An OPM icon’s wake-up call
At a certain age, the running joke goes, the real flex isn’t having the biggest paycheck or the fanciest job title—it’s having the lowest blood sugar and the cleanest lab results.
And if the competition involves not a microphone, but a blood pressure monitor, singer Marco Sison, 67, could still give his younger peers a run for their money. “Just this morning, my reading was 110/80 mmHg,” he told Lifestyle in an interview. “That’s how my numbers usually are.”
Sison eats clean and goes to the gym—no maintenance medicine. Healthy by all appearances. He doesn’t feel sick, but it’s precisely because he doesn’t that he feels a little nervous. You see, his good friend and fellow OPM icon Hajji Alejandro, looked just fine the last time they shared a stage last February and then suddenly he wasn’t.
It was the last time they saw each other. Alejandro was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer shortly after and passed away two months later. “That was a wake-up call,” said Sison, the voice behind the enduring OPM hits “My Love Will See You Through,” “Make Believe,” and “Si Aida, Si Lorna, O Si Fe.”
“It made me realize that while you may be active and feel you’re completely healthy, the truth is, you don’t really know what’s going on inside you… if something’s already amiss,” he added.
And despite his misgivings, Sison—at the urging of doctor friends—has decided to go in for screenings, including a colonoscopy. Shyness be damned.
Absolutely no alcohol
For now, he sticks to his longtime habits he believes have helped him preserve—or maybe even improve—his voice. His diet consists mostly of fish and vegetables—no chicken, pork, or beef. Cardio workouts are a must; they open up the lungs and get the blood pumping. And absolutely no alcohol—it can be drying, irritating, and ultimately, damaging to the vocal cords.
Well, not that he can have any.
“I tried drinking when I was young, just to fit in, but it’s not for me. My body rejects it. I get nauseous, my skin gets itchy,” Sison said. “There are lots of temptations in showbiz. People don’t believe me when I say I don’t drink. I mean, I drank coffee while my friends drowned in booze!”
“And maybe that’s for the best,” he added. “My voice is still in great shape. In fact, I think it’s even better now—I can hit higher notes than before.”
Besides, he gets his high some other way, some other place—on stage, under the lights, singing his heart out. On July 25 at The Theatre at Solaire, Sison plans to do just that.
With a planned repertoire that celebrates the evolution of Filipino music, “Seasons of OPM” will have the seasoned artist going beyond his usual balladry—and trying his hand at singing kundiman, contemporary pop, and everything in between.
“I want to show how OPM has changed through the years…how our state of emotions remains the same, even if the ways it’s expressed and written nowadays are different,” he said. “I hope that through this concert, I can inspire more people, especially the youth, to embrace our music and help further its growth.”
While love songs will be central to the show, Sison can’t imagine performing without paying tribute to his dear departed friend. “I don’t know how that will go,” he said, “but I know that music is always there to comfort our soul.”
