MANILA, Philippines — APO Hiking Society’s half-century career is now bound in print.
Continuing the group’s long-running habit of weaving wordplay into their branding, Limang Dekada nAPO Kami collates the stories behind the group’s milestones, from their origins as high school-to-collegiate performers in the late 1960s to the decades of albums, TV shows, and concerts that followed.
“It’s a personal history book, where we really give our thoughts as we went through certain situations and we give stories that you never hear us talking about,” said Boboy Garrovillo during the book launch held on August 7.
Born out of a deliberately absurd, tongue-in-cheek name that clung well past its founding roster, APO’s early incarnation was a band of campus pranksters with guitars and an easy knack for harmony.
However, by the mid-1970s, the core trio of Garrovillo, Jim Paredes, and the late Danny Javier had become fixtures of an OPM movement still in its infancy, marrying sharp pop craftsmanship with a sensibility rooted in Filipino humor and sentiment.
APO’s mix of folk, pop, and novelty songs — “Ewan,” “Panalangin,” “Pumapatak Ang Ulan” — found space in both radio charts, overseas venues, and the country’s variety show circuit.
Their long-running Sunday program Sa Linggo nAPO Sila on ABS-CBN cemented their visibility beyond music, while the turn of the millennium brought tribute projects like the Kami nAPO Muna duology, reintroducing their discography to younger audiences in the 2000s.
For a group as storied as APO, a book chronicling its five decades must take a different approach to documenting this history. With over 200 pages of full-color photographs and text, the book bisects the work as part memoir and part commemoration, with the members narrating the conditions, relationships, and industry realities that produced their songs.
For listeners accustomed to consuming the music without context, this opens up the mechanics behind their creative and professional choices.
More than a mere catalogue of achievements, Garrovillo said they wanted readers to pair the chapters with the songs, turning the act of reading into an active encounter with their music.
“We wanted the people to have a complete experience while they read the book. Listen to the music while reading… when you read the book parang ‘ah, so eto pala ’yung kwento sa likod ng mga kantang ’yun’ (you’ll think, ‘ah, so this is the story behind these songs’).”
Told in their own voices, the book retraces the circumstances and choices that shaped APO’s career. Furthermore, the members note that the group’s longevity has taken on a different shape since Javier’s passing in 2022.
“You really have to learn a lot of things to survive as three and now we’re learning to survive as two. A group is different from a solo career,” Paredes told Rappler.
Across decades, APO’s songs have moved in step with the nation they sang to — from the hopeful refrains of the OPM movement’s early years, the coded dissent of the 1980s, the nostalgia and reinvention of the 2000s, and even the wake of a member’s passing.
The new book places their journey on record, not as a means of saying farewell, but as another way for the group’s voice to travel alongside the audiences that have carried it this far.Limang Dekada nAPO Kami is available by emailing [email protected]. – Angela Divina/Rappler.com
Angela Divina is a Rappler intern studying Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Ateneo de Manila University.