I feel woozy, coming out of Dionela’s “Grace Tour” concert in the New Frontier Theater, plus a good dose of ethanol from Cubao Expo, in Quezon City. Before I head home on a vertiginous Friday night, I ask myself: How do I make sense of what I’d just witnessed—and the meteoric success of this singer-songwriter whose professional and last name also happen to be my middle name?
One thing’s for sure: Dionela is dramatically romantic, and unapologetically so. What can be more hugot-filled than “153” (past tense of 143?) with lines like “Sinanay mo ako tapos bigla kang lumayo,” and what can be more sawi than the protagonist of “Oo Na, Kayo Na”? As in: Oo na, kayo na / Huwag mo nang ipamukha / Na naagaw mo s’ya.
I guess, as I’ve written before, this can be said of every single Filipino act from the age of the kundiman to today’s era of P-Pop. But Dionela—who burst onto the stage in a shiny red robe fit for Bruno Mars—renders this emotional skyscape more intense, more intimate. His voice, soulful and visceral, carries an earnestness that is in full display on stage. And his lyrics often verge on the existential, spiritual, even cosmic—nowhere better seen than in “Marilag,” doubtless his best song to date: Marilag / Ang himala’y sa ‘yo ibibintang / Haven’t felt so divine ’til I looked in your eyes / I see my future / Baby loving you saved me.
And perhaps even more so in “Oksihina,” where the element oxygen is turned into a quasi-theological metaphor, complete with gasping sounds: Tunay na propesiya / Ikaw ang dakilang rason ba’t ako ginawa / Aking oksihina / ‘Pag hindi na makahinga (hindi na makahinga).
But within and across songs, he is also able to traverse the macrocosm of love and the microcosm of life. In “Hoodie” (feat. Alisson Shore), we are transported not so much to the exoplanet KELT-9b (yet another astronomical reference in ‘Marilag’), as to Ipanema, and it is hard not to be infatuated with the waves of longing, or, if nothing else, with the music.
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Born Timothy Dionela in Guiguinto, Bulacan, to two musicians (one of them a pastor), the 26-year-old is firmly Gen Z. Yet his audience is strikingly intergenerational: not just titas and titos like me but also lolos and lolas—and kids. It helps that unlike many of his R&B peers, Dionela steers clear of overt sensuality. His musical universe may be nebulous but at its core is honest-to-goodness romance and metaphysical longing.
Both online and onstage, he has been open about his struggles and humble beginnings, playing in bars, singing at weddings, drowning in debt. This vulnerability is part of his brand. Dramatically, he proposed to his girlfriend Meizy Mendoza onstage, to much kilig and cheers, before serenading his fiancee with “Ikigai” (feat. Loonie), yet one of his fanciful creations (“I fell for you faster than the speed of light”). My more OPM-versed friends say such theatrics are par for the course—and far from cringe-worthy for most fans; in any case, Dionela’s version feels particularly earnest and he seems to genuinely tap into the wellspring of support from his fans.
After the confession of love comes a confession of faith. Evangelical in both tone (cue the harps in “Marilag”) and lyrical undertone (“Tunay na propesiya / Ikaw ang dakilang rason ba’t ako ginawa”), his songs already have a gospel-like quality, reminiscent not so much of Romans as of Song of Solomon and the Book of Proverbs. During the concert, he made this clear with a courageous testimony, saying that in the face of depression, “I only felt that peace again when I finally gave up all my desires, worries, and broken heart to Jesus.” The concert briefly turned into a praise-and-worship service, complete with a pastor delivering a short sermon and prayer.
Dionela seems to at least practice what he preaches: Before the concert, he announced that proceeds would be donated to victims of Supertyphoon “Uwan.” In the most recent Awit awards where he took home the major distinctions of Best Solo Performance, Best R&B Recording, and Best Collaboration, he declared: “Corruption thrives in fear and silence and fear ends now,” nudging fellow artists to use their voice on social and political issues.
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What’s next from Dionela? Musically, he seems to be comfortable where he is right now, a Lagrange point of sorts between R&B and P-Pop; and his star keeps rising, with his two-night run in Cubao surely serving as a professional and personal (because of the proposal) milestone, coming after successful legs of the tour in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Dubai. Yet with his intimate, intensely personal style, it remains to be seen how audiences will continue to receive him, how his music will evolve, and whether, like SB19, he can expand his discography with the same salamangka as his Billboard-topping hits.
He has acknowledged the bashers who take aim at his lyricism, admitting he is hurt by the comments. On this point, I join Jay-R and his growing number of fans in coming to his defense:
Filipino artists can only be “pretentious” if we accept the misguided premise that we are not allowed to tinker with languages, not least our own—English included. As Dionela, Matthaios, and many others are showing, OPM can actually advance our languages, free as they are from the artificial divisions of English and Filipino, and of the conventions of creative writing.
I actually like his code-switching, his Andromeda of a lexicon, his recuperation—even if at times awkward—of lovely words. And I wish that, as a writer, I could sometimes allow myself the same linguistic flamboyance and literary freedom. If Taylor Swift can drop “whiskey on ice,” why can’t Dionela say “whiskey in a teapot”? And if Salbakuta can summon the Sphinx in “S2pid Luv,” why can’t he mention Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché? I’m not sure about what my medical-school profs would feel about the use of neurological metaphors, but don’t we all deserve someone who could turn our “limbics into a bouquet”?
Dionela’s lyrics may not always seem to make sense, but beautiful music doesn’t need to.
Gideon Lasco is an anthropologist and physician currently serving as professorial lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman and as Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. A Palanca Award-winning essayist and longtime commentator on health, culture and society, he is the author of five books, including “The Philippines Is Not a Small Country” (2020), a winner of the National Book Award.
