Ferdinand Pascual Aguilar (; born February 5, 1953), better known as Freddie Aguilar, Ka Freddie Aguilar, or simply Ka Freddie, is a Filipino folk musician and singer-songwriter. Regarded as one of the pillars and icons of Original Pilipino Music (OPM). He is best known for his rendition of "Bayan Ko", which became the anthem of the opposition against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos during the 1986 People Power Revolution, and for his song "Anak", the best-selling Philippine music record of all time, selling 33 million copies worldwide. He is heavily associated with Pinoy rock.
He is well known internationally, claiming fame as one of the best musician-songwriters from the Philippines.
Early life
Freddie Aguilar's musical beginnings started when he was young. When he was 9-years-old, Aguilar played his first guitar. By the time he was 19-years-old, Freddie Aguilar performed on stage with Joshua Alcantara for the first time.
Aguilar studied Electrical Engineering at De Guzman Institute of Technology but did not finish the degree program. Instead he pursued music, became a street musician, and then a folk club and bar musician.
At the age of 18, Aguilar parted ways with his family and quit college. After realizing and regretting his mistakes five years later, he composed the song "Anak."
Influences
Freddie Aguilar's influences include British and American folk-rock stars like Cat Stevens and James Taylor. He is also heavily influenced by his Filipino heritage, nationalist feelings, and tries to constitute a musical exploration of the Filipino ethos.
Career
Aguilar first began performing in public in 1973, when he auditioned and was hired to play folk songs at per gig at the Hobbit House in Ermita, Manila.
International acclaim
Aguilar's "Anak" not only broke the Philippine record charts in 1979, but it also hit the no. 1 spot in Japan and achieved considerable popularity in other countries as Angola, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and parts of Western Europe. The song has become so famous that, by some counts, it has been recorded in as many as a hundred versions in 23 languages throughout the world. Billboard reported that the song was the number two world hit of the 1980s. According to Billboard, Aguilar was the second best-selling recording artist of 1981 in Europe. As of 2006, it was unsurpassed as the highest-selling record of Philippine music history.
Political activism
Even before Aguilar's rendition of "Bayan Ko," Aguilar created and performed songs targeted at social injustices. His album, Magdalena included songs about a girl forced into prostitution as a result of poverty and the Christian-Muslim clashes in his song Mindanao. After the album, Freddie Aguilar also sang about the injustices suffered by the powerless, poverty, and the arrogance of superpowers in a song about the U.S. and Russia.
Five years after the composition of "Anak", Freddie Aguilar joined protests against the Marcos regime and began writing and performing songs that criticized the excesses of the government. Some of the songs that caused him to be banned from mainstream media include: "Kata-rungan" or "Justice" (speaking for the unjustly accused), "Pangako" ("Promise") (a leader's unfulfilled pledges to an abandoned people), and "Luzvi-minda" (an acronym for Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, calling on Filipinos to wake up to the reality of oppression). One of the songs he was most remembered for during that time was his interpretation of "Bayan Ko" ("My Country"), in which he added a verse to the original piece.