De Quiros' Column

There's The Rub : Good men, too

Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer News Service

I'VE always asked why God insists on removing from this world artists rather than politicians. A dozen local artists died in 2002 and about the same number last year, some of them our National Artists. I do not recall the politicians who did. I should add to my question why God insists on removing from this world the best rather than the worst politicians on the occasions that He does. We've just lost Raul Roco. Elsewhere in the world, Britain has just lost Robin Cook.

Cook died from a heart attack last weekend while walking on the highlands of his native Scotland. He was one of the most principled human beings in all of Britain. A brilliant debater and a much feared one in Parliament (legend has it that he once went over a 2,000-page report in a few hours before delivering a devastating attack on John Major's government over an arms-to-Iraq deal which sealed its doom), he was also a staunch believer in peace. He was visible in anti-war campaigns, notably the one on nuclear disarmament. He wasn't just a fair-weather friend to the cause, he was its champion in bad times.

He resigned his powerful post as leader of the House of Commons in 2003 (he lost his job as foreign minister a couple of years before over differences with Tony Blair) in disgust over Britain's participation in the Iraq invasion. I reprinted his hugely eloquent resignation speech, one that exposed the hypocrisy of the so-called "war," in this column then. "Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war," he said. "Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion." He refused to be part of it, opting instead to side with the British public, which was overwhelmingly against the war, and which was "suspicious [of] being pushed hurriedly into conflict by a US administration with an agenda of its own."

In his memoirs, which he wrote later, Cook accused Blair of going along with Bush despite knowing full well Saddam held no weapons of mass destruction.

As usual, the same unprincipled lot that made him pay for his principles was quick to praise his principles after he died -- in the same way that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was quick to do so after Roco died. Rogues do know how to lie through their teeth.

But Cook does have a thing or two to teach a world that is fast losing its moral moorings, this country faster than the rest. Like all the great men who have come before him, Cook has added new dimensions to the meaning of courage and compelled us to reexamine the nature of victory and defeat. He staked his career on principle, putting reason before power, compassion before greed.

It's not completely true that the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. No one will remember Bush, Blair and Ms Arroyo a few years from now. Everyone will still be lighting candles for Cook and Roco.

Apart from Cook and Roco, yet another person to have disappeared from this earth during the weekend was Ibrahim Ferrer. Which brings me back to what God has against artists. Not too many people know Ferrer, and if it hadn't been for guitarist-composer Ry Cooder, no one would have known him at all outside of his family and friends. Cooder went to Cuba in the mid-1990s and assembled a group of musicians that played vintage Cuban music. The group became the hugely famous Buena Vista Social Club, with Ferrer as lead singer, "the Cuban Nat King Cole," as Cooder described him in Wim Wenders' film biography.

What made the group special was not just that they were gifted musicians but that they were in their 70s and 80s. At the time Cooder discovered them, Compay Segundo was 90 years old and fit as a fiddle, or guitar, which was what he played. And he had been smoking Havana cigars from when he was 5 years old! Alas, Segundo would depart the earth earlier in 2003, as would the great Ruben Gonzalez, as fine a pianist as you could get. I have the CDs of Buena Vista, Ferrer and Gonzalez, as well as a DVD of Wenders' film, simply titled "Buena Vista Social Club," and I have listened to them again and again. Nobody plays that kind of music anymore.

And nobody else will, unless Buena Vista finds its own version of Michael Buble. They were pretty much the heart and soul of the band, Ferrer, Gonzalez and Segundo.

Ferrer himself had been a member in several bands in his youth, but had fallen on hard times when their kind of music faded from glory. At the time Cooder discovered him, he was trying to make both ends meet shining shoes. A friend of his told him about Cooder's rehearsals and asked him to go. Ferrer said he would go home first to change into more respectable clothes. His friend said no, the recordings were going on. So he went. It was magic from the first meeting. Cooder would say later on that Ferrer was someone you chanced upon only once in a lifetime. You hear Ferrer sing, you'll agree vigorously. He sings, particularly in duet with the great Omara Portuondo, with such luxurious romanticism, with such depths of ache and longing, you are thrown back to the Spanish times in this country. Rizal might have listened to something like that.

Ferrer won the Grammy a few years ago, to the elation not just of Cuba but the world's Latin community. Alas, he died too soon from emphysema at the very young age of 78 -- at least by Buena Vista standards.

What can I say? I can only thank them for making this world a little brighter. Or, in these vastly cynical times, for keeping the light burning a little longer.