When he reached college, Ryan chose to take up accounting in UP, a course similar to his cousins’: banking and finance. Simultaneously, Ryan decided it was a good time to earn on his own as a way of helping his father, a government employee, with the household expenses. Ryan decided to work as a pianist for a bank chorale group. An encounter with Victor “Cocoy” Laurel back in 1972 became what would eventually kick off Ryan’s successful career in music. Cocoy employed Ryan as his musical director and accompanist everywhere he performed, and it didn’t take long for the two to become good friends. Spending time at the Laurel household one night, Cocoy’s father, the late Vice President Salvador “Doy” Laurel (who was Senator at the time), sensing Ryan’s knack for music, pulled him aside and offered him a scholarship to study music. “He told me, ‘Kahit naman ano pwede mong pasukin (you can get into anything), as long as you get the respect and authority you deserve, kahit na ano, if you’re good at it, if you love it, everything else will follow.’” Ryan, who was 18 at the time, wasted no time. The minute he came home, he told his dad of his plans to switch courses—from accounting to music. He has never looked back since. As a student at the UP College of Music, Ryan was afforded with many opportunities, which helped mold his place in the industry. Traveling everywhere in the world with seasoned performers like Pilita Corrales, Basil Valdez and Celeste Legaspi, Ryan realized that it wasn’t only possible for him to have a career in music, he also realized it was possible to live wholly on it. “I’m lucky because the direction I took is music writing, arranging, composition,” he says. “There’s a lot of work in this area because you cannot perform anything without music arrangement.” Ryan also opted to wear the hat of a teacher, as he became a lecturer of Music Theory and Composition in the UP Conservatory of Music in his senior year in 1981 (with all the traveling he did, Ryan didn’t earn his Bachelor in Music, Major in Composition diploma until 1983). Ryan taught at the college for two decades, and it was also in one of his classes where he met his wife, Emmy, who graduated cum laude in Choral Conducting. Their partnership led to the birth of the music school Ryan Cayabyab The Music Studio in Makati in 1986. “We said let’s put up a school na pwedeng pumasok kahit sino (anybody can enrol), those who want to learn how to play music, play the violin, play the piano, without taking up higher studies, a music school for people who want to study music but do not want to go to college to take up music,” he shares. The music studio established another branch in Bohol Avenue in Quezon City in the 1990s but has since transferred to Robinsons Galleria in Ortigas Center in 2006. All these years, they have trained a new generation of young singer-musicians. Ryan and Emmy’s love for music was passed on to their daughter Christina Maria and son Antonio Maria, both of whom had their share of regular Saturday piano lessons at the music studio when they were young kids. Their kids’ passion and drive for music, it seems, came with the genes. “It is more of an aberration if you don’t do what your parents do,” Ryan says. “It’s natural for you to go to that profession, embrace that kind of profession or work or career because you are already familiar
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with it and it seems so easy. You get it without even trying too hard to understand it because parang intuition mo na ‘yun eh (it’s just like intuition).” He maintains that despite all that he has achieved, it is still his family he considers his crowning achievement. “Because in them, the legacy continues, not just the name,” he says. “More importantly, because life is such a rewarding experience, and if you have that family to continue that life force that you carry in you and you see it in them, it becomes even more rewarding. You see something deeper than what you see superficially.” Over the years, Ryan has been a tatay-tatayan (father) to many artists in the industry and has been a first-hand witness to the development of today’s most idolized singers and performers. He has experienced so much in the world of music, he could write a whole opera about it. On that afternoon, in between our talk of lyrical and melodic ideas, he reminisces on the golden age of music when Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Santiago reigned, mourns the passing of Francis Magalona and ruminates on how much The Eraserheads changed the face of music. Brimming with obvious positivism and excitement, he admits he looks forward to the future of the Filipino music scene, eager to see how the careers of the likes of Sarah Geronimo, Rachel Ann Go and Christian Bautista will flourish and what will come next after people have grown tired of downloading songs off the Net. He reveals he dreams of the day when a Filipino artist wins an Academy Award for Best Musical Score or Best Song, citing Tan Dun (who won for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon back in 2001) and most recently A.R. Rahman (for Slumdog Millionaire) but cites the main dilemma of not being able to fully utilize the rich music we already have and of trying too hard to sound Western. He says this dream is no longer something he holds for himself to attain but believes that many from the younger generation have a similar ambition. Thus, he offers this piece of advice: “We should create our own fusion, blend what is traditionally our style and elevate it to a level which is more accessible for many people.” For these aspiring future legends of music, it is also a wise move to take a cue from Ryan’s wide range of award-winning and internationallyknown works: from theater musicals, choral pieces, commissioned full-length ballets, orchestral pieces to commercial recordings of popular music, film scores and television specials. He has won top prizes in both local and international competitions, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Awit Awards in 1996 and was a Gawad CCP Awardee for Music in 2004. In that same year, he accepted an offer he couldn’t refuse which meant giving up a longtime dream to migrate with his family to the United States. Ryan became the Executive and Artistic Director of the San Miguel Foundation for the Performing Arts (SMFPA). With Ryan as conductor of the San Miguel Philharmonic Orchestra (SMPO) and the San Miguel Master Chorale (SMMC), they released a total of seven award-winning and topselling albums under Sony-BMG, including the record-breaking Great Filipino Love Songs and Great Original Pilipino Music. Unfortunately, the foundation was disbanded in 2007. In the 1990s, he managed a group that launched into superstardom, Smokey Mountain, which turned out the hits “Kailan” and “Paraiso.” Currently, he manages the Ryan Cayabyab Singers or RCS, a group of seven young adult singers who perform different genres of music: from kundiman to rhythm and blues, from classical to pop. The group embarked on a 12-city US tour last year in cooperation with Gawad Kalinga, an organization that helps build homes for the less fortunate. With all these, there is no need to argue that Ryan has a fulfilled career and so much more, but mention the word “retirement” to him and you can expect a slightly annoyed disagreement. He maintains that retirement is out of the question and still considers himself “a work in progress.” Although proud and overwhelmed with all the accolades and the awards he has attained in his career, he emphasizes that the race he’s in is far from over and that, for him, it actually spans a lifetime. However, he is quick to point out he is not in a race with any other artist but himself. Of course, in our books, he is already a champion. Destiny smiles on this man. g