Folk-rock artist Joey Ayala turned 54 on Tuesday, June 1, but he remains a kid at heart.
Entertaining his special guests, mostly neighborhood kids aged 5 to 10, Ayala said his birthdays had always been spent among children, his best friends.
"I think they sense the kid in me," he guffawed.
In Peter Pan-esque style, Ayala mingled with the children and exchanged banter with them. He also gave them birthday presents: an artist's sketch pad and a box of crayons.
"Friend namin si Joey Ayala," said Hazel, 8, proudly. "We're always in his house jumping on the trampoline or watching videos."
There would always be that child-like quality in Ayala's persona. It's a sense of freedom very much like the flight of an eagle, a freedom that could not be caged.
Which is why Ayala has remained a dabbler and has not concentrated on becoming a big star. He chose to be an iconic presence instead in an industry crowded with pop sensations and one-hit wonders.
Despite eight albums to his name and a solid reputation that assures him of a mention in the history of Original Pilipino Music (OPM), Ayala is still raring to accomplish meaningful things. So he activated his long dormant Bagong Lumad Artists' Foundation Inc., which he put up in the 1980s, and conducts workshops on the use of art as a medium in the fields of governance and education.
The workshops, he said, help people explore three basic abilities—contemplacy or looking within, articulacy and operacy or the ability to actually do things.
"This releases people from linear problems," Ayala explained. "Problems are created by linear thinking that lead to global warming and extreme poverty, for example. In schools, people are trained to be employees, but not enough employment has been created for these employees. Students have become products waiting to be bought."
Such concepts, a rarity in local showbiz, do not daunt Ayala, a product of a Jesuit education—Ateneo de Manila from grade school to high school and an economics degree holder from Ateneo University in Davao City—and artist parents, Jose V. Ayala, Jr. and Tita Lacambra, both poets, fiction writers and painters.
Ayala believes, for example, that corruption exists because of too much government.
"If there were less government, there would be less corruption," he said. "If a country were run as a corporation, it would simply be profit or a fee (for a service). No secrets, all transparent."
Ayala said he would have voted for Nicanor Perlas for president if he had found his name on the voters' list in the last elections. He has not voted in two past elections because of this.
"Perlas has a solid platform although it is hard to explain," he said. "The most convenient term is the one he uses in one of his books—'three-folding,' a way of looking at human reality as an interplay of politics, economics and culture in the context of the natural world.
"It's always better to look at the framework rather than the words because words are naturally divisive. It might even be a blessing that a majority of people cannot think in terms of graduate school thinking. Can you imagine what our country [would be like] with all these graduate school thinkers?"
The profoundness of Ayala's thoughts and ideas might have been one of the reasons why he has not been integrated in the mainstream of Pinoy pop music. But he apparently does not mind being in the sidelights.
"Popularity is nice because it raises your market value," he said. "But sometimes, anonymity is more precious."
He recalls an incident while urinating in the comfort room of an SM Mall.
"The guy next to me was trying to shake my hand," he said. "Sabi ko, 'Pare, maghugas muna tayo ng kamay.'"
Ayala's thoughts, however, have liberated him. His songs and music depict this freedom, as in Narito (music by Cynthia Alexander):
Lahat ng kailangan ko ay narito
Mula talampakan hanggang sa ulo
Mula kalooban hanggang sa labas
Ang lahat ng kailangan ko ay narito
Kailangan lang aminin
Hanapin, kilalanin
'Akapin at ibigin
Igalang at gamitin
Lahat ng kailangan ko ay narito
Ang lahat ng kailangan ko ay narito
But Ayala's profundity has found its way into KC Concepcion's blog, which has quotes from Ayala's various songs. KC, in fact, did a cover of "Agila,"one of his most popular songs.
"KC grew up on my songs, according to Sharon," Ayala said. "My CDs were always in Kiko's player in his car. I think that's why KC knows my songs well. Sharon once told me, 'Sawang-sawa na ako sa mga kanta mo.'
But to a generation that KC belongs to, Ayala's songs might as well be a journey of discovery. It is perhaps a discovery of the inner child, or the new native (Bagong Lumad). For that is what Ayala is all about, a constant re-invention of the Pinoy as artist.
"My uncle Frankie once told me that I should been a balladeer and forget my advocacies," Ayala related. "That way, I could have been a star, more mainstream, more popular. But I would not know what to do with it. I don't know what I'd do with popularity. I guess you would need a higher kind of self-awareness to see how other people see you. People who can do that are very, very powerful."
Here's more power to Joey Ayala.