By: Brod Bebong Arreza’82 DLSU-AUF

You may not have probably heard of John Manalili.

But for sure you’ve listened to the chart-buster he composed, “Bakit?”, whose iconic lyrics “Kung liligaya ka sa piling ng iba” is a standard birit for videoke addicts.

Or, admit it, when a Sigma Betan rejected your romantic overtures, you even sang it, over buckets of beer and tears, with brods by your side, who were happy to profit over your misfortune.

Yes, that song, still the national break-up anthem despite being a relic of the jukebox age, was composed by a Beta Sigman , John Manalili, GAUF ( now DLSAU) ’69.

And there’s backstory to that song that is as colorful as his life.

Legend has it that Brod John toyed with different lyrics to the music – as a paean to Beta Sigma one moment , a revolutionary ballad the next – until he settled for the version that rocketed an heretofore unknown Bicolana, Imelda Papin, to stardom in 1979.

Sadly, he is no longer around to tell us the real story as he passed away on Feb. 11, 2020, at age 67, in his beloved Lubao, Pampanga, the province which crowned him Kapampangan Poet Laureate eight years earlier.

Brod John was a poet, a painter, a singer, a writer, a teacher, a reformer, in short a renaissance man, “a man of many splendored talents,” as one eulogy described him

But he was mainly a journalist, slogging it for 44 years, first cutting his teeth as campus paper editor, later as cub reporter, to editing a newspaper.

He was also a civil servant, rotated to government media agencies, under five presidents, from FVR to Rodrigo Duterte, climbing up the ranks until he retired as assistant secretary at 65.

And he was not the first Beta Sigman who was recruited by the powers that be for his communications skills.

Brods Jun Icban became Press Secretary; Joel Paredes, PIA Director General; Rey Rivera , PTV 4 Chairman and CEO; Rolly Reyes advised several presidents; and even Vic Ramos, just fresh out of UP Diliman was already churning out speeches for the first Macoy, to name just a few.

At one point, Brod John was seconded to the Palace, including briefly heading RTVM (Radio TV Malacanang) where during lulls in work he would whip up a gallery-quality pen-and-ink drawing of Malacanang’s tree-shaded grounds.

But it was in public broadcast that he spent much time, as longtime Director of the Bureau of Communication Services, and of the Bureau of Broadcast Services, which supervises Radio ng Bayan stations.

In that assignment , he was not a newbie parachuted into alien territory but had come well prepared.

He was a Voice of the Philippines reporter and anchorman in the mid-1970s, donning his favorite emerald green gabardine americana which a colleague remembered as never having seen the inside of a laundry shop.

By the early 1980s, he was a commentator in dyRE, Cebu’s independent radio station . There he had the balls to score a scoop by interviewing exiled Sen. Ninoy Aquino, to the chagrin of the KBL crowd

If he was not in the radio booth of that “fightingest station” in the South, he was in the bull pen as news editor of the Republic News, a Cebu-based daily owned by the Cuencos that relished its role as gadfly to Martial Law

So long before it became in vogue, Brod John was straddling the print and broadcast worlds. And he was competent and courageous in both.

As a radio man, he did not have to raise his voice to elevate the discussion, and newspaper articles which carried his byline employed facts to buttress his opinions.

How this Kapampangan ended up in Cebu, and quickly learned to speak fluent Cebuano, was a journey young people liked him undertook in search of a sanctuary city to escape the stifling air of Martial Law to where they could practice their craft under the heady air of freedom.

Like many student leaders, Brod John had gone underground when Martial Law was declared in 1972.

As editor-in-chief of the militant “Tinig”, GAUF’s school organ and later president of its student council, he truly booked himself a spot in the arrest list.

Brod John would later confide to a brod that his radicalization was a result of nurture and nature.

Growing up in Pampanga, his town was once upon a time Huklandia, peopled by clans who hosted and contributed sons and daughters to socialist movements.

But the eyeopener for him was The Great Central Luzon Flood of 1971 when students from Metro Manila including many Beta Sigmans like him who joined relief efforts came face-to-face with worst kind of calamity : man-made, which was poverty.

Brod John spent his clandestine years organizing labor unions and urban poor communities while living in a hovel patched together from scavenged material with no plumbing and perched atop an open sewer in Bagong Barrio, then a slum area in Caloocan.

Then came the Cebu years.

In the autumn of the dictator’s rule and in the spring which followed he was engaged as editor by the Manila Broadcasting Corp. and by the Catholic-owned Radio Veritas.

A short detour to the House as adviser to a congressional leader followed suit, until civil service beckoned.

While he was not a fixture in Frat activities, Brod John never hesitated to bail out brods in distress, especially during the Arroyo years, when his wife, Atty. Jennifer Manalili became POEA head.

He was also true to his Brotherhood of Scholars calling, earning two BS degrees, two Masters degrees, a fellowship in a US university, and a PhD from CEU, despite his studies being interrupted by Martial Law.

Once in a talk with residents, he reminded them that Beta Sigmans must be versatile, but was humble enough not to hoist himself up as an example.

He can write love sonnets with the same ease that he could dish out barbed-wire manifestos. And he could play the guitar, like a busker having an acid trip. Or compose “Bakit ?” simply because he had time to time kill

.

And immediately before and after retiring from the government, he had gone back to teaching, mentoring a new generation of literature lovers in Holy Angels University.

Although Brod John was fluent in four languages, it was in Kapampangan, his first true love, the vernacular of the brave to him, that he published a trove of works.

As a result, he was crowned as poet laureate by the Prince of Parnassus, Romeo Rodriguez, on Jan. 27, 2012 in front of Juan Crisostomo Caballa Soto’s monument (father of Kapampangan Literature) in Bacolor, Pampanga.

The following year, King of Parnassus, Renato B. Alzadon, crowned him at Museo ning Angeles, in Angeles City during the “Aldo ning Amanung Sisuan” (Day of the Kapampangan Language).

During GAUF-DLSAU’s 60th Anniversary Fraternity Ball, he was honored for his contributions to journalism and literature.

Part of the citation extolled him for “the stories that engage and empower, and which represent the best in the craft, including literary outputs in many languages and forms, from songs and poems and essays that delight the public, inspire the nation, and influence history.”

So next time you’re nursing a heartbreak, ignore the “baduy” taunts, go ahead and sing your blues away, belt out the national break-up song, and while at it, remind yourself that a Beta Sigman is strumming your pain with his lyrics. (END)