Johnoy Danao was no exception to drawing the audience’s attention towards him. He had the crowd hanging on to his every word and every strum and pluck of his acoustic guitar. If Bullet Dumas is the wild one of the bunch, Danao is the reserved one. It’s not to say that the prolific singer-songwriter doesn’t let it all out while he’s onstage. If you’ve seen him up close while he performs, he does, but he does so in a very calming matter that complements his tunes. His face when he sings is evidence enough of the heartbreaks and hopes that’s thematic to what he’s penned. Each and every facial tic is an intense emotion in itself. The emotions undoubtedly translated with the audience. It was all felt by the audience, especially his song that stemmed from the loss of a family member – his beloved pet.
And then there’s the most seasoned of the three, Ebe Dancel. The veteran of never-ending battles with feelings and emotions more than put on a show, Dancel’s stellar performance was a confession about his mental frailty and cathartic deliverance. His voice, even when he moved away from the microphone, was powerful and emotional enough to fill the walls of the Music Museum. Ebe Dancel’s impassioned speech regarding his clinical depression became an open letter to his fans and loyal followers, with “hope” as the takeaway. As someone who suffers from clinical depression too, I thought it was a truly remarkable and inspiring speech. It left me fighting back tears at the back of the venue. It was a fight that I lost and I ended up crying at the back of the music hall and in the hallway outside and in the bathroom due to the overwhelming nature of the confession.
The Dama concert was everything that the devout fans of all three immensely talented singer-songwriters could ever hope for. 3D may have started with three guys and their guitars, but in the year that they have performed on all kinds of stages, it became so much more than that. It became a personal connection with each other that the three learned lessons from. “The value of friendship is my best takeaway from Ebe and Bullet,” Johnoy Danao said when I asked him about the one thing that the two brought out in him. It became a camaraderie of three musical soulmates bound together by their passion for music and storytelling.
The trio’s journey also became a deep connection with whoever’s got their eyes and ears to them. As fans of music, we tend to gravitate towards the voices of those who speak the words that we cannot say. We cling to our favorite musicians’ songs like our lives depended on them. And sometimes it does. Music, great music, saves lives. I can only imagine the number of lives the three saved that night.
As for what we can look forward to from 3D: Danao, Dancel, Dumas in the coming months? According to Danao, “What’s next is the unexpected. Who knows, but one thing’s for sure: we are happy to where this tour will take us, small or a big venue.”
With the standing ovation that Johnoy Danao, Ebe Dancel, and Bullet Dumas received when that magical night was over, it’s a safe assumption that we’ll be there in those venues with the three guys and their guitars.
