OPM: What really happened..

OPM or "Original Pinoy Music" was first introduced in the late 80's. It was called in the late 70's Pinoy Rock/Garage music/Tunog Kalye. Back then, people were inspired in writing poems and making original chord progression. Chord Progression is the process of making rhythms by the use of every instruments (guitars, keyboard, drums and base are the basic instruments) and back then people were against plagiarism and copying of chord progression. artist like Francis M. is one of the people who's against with it but by the time he wrote his hit songs Kaleidoscope World and Friends, it's tunes and intro's were the same as The Beatles hit songs "Here, There, Everywhere" and "In my life" which made a ruckus on pinoy music stream, by that time sample/sampling was introduced. Sampling is using same chord progression of a hit song but made public and with the composer's approval. many artist back then was introduced and rises up to fame because of their unique and original compositions and chord progressions. Eraserheads was one of those bands and stayed on the minds of every Filipino today.

Today, OPM in my opinion is fading. most of the singer/bands are doing revivals and mostly these songs were a hit back then. what really bugs me is that they've been doing their own versions of it. i'm not against it but as you can see, reviving songs from the past is good and i know it's trending here in the phillipines but it's just for bars and pubs. why revive songs and send it as a proposal for a new album when you can just write your own song.

composers from late 80's were motivated because of new and aspiring musicians, they compete with their own and original compositions, rey valera, renz verano, ogie alcasid, ariel rivera and other ballad composers were competing with bands or tunog kalye genre like eraserheads, rivermaya, parokya ni edgar, the teeth, grin department and many more. back then our music industry was at it's peak. we even competed with other foreign artist and won it in our own language.

today, OPM is fading fast. i'm not saying it's because of other genres like hip hop/rap, kpop and jpop, pop and many more genres but it's because of us supporting piracy. top level composers are still motivated in writing original compositions but they are not financially motivated and it's because of piracy. they wont be risking their compositions for a label company because once it is out there it's easy to manipulate. composers were risking everything for us to see what's happening to our music scene. other bands were disbanding because they cant support their own lives just by living as a musicians. others stayed because they love and like to live it.

I'm not against any other genres, as i said to other people "Music connects people, kahit anung genre pa yan". it makes us connected. what I'm saying is we were connected by their songs and compositions. it's about time to give back to them and appreciate on what they have done to be heard.