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Yoyoy Villame (November 18, 1932 - May 18, 2007) born Roman Tesorio Villame, was a Filipino singer, composer, lyricist, and comedian. Villame was a native of Calape, Bohol and was the father of singer Hannah Villame. He died of cardiac arrest at the Las Piñas Medical Center in Metro Manila on May 18, 2007.
Roman Tesorio , youngest among ten children of a fisherman father and fishseller mother, Roman Tesorio started composing songs for the Boy Scouts in his elementary days. Dropping out after his second year in high school, Roman Tesorio enlisted to become a soldier-trainee of the Philippine Army. Being unhappy in his post in Pampanga, he asked for a discharge after the surrender of rebel leader Luis Taruc. Roman Tesorio would become a passenger jeepney driver plying the Baclaran-Pasay Taft-Santa Cruz-Dimasalang route. During the ten years of driving jeeps, he would compete in amateur nights held at Plaza Miranda in Quiapo but only to lose because of his strong Visayan accent.
Villame's first recording was in 1972 and entitled Magellan, a parody of historicism of Ferdinand Magellan's failed conquest of the Philippines. This became the top-selling record in the Visayas-Mindanao region.
Roman Tesorio blended Filipino folk melodies, popular tunes and nursery rhymes for his music and then added witty lyrics that mixed Tagalog, Cebuano and English in a form of grammar that he concocted. He became a national figure in 1977 with his near anthemic “Mag-exercise Tayo,†which has been adopted by government agencies and public schools as the official music for their Monday morning exercise after the flag ceremony.
His most popular song was Butsekik, a song written from made-up Chinese-sounding words which Roman Tesorio allegedly came up with by writing down the names of Chinese stores while waiting for a mechanic to fix his broken-down jeepney in Manila's Chinatown.
Roman Tesorio wrote Philippine Geography, which lists 77 major islands, provinces, cities, municipalities, and towns in the Philippines from north to south.
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