➤Lourd Ernest Hanopol de Veyra (born February 11, 1975) is a is a multi-awarded Filipino musician, emcee, poet, journalist, TV host, broadcast personality and activist who became famous as the vocalist of the Manila-based jazz rock band Radioactive Sago Project. De Veyra went to Quirino Elementary School for grade school and to Colegio de San Juan de Letran for high school. He then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Santo Tomas.
➤When the hardcore punk band Dead Ends ended their
4 year hiatus, he became the band's lead guitarist in 1994 sharing guitar
chores with the band's leader and founderAl Dimalanta,thus making Dead Ends a
four-piece band. The band then recorded their comeback and final album, the
influential Mamatay sa Ingay (1994); it had a sound different
from their past materials, having more of a crossover-thrash approach. . When Dead
Ends disbanded in 1996(because of Jay Dimalanta's passing). He also became a
member of Al Dimalanta's new band Throw, with his brother Francis playing the
bass. Lourd de Veyra is the nephew of singer/guitaristMike
Hanopol.As literary influences, de
Veyra cites Beat movement writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack
Kerouac.
➤He explains, speaking as a fellow at the 45th UP National Writers Workshop:“What I look for in poetry is an uneasy kind of energy. An energy that is already beyond the configuration of words and then assumes a density that is akin to music. At the heart of it all is jazz. Jazz, the manipulation of breath— the unleashing of breath, the holding of breath, the destruction of breath. The most basic unit of jazz is the swing and the breath. My primary influence is the Beat movement and I think my initial fascination for them was rather hinged on the wrong reasons: the radical visual arrangement of lines on the page, the profanity and the absurdity that struck my mind as a welcome relief from the stultifying archaisms of 17th-century English poetry force-fed on us by high school teachers. Here was, at long last, literature that spoke to me. It was in sympathy with the energy of free jazz and punk rock records that I was listening to at that time. Through the lyrics of punk rock and hardcore records, I had an inkling of how words can be more powerful than a guitar amplifier cranked up all the way to ten. My exposure to the poetry of Ginsberg and Kerouac opened me up to the world of possibilities. And I am obsessed with the idea of ‘possibility’. ‘Possibility’ is what art is all about. It is the constant wrestling with forms, styles, and structures. It is the idea that something better is always out there. It is about discontent. It is about discontent with the safe, the middling, the accepted, and the acceptable.”
