Gloc 9 uses his inks and notes responsibly

Rap is a world so remote to this writer’s that when we were informed that Gloc 9 was to be the guest in Davao’s “Larolympics,” we had to double check who or what it was.

It turned out, everyone in Anak TV, myself excluded, had heard of him. His repute as a machine-gun mouth was rather widespread, we discovered, and his association with the late master rapper Francis M actually made him even more familiar to many. He was not a talent in Kiko’s stable, just a friend, he explains, who inspired him.

It was also a delightful astonishment when the predominantly teeny bopper crowd in Davao welcomed Gloc 9 with shrieks and fanatic screams of adulation. Here was a young man in very simple garb who hardly stood out in a crowd. When his music played and he took to the mic, he morphed into a rap star that literally swept the listeners off their feet. The scouting contingent had to cordon off the performance area lest overzealous fans break in and do something overboard.

Crowd reaction approached pandemonium.

For a while, we thought that everything else that should have mattered that afternoon became inconsequential: the Larolympics finals, the awarding ceremonies, even the VIPs onstage. What was already a musty and humid gym deteriorated into a sweltering sauna after Gloc 9’s songs, no thanks to the shrill shrieks and roaring thunder of applause.



PROUD OF HIS ROOTS

Gloc 9 aka Aris Pollisco is proud of his roots, even prouder of his branches.

Years after his siato, patintero, sipa ball and moro-moro days in Binangonan, Rizal, Gloc 9 says he lukewarmly played with a group in the late 90s but the promise of slightly better income came knocking.

(Moro-moro is a variation of tag where opponents are captured and rendered “prisoners
of war” until they are rescued by their teammates. Sipa ball is modified baseball without the bat.)

He took on waitering and service crew jobs until one day in 2001, he found himself hired as musical researcher for ABS-CBN. He would search for appropriate scores to accompany scenes and when he found it tiresome to use other people’s music, he began composing rap tunes. Then came Handog Himig and thereafter, his first compositions were blown up to form his first Star Records album.

His experiences as contract hire performing odd jobs provide grist for many of his compositions, nearly all of them threaded by some social realist theme. He sees himself in many people around him. Where he fails to do that, he hurls himself in their place like what he did to Lando, the fictitious taong grasa who became the subject of a song that seeks to ask the reason why people go mentally astray.

FAMILlY MAN

Gloc 9’s youthful looks belie his growing family. He has four-year old twins. The boy, Sean Daniel is the more vocal one and deeply defensive of the mother. When Gloc 9 is espied having snapshots taken with strange female fans, Sean candidly scolds him. Shawn Danielle, on the other hand, is reserved and couldn’t care less. The twins see him on TV but the idea that they have a celebrity father has not sunk in entirely.

“Which is all the more gratifying,” Gloc 9 confesses, “because as a family, we can still lead normal lives. My kids can still play with the neighbors and I will soon have the chance to teach them the siato, patintero and moro-moro of my childhood.”

Now with Sony Music and having recently waxed his third album Matrikula, Gloc 9 recalls Francis M’s earlier advice: “God gave you the gift to write music. Your songs can easily influence young people and children. Watch how you wield that influence.”

To which Gloc 9 composed a new song Tinta, whose message is encapsulized in the question sung in Pilipino: How did you use your ink? -Manila Bulletin