It seems that the past few years have placed increased emphasis on the Philippines’ ability to produce and promote some very interesting acts in the fields of music and entertainment. Our subject for this week’s People falls into this category, but his career extends to a period back before the Filipino entertainment explosion. Way back, in fact.

Gary Valenciano, popularly known as Gary V, has been a fixture in the world of Philippine entertainment for 28 years. Having released 27 albums, Gary first started performing professionally at the age of 19 and hasn’t stopped since. This decades-long career has provided Gary with a dedicated following of Filipinos and fans who have encountered him in performances around the world. A bona fide Philippine pop culture icon, Gary is also a proud parent of three musically talented young adults: Paolo, Gabriel, and Kiana.

To further put things into perspective, the singer has dealt with Type 1 diabetes for most of his life, an ailment that requires Gary to receive frequent insulin doses through a pump worn under his clothing. While the disease is something that he publicly acknowledges as a serious matter, Gary’s iron devotion to his music, faith and family has enabled him to rise above diabetes and lead a happy and very fruitful life.

Through Malaysian regional label Muzikon, Gary recently came to Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu for performances promoting his first Bahasa Malaysia single, “Ayu”. Here is what the singer-songwriter, dancer and proud father had to share with LifeAndStyle.com.my.

LifeAndStyle: You’ve had a career that’s been going on for so long. How do you find the energy to sustain it?

They call me Mr. Pure Energy back home because ever since I started, it’s been that way. And now I have a 23-year-old son who comes up with me onstage, and he’s slightly bigger and he moves even more than me to the music. And then I have a 27-year-old son who’s into rock music, and we all look like friends when we’re onstage, not father and sons.

I came from a music convention in Dumaguete, Philippines, where I told them, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you have. You can have a Rolls Royce, a Ducati, you can have a Toyota or a Nissan or a Lexus, but no matter how beautiful the car is, if you don’t have the fuel, it remains in one place.

The fuel, whether you’re a singer, a dancer, an actor, a comedian, is heart. If you don’t have the heart, you don’t last. With heart, you have half of your foot inside the door already. I know it sounds clichéd, but especially in my case, you have those years where everything is just black holes. You don’t know what’s next. But you still have the heart, you still have the time, you want to continue. And then inspiration comes in and it picks up again. It stops, and it picks up again.

LifeAndStyle: Speaking of your kids, several years ago, you performed at the MTV Pilipinas Music Awards in the Philippines with one of your sons. You were being honoured for something...

Yeah, I remember! It was the MTV Generations Award, in 2005. I had my son Gabriel with me and we were playing with cajons. They’re instruments that are basically shaped like a box, and you sit on them and play. My son and six other guys each played a cajon, and then after that, in the middle of it all, a beat came in and we started dancing. It was a great, great event for me to be honoured by MTV, the people who started out popularising music videos in the first place.

LifeAndStyle: It’s good to know that your kids are still involved in music. Have you always encouraged them?

Yes. I’ve always encouraged them, but not in a way that most people would expect. I never went up to my kids and said, “This is what you have to do.” It’s difficult for Paolo, being the eldest son. He’s not as tall as me, he doesn’t look like me, he’s completely different, like a boy next door. A lot of young girls tend to like him because he’s so humble and quiet, but then he comes out on stage, and it’s rock!

It’s a totally different thing from what I do. And I’ve told him and Gabriel, my second son, “If there’s one thing I don’t expect from you, it’s for you to be an exact copy of your dad. You cannot be like me, you will not be like, and I’m not expecting you to walk, talk or dress up like me, or to have the same rapport with the audience. It’s a totally different generation. But, just like me, you have your own set of wings to fly.”

Paolo came up to me after and said, “Wow, dad, thanks. I really needed to hear that.” And from that point on, he started writing music. There were no more worries about being Gary Valenciano’s son. Now I’m starting to be known as Paolo Valenciano’s dad, and that’s fine!

I let them go at it. My second son Gabriel wants to go to America to study music production, and that’s another thing I told him. “Gab, if you go to the States, you’re still Gary Valenciano’s son, but only in the Philippines. You might expect that kind of treatment from there.” He said, “No dad, I want to go because in the Philippines, I’m kind of limited with what I can do. I’m looking for people who have the same vision. Can I go?” I said, “I’ll back you up 100 percent.”

Then my daughter, who is actually the best vocalist of all, she’s more into R and B. As a matter of fact, you can search for Kiana and Gabriel on YouTube. It’s a studio setting, with Gabriel playing and Kiana singing Chris Brown’s song, “Yeah x3”. I’ll leave the rest up to you to discover (click here for video). It’s quite interesting to see them play and if you want to know what Gabriel is like. In the beginning of the video, he looks at the camera and smiles, and just like that, you’ll see his naughtiness. That’s my son!

They’re all three different characters. I feel like as a father, they’re made that way, so they have to be seen that way, and not as a reflection of who their dad is.

LifeAndStyle: Perhaps you could tell us more about “Ayu”, your new Malay single.

There was a song that I wrote 28 years ago “Called a Fool to the End”, which was in English. It’s amazing that the first song I’m doing in Bahasa is also the first song I wrote in Manila. It’s not a translation of what I wrote, it’s an entire rewrite in Bahasa.

The arranger Sharon Paul took the song and rearranged it to make it sound more suitable for the Malaysian market. Fatine wrote the lyrics to the song. They send me the demo in Manila. I’m really thankful for the way technology has changed things, you just download and all the demos are there with the comments and such.

LifeAndStyle: You did a pretty good job on the song. Did you have someone standing behind you the whole time to help with pronunciation?

It’s actually a girl from Indonesia. She helped the likes of Jed Madela and Christian Bautista with their songs (editor’s note: these two singers also recorded Malaysian songs with Muzikon, performing with Nikki Palikat and Noryn Aziz, respectively). She was a really young girl, probably in her 20s, so I was nervous at first. She said, “I love your music!” She studied in the Philippines and had decided to stay there. “But you’re Indonesian!” I said. “How will the pronunciation work?” She said, “It’s okay, watch.” We really clicked right away.

LifeAndStyle: Where do you think this is going, the fact that artists are coming to different countries and singing in each other’s languages?

I really think it’s the next step and it’s long overdue. In the Philippines, it’s nice that on the charts now, you have a lot of Filipino songs. But then you have K-pop, which is Korean stuff that nobody really understands, but people really like what they see, the way the production is done, the way the young boys are moving and all.

I think that if there’s one thing that’s been mentioned time and again, and what is now really becoming a reality is the fact that music is becoming a truly universal language. When you go to the United States, you still have to sing in English, and put a certain twist into the way you speak. But in Asia, it’s different cultures, which bring about different types of melodies and music. I think that it’s only in Asia that you really see that meaning survive, that universal language of music.

And talking about Malaysia, I’ve heard the music that comes from here, and the production is excellent. It’s one thing that artists should never fail to have when it comes to making their music: people who work with them who are on the same page.

LifeAndStyle: What are you expecting from your performances here and in Kuala Lumpur?

Fans have changed quite a bit. Before, it was about being exposed as much as you could on television and on radio. But I think nowadays, with new media, there are all these other avenues that can be tapped to promote oneself. It’s not to say that I won’t be coming out on television and doing radio interviews; I will be doing that too.

But this is my second visit here where I’m actually being introduced to the Malaysian market, and I’m really looking forward to coming back again and again. Hopefully I can start beefing up the performances to show people exactly what I do. Every time I invite people to my concerts, it’s like I invite them to my home. I get very personal with my audience when I’m on stage. It’s not really a show, it’s not really a performance. It’s an expression.

W: garyv.com
Facebook: GaryValencianoOfficial