon’’ musical.

Over the years, he had produced music festivals that had helped promote talents in music and encouraged them to compose original Filipino music.

be able to share his God-given talent in music and help others develop theirs.

One time, he said, a professional musician asked him if he was not afraid that by teaching and sharing everything he knows, he would be divulging trade secrets. But then, he said, there were no trade secrets in music, and even if there were, he would share them anyway. “The next generation should be better than us for our country to move forward. For this to happen, we must teach them everything we know at every possible instance,” he said.

“I like teaching, I like sharing what I know, and I like playing music. When I’m doing all of these, I’m very happy,” he added.