Perfect Pitch

His countrymen regard him as an extraordinary musical genius. But Jesuit Manoling Francisco, composer of the classic ‘Hindi Kita Malilimutan,’ sees himself as an ‘ordinary Christian’

By Anissa Vicente-Rivera

Manoling Francisco could have had it all, the worldwide admiration for a first-class pianist, the pride of a country for a musical genius. Instead, he rides a Boston subway to fetch some patis. It’s his turn to cook a meal for his four roommates.

And he’s happy.

Francisco, best known for creating the melody and helping write the lyrics to the classic “Hindi Kita Malilimutan,” is spending five years in Boston, toiling on a five-year doctorate in systematic theology from Weston School of Theology.

He’s a true blue Jesuit now, three years in the business, and immersed in a life he never imagined for himself.

Manuel Simplicio Valdes Francisco was born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines, on Feb. 26, 1965. His family tree is peopled with artists and politicians, including his grandmother Leonarda Ocampo, the first female graduate of St. Scholastica’s Conservatory of Music. Famed composer Louie Ocampo is an uncle, who taught Manoling to play organ. His grandfather was former Senate President Vicente Francisco.

Francisco grew up playing the keyboards and trained for a career in classical piano. The protege was ready for the national stage. Then God changed the script.

“I was in first year high school when I started to realize I was withdrawing from others in order to rehearse and it was inconsistent with what I felt was my calling,” he said.

It was that same year that Francisco’s freshman class at the Ateneo de Manila High School made history.

“We decided to join this liturgical song contest at the Ateneo,” he said. “We knew there was no way we were going to win. We had croaky voices.”

Their teacher, the legendary Onofre Pagsanhan, suggested they work on the theme from Isaiah 49.

“Pagsy invited us to translate it to Filipino and at the same time put a rhythm to it. He suggested the first line and we would raise our hands and suggest another,” he said. (“Sir, hindi kita malilimutan, hindi kita pababayaan, nakaukit sa aking...kamay, no, palad...”)

After one period, the lyrics were complete. It had perfect rhyme and structure.

Francisco still shakes his head at it all.

“Looking back at it, this bunch of 40 kids, it was pretty amazing,” he said. “We were just playing then.”

Four students with some musical background were assigned to put melody.

“When I got home I was just tinkering while I was writing my melody,” he said. “In 30 minutes I was done. I wasn’t inspired or moved or on the brink of tears. It was just one assignment finished.”

The next day, in “Tawag ng Tanghalan” style, his classmates voted for his melody. The song went on to win the schoolwide competition. The young composers didn’t feel they had created a classic.

“We felt it was so plain and simple,” he said. “When we sang it for our mothers, they were all crying but we thought maybe it was because we were their sons,” he said. “But people picked up the song and soon, we heard they were singing it at Miriam College, at parishes, in Guam, at the U.S. By the end of the schoolyear, the song was everywhere. It became clear to me that the hand of God is here, I realized how God could use others as instruments even if they weren’t fully given to the Lord.”

The composing bug bit. In his early teens, Francisco composed many of the songs that are familiar to Filipino churchgoers: “Anima Cristi” written with classmate John Arboleda; “Take and Receive;” “One More Gift;” “I Will Sing Forever.”

Francisco even tried his hand at composing the songs sung for the Mass regular.

“I took the guitar, I didn’t play but in five minutes I had the Aleluya (Alelu-alelu-aleluya) and I thought, “Maybe next week I’ll do the Santo,”’ he said.

He and Arboleda would compose a song, play it at the morning Mass at the Ateneo and in three weeks, the regulars could sing along. Other parishes would follow suit, even though the two young musicians hadn’t yet written down the music or the words for the public.

“The Holy Spirit is spreading our music and using us in the most wonderful way, as instruments of his compassion,” Francisco said.

By the time he graduated from Ateneo High School, his social conscience overtook his musical prowess. Francisco thought he wanted to be a social worker and the events of 1983 spurred him on. That was the year his uncle, his mother’s first cousin, Benigno Aquino, was killed.

Francisco became a student activist.

“Those two years were risky and fearful, rallying in the streets and visiting detainees,” he said. “I was wrestling with God. He would not let me sleep at night. I would bargain with him: am I not supposed to finish my degree? If you’re calling me to serve your people, the squatters and the striking laborers, how can you call me to the seminary where I will hide and distance myself from them? This went on for months.”

One February evening in 1985, Francisco finally said yes.

“’I prayed, “I do not understand your ways completely, so be it,”’ he said.

He was in his second year in college when he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Novaliches. He was 20 years old and already understood much.

“Whenever I insisted on my ways, even if I appeared to be noble in the end, God works things out far better than my expectations and far better than I could imagine,” he said. “God surprises us all the time.”

The music was still there.

“I thought I had given up something so dear to me, classical piano, but God gave me something better in return,” Francisco said. “I found I couldn’t play classical piano when I didn’t practice as I did before but I still needed to express myself musically. That hunger came out as my own compositions.”

Among his favorites, “Take and Receive,” inspired by his seventh-grade teacher.

“She told me to pray it every night and I did. By the time I was in third year high school, it had become a personal anthem. It’s a prayer of total self-offering,” he said.

Others include “Your Love Today,” sung by Dulce. Francisco wrote it for Cory and Ninoy Aquino from an adaptation of St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer for peace.

“One More Gift,” a hymn for peace, was written in high school, while Francisco was struggling with family problems.

“The more honest I am in my experiences, looking for him when he seems to be absent, complaining to him about my misfortunes, for his seeming infidelity, when he didn’t seem to be present in my life, the better,” he said. “Growing up in a broken family has been a very important ground to nurture my faith. It has allowed me to find God even in the darkest moments of my life or in the history of our people.”

In 1992, the Philippine Philharmonic dedicated an evening to playing the then-27-year-old’s songs, featuring singers Basil Valdez, Ogie Alcasid and Ariel Rivera. They were accompanied by a 100-member choir.

“I remember thinking, here they are playing not Bach or Beethoven but my own compositions,” he said. “More and more God has been suprising me.”

Ordained in 1997, Francisco’s first assignment was as parish priest and school director of an Ifugao tribal community.

“I fell in love with the people, the Tualis and Ilocanos,” Francisco said. “I was so fearful, so anxious when I was first there, to be assigned to a distant tribe where I knew no one yet when I left, I had thousands of friends. In the end, everything works out for the best.”

He embarked on a new project and wrote a Cordillera Mass, searching for ethnic musicians, writing songs for an indigenous Mass using instruments and rhythms and incorporating ancient melodies.

“We had three days of brainstorming, using gongs and bamboo,” Francisco said. “’For example, in the Lamb of God, we used an instrument used by tribes for peace pacts because Jesus is the peace pact maker.”

His latest composition is a new “Glory to God” composed a few months ago but not yet written down.

And the man who has performed for the Pope doesn’t have a complete set of his music because he invariably gives it away.

He doesn’t have a permanent room anywhere in the world, he doesn’t even have a regular rosary. To travel to his new life in Boston, he packed just a few clothes.

But he’s useful and he’s happy.

“Because of our vocation, people readily share their lives with us so I’m very blessed to share special moments in their lives,” he said. “It’s very humbling. But I’m not a visionary. I’m not a healer. I’m just an ordinary Christian.”