He wrote his hit songs in a cemetery

Rey Valera. Photo from wikipedia.org

TORONTO, Canada — He’s got neither matinee idol looks nor the charms of a young star. Yet, Rey Valera, the singer, songwriter, music director and film scorer, managed to cause a minor stampede of shrieking fans he won over with love songs he had written in the tranquility of a cemetery.

“It’s true,” he revealed to the guffaws of the audience. The peace and quiet of the graveyard inspired him to write and produce songs through the seventies.

He explained further, a day later, in a brief interview at FV Foods on Bathurst and Wilson streets, where his Toronto handlers, Mon and Teresa Torralba, brought him for a snack of “kakanin.”

“The cemetery was my studio,” he said half-smiling. That part of his life had been one of restlessness and pain, mostly from being poor, according to him. Single and penniless, he lived with relatives, doing household chores for them as a way of repaying their kindness.

“My life was hard and problematic. I had no money. I really came from below-zero,” Valera revealed, looking pensive.

The cemetery near his relatives’ home gave him the chance to contemplate. Being there, he said, was also a means of escape from the unpleasant routine of cleaning the house.

“Even if I worked my butt off for ten years, I would still be zero,” Valera shares. “That’s how poor I was. That is why I can relate with the poor.”

Valera sat down with FV Foods owner, Mel Galeon, while their friends and the local media occupied two adjoining tables. The loud chatter, amid the piped-in Valera songs and the snacks, flowed freely.

Valera’s pieces melt and win hearts like “Maging Sino Ka Man,” “Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko,” “Sinasamba Kita,” that beseeches an end to agony and pain like in “Tayong Dalawa”.

“His songs are very down-to-earth,” says a middle-aged fan, one of the many that packed the auditorium of the Toronto International Celebration Church on Railside Drive on Friday, Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

The Torralba staged the concert as a look-back to the seventies and early eighties, when the Philippines buzzed with the Manila sound, which later on evolved as OPM or Original Pilipino Music. Torralba’s “Pers Lab” was one of the songs responsible for that genre.

Valera and Torralba, the latter formerly of Hotdog band, were talent-packed combination given their contribution to the evolution of Filipino music. Their songs and Valera’s patter made for a riotous evening.

Musical stars Ryan Orlanda, Theresa Panaligan, Bea Santiago, Joshua Tamayo and Don opened for Valera.

“I write songs not because of my life,” Valera said. “I write songs for the common people. I put myself in their situations. That way I’d understand them because I can feel what they’re going through,” he explains.

For 86-year-old Aning Sanchez, Valera’s songs are therapeutic. Sanchez, who uses a walker to move, and her 87-year-old husband, Nardo Sanchez, flew down to Toronto from Sudbury, Ontario, a distance of 390 kilometers,  to watch Valera’s Valentine’s Day concert and celebrate 57 years of wedded bliss.

After the performance, the couple and their daughter were among those who awaited their turn to have CDs and shirts autographed by Valera.

Aning gushed at how they loved the songs, especially “Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko,” stroking her hair to signal how she and husband have managed to stay together for almost six decades now.