goodnight mr. music man

I got a text message from Bibsy Carballo today inviting me to a memorial mass for Toti on Tuesday.

It took me several seconds to acknowledge the words, “Toti’s cremated ashes in Chicago. Don’t have details if will be brought to Manila.” and the tears came.

I met Toti Fuentes, one of the kindest gentlemen and gifted musicians I’ve ever had the opportunity to meet, when People Asia sent assigned me to interview him two years ago. It wasn’t one of those usual assignments where I only had an hour with the subject and I was in and out of the photo shoot. This one required me to go with him to Cagayan de Oro to watch his benefit concert at his old alma mater. For the first time, I had three days with my subject, and while we only got to talk for thirty minutes on tape, I had the whole trip to get to know him and see him in action.

At that time, he was already taking six kinds of pain medication, and i remember when i first met him at the airport, he told me had just come out of the hospital because they had to drain fluid from his lungs.

Sherie got her first People Asia gig with his photos too. I didn’t like the photos that the photographer from CDO took so i talked to Jacs about letting Sherie have a go at it– if they didn’t like her photos they don’t have to pay her. hehe

I still think that Toti’s portraits were one of her best works. I remember Toti playing a song on the keyboard while Sherie shot him. the music made sherie and i all teary-eyed.

since then, every time Toti came to the Philippines, Bibsy, his manager, would text us and put us on the guest list on one of his shows. The last time we saw him was at Merk’s in November 8 last year (according to my twitter archives) and he wasn’t looking well at all.

Well, he was terminally ill already since I met him, I just thought we’d have more time with him… I will miss him a lot.

A video by Damien Fuentes, Toti’s son, playing one the last songs his dad wrote.

Here’s the unedited version of the article I wrote for Toti:

Where Dreams May Come
(title was changed to “Unchained Melody”)

By Stef Juan

How does one describe the first encounter with Toti Fuentes’ music?

No matter how much you have prepared yourself for it, the music just takes you by surprise. Just like the light pattering of a ballerina’s feet. It tiptoes to the edge of the stage and takes you by her graceful hand. Strong and quiet, the music builds up and sweeps you off your feet, even as you are just sitting there in the dark with your eyes closed and your hands clasped together under your chin.

The maestro behind the keyboard seems oblivious to his audience all this time. His fingers dance up and down the black and ivory keys until the music swells and ends in a triumphant climax. He stands up, opens his arms to the sky unmindful of the applause that comes after a second of breathless silence.

This is how it is when Toti plays. Whenever he places his hands on the piano keyboard, the music takes over. And all the exaggeration and theatricality that comes after is swallowed up by the sheer awesomeness of his music. Now you understand how he came to play with the likes of Sergio Mendes, the Platters, the Lettermen, Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin.

And you just might be able forget that the he is terminally ill with cancer.

Toti’s life is characterized by a series of dreams and triumphs over seemingly insurmountable odds. He was born in 1952 in Cagayan de Oro City where he also grew up. “Undeniably a small town, compared to the towns in the U.S.” Toti says fondly of his hometown. At the age of seven he was already making music on his mother’s piano, and that was the start of his love affair with music that has taken him from his hometown to international fame.

He knows all about the power of dreams. Toti simply summarizes his rise to fame this way, “When I was young, I had a band called HG and the Trumps in 1964. But I dreamed that I could learn more and perform more music if I go to Manila. So after high school, I went to Manila in 1969. stayed in Manila until 1978. Around ’76 I started to dream again, to make it even bigger. My dream was to be a conductor and I conducted the Manila Symphony Orchestra and the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. I’ve worked with the biggest stars in the Philippines such as Pilita Korales. It all happened, all those dreams came true. But I had one dream back in ’66, it was with Sergio Mendez & Brasil ’66. So in ’78 I went to the United States to look for Sergio Mendes. To make the long story short, in 1988 I worked with Sergio. It took me ten years. But it happened!”

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. There were detours along the way, and Toti has a handicap that fully manifested itself when he was studying music in the University of Sto. Tomas. He has dyslexia, a reading disorder that made it difficult for him to understand what he is reading. “I’ve never read a book in my entire life,” he confesses, “I am not a sight reader. I memorize all of my musical pieces.” Sheer hard work and his photographic memory make up for this handicap.

When he left for the United States, it was not only in pursuit of his dream to play with Sergio Mendes and Brasil, but it was also to find his wife—who, in the midst of the famous people he wanted to work with, appeared in his dreams. It was a vivid dream, “I visualized her and she has a gap in her teeth,” he smiles as he continues his story, “I found Joni in Chicago in 1979. When I saw her I said, ‘You have a missing tooth.’ And she said, ‘Yes I do.’ I told her, ‘You’re going to have my children someday.’ And she told me that I was crazy.” He laughs in recollection. “We lived in different worlds. But 27 years later we’re still together.”

He refers to his love life with his wife, as “my foundation.” Except for this latest trip to the Philippines wherein he has his eldest son, Demien, in tow, his wife has always traveled with him to his shows, supporting him and his music all the way.

Three years ago, Toti was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer—so rare, only four out of a million cancer patients have it—and it was already at its late stages. The prognosis was not good. He only had three more months to live. Toti, who was once a hefty man weighing 270 lbs. lost half his weight drastically because of his cancer. He and his family were living in the Philippines at that time.

Toti took his family back to the U.S. to get treatment for his cancer in John Stroger hospital in Cook County. “That’s where I met the best oncologist, Dr. Lily Hussein. She was the one who asked me if I was willing to go through an experimental treatment.” By that time, he was already bedridden. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, he submitted himself for the treatment. Three days later, he was able to get up from his bed and even go to the bathroom by himself.

“When you know that you’re going to die you prepare yourself,” he says. “In a way, it’s good that you know when you’re going to die.” But when a year has passed since his doctors gave him his supposed-deadline with his cancer and he was still alive, he decided to continue with his music.

However, tragedy still wasn’t done with his family. The following year upon his recovery, his daughter, Xara, succumbed to her depression and committed suicide. A wave of sadness passes over his face before he says, with all the wisdom that came from his experience, “When you’re not in that situation, you think that you can’t survive. But you can survive. You will become stronger, because you had to survive because you have two more kids and a wife. You have to think of them. You have to live longer and survive pain.”

He pauses for a moment before stating, with all the strength of will and conviction that has taken him from obscurity in his small town to international renown and made his dreams come true, “My music is the one that’s surviving me now.” But now, he uses his music to raise money for people who need it, especially cancer patients.

This is also why he went back to his Cagayan de Oro to hold a fund-raising concert for his alma mater last June. “I made a promise to Father Demetrio back in 1992 to help raise funds to help the Xavier University Museum,” Toti explains. Unfortunately, Father Demetrio passed away five years ago, before Toti could fulfill his promise. This weighed heavily on Toti’s mind until earlier this year he talked with an old friend from his childhood in Cagayan de Oro, Attorney Rufus Rodriguez—who regularly produces shows in their hometown—about holding a concert for the benefit of the museum.

A week before he was set to go to Cagayan de Oro, Toti was rushed to the hospital because of fluid in his lungs, from his travel fatigue. The fluid was drained by inserting a needle in between his rib cage and into his right lung. It looked like he wouldn’t be able to make it to the concert at all. His doctors wanted to keep him in the hospital at least until Friday that week, and the concert was already on Saturday.

Come Thursday morning, Toti was at the airport, all set to go. He mentioned in passing about the surgery on his right side. On Friday morning, he played for a hundred of students for free in Xavier University, and inspired them to go after their dreams, because if he can do it, they can too. On Saturday, he played his music to hundreds of his fellow Cagayanos. Toti knew he was living on borrowed time and was not the one to waste any of it.

In between songs at his big concert, he looked like the cancer-patient that he is—in pain from the fresh wound from his recent surgery. But once the music started, the maestro and performer took the place of this strong, battered survivor and dreamer, and once more carried his audience to where dreams may come, where death can never come near.