JOHNNY SABLAN hafa adai todo maulick

Johnny Sablan, a pioneer Chamorro recording artist, received the “Island Icon Award for 2011” in a vote among fellow musicians and islandwide audiences at the Island Music Awards. This is the latest of a litany of accolades for Sablan who has promoted the island’s indigenous language and culture through a music career spanning more than five decades. The award is not surprising, considering Sablan’s 1968 release of “Dalai Nene,” the first commercially recorded album in Chamorro, marked the beginning of the Chamorro music industry.

Although an accomplished singer, musician, composer, producer, and entrepreneur, Sablan humbly defines himself as more of a “contributor” to the preservation, perpetuation, and promotion of the Chamorro language and culture. His recording career actually started at the age of thirteen after winning a talent contest in Los Angeles on a popular TV show. After that performance, he landed a contract with a Hollywood studio. However, a decade later, Sablan reached a turning point his life–he discovered his cultural identity and decided to act on his passion to share and teach his Chamorro heritage through music. In 1958 at the age of 10, Sablan’s inadvertent music “debut” occurred because of his desire to watch a movie. Upon hearing that singers were being recruited from Hagat to perform for the hospital patients at the old Guam Memorial Hospital in Tamuning, Sablan and his favorite uncle and best friend, Vicente “Tarzan” Sablan, auditioned by singing and dancing to Elvis Presley songs from a coin-operated jukebox at the door steps of the Agat Store. The audition, however, was really a means to get the two boys a ride to a movie theater also located in Tamuning. His parents did not even hear about his singing debut until later.

Nevertheless, singing was a way of life in Guam’s southern villages in those days, especially in Hagat where Sablan grew up and learned to sing. He was surrounded with talented musicians and singers, both young and old. To this day, Sablan continues to give credit to his friends of Hagat village for his musical success. He remembers hearing groups of singers around the village creating beautiful harmonies every evening, their voices blending songs of the past with present-day tunes.

Before long Sablan himself was performing at fiestas, parties (also known as the “pala-pala circuit”) and other community gatherings. He continued to sing for the manamko and the hospital patients. He entered singing and instrumental contests, perfoming on the Alan Sekt Talent Show and Crown Motors Talent Show on KUAM, Guam’s only television station at the time. Sablan also took music lessons at the Guam Academy of Music and Arts in Hagåtña to further develop his musical ability. It was at this time that he began singing “Agat Town” as part of his repertoire. The song was a popular village tune and the most requested song during his “pala-pala circuit” shows.

We found this Lp in a little shop in Singapore.This lp inspired by his mission during the Viet nam war.you have even a song called "christmas odyssey in viet nam".for us the main song and the Funkiest is TAOTAOMONA (the first man) 8 mn of pleasure!!!