Everyday pop is everything Popong Landero's music isn't. Funny, but most of my friends had been raving about the former Bag-ong Lumad composer-singer's prodigious musical gifts--his band included--when other friends were on a desperate stakeout for club acts worth their weight in cover charges. Juaniyo Arcellana and the Unstoppable James, music critics both, had been singing paeans to Popong while we were giving up on pinoy guitarists who thought they were George Benson.

    To be sure, unnatural poets can be the worst nightmares, and Popong spares his listeners from this particular cruelty. The Unstoppable James had pointed out that Popong's love songs, for instance, are not mush, but rather lush in the way they relate with most all things alive-- and are thus constant, if protean, as love usually is. Popong's social commentis as sharp, without slipping into sloganeering. A personal favorite is "Apatnapu" a song about internal refugees: "...Mga sandatang pandigma/Araw-gabi namumuksa, Pinupunit ang karimlan/Ang umaga'y pinagluksa, Daang-buhay nangadamay/Sa nagngangalit na digmaan, Karaniwang mamamayan/Nangaipit, nangamatay.."

   Besides, when Popong starts playing the harmonica or the kuglong, or leaps, birdlike, to the strains of a Manobo rhythm, a journey to the heartland is well on its way. And it's not one where you can sit back and relax- this time it's sit up and listen. �