bakit di na masyado ginagawa yung 8-beat? It used to be the basic Ateneo trademark.

We usually do it at the start of every game, and when we rally. Lately, napalitan na ng Go Ateneo cheer, which is a great cheer dont get me wrong, pero kasi when I was in College, or even before being an Atenean, the 8 beat was the Ateneo beat


ps
come to think of it, when we stopped using it, the copycat schools also stopped using it, hmmmm

guys! the comp's on sept. 12, 2pm. that's the day after the FEU game. Tix will be sold starting next week at the UAO. Support the Blue Babble Cheerdancers and Lifters! They certainly deserve it

I have a query regarding the Ateneo cheers: When was the choreography used for the cheers first established and by whom?

on the eight-beat: i can't speak for the band, because i really have no idea, but i suspect it got to be too "generic." everyone started doing it, because no one respected it anymore as a signature ateneo drum pattern, the very beat we would play to usher in the team at the start of the game or the cheerleaders at halftime. at one point i even heard the la salle greenhills band perform it, at the first ateneo-la salle alumni badminton tournament two years ago. the ateneans on court at the time (including me and my playing partner) just sort of froze and looked at each other and said whoa. i think the dagger looks we kept throwing at the greenhills band contributed to our losing the match, ha ha. but they just kept drumming away. i think they had no idea they were "borrowing" it; they just thought it was a cool thing to play. since the greenhills band plays in the NCAA i would venture to guess that eight beat is played in that league's games all the time, unbeknownst to us.

on the cheerleaders' choreography: when raul manglapus (author of "blue eagle the king") stepped out on the floor with our cheerleaders during one of the 80s championship runs, he still had some of the moves, creaky knees and all. so we can assume some of the stuff the babble performs is fairly ancient, transferrable across the generations.

i am aware of no videos of the old cheerleaders, but archive pictures of the prewar years show them in classic stances we would recognize today - wagging their fists with the beat, crouching low to the floor while leading a yell, or "framing" the cheerleader in the middle with two arms extended, hands open. the most recognizable babble move - extending the arms sideways to suggest "wings" - also appears in the old photos.

the pictures (and the manglapus halftime show) also seem to suggest that we practiced some form of gentlemanly old white-bread US-college choreography in the prewar years, where the point of the exercise was to enunciate the cheers veeeery clearly and glide and prance around and make it look effortless, sort of like the way people used to dance before they discovered black music, heh heh heh. think of that era as low-impact aerobics. if this inference is correct, then the babble moves probably got more athletic and the cheering got more urgent with time, until you got to the point where the fist-wagging got really vigorous and aggressive, the jumps at the end of the cheer crept higher and higher, and more and more cheerleaders performed mass floor exercises, moscow-olympics style, instead of only the three or four from the old days, when we were a much smaller school, when taking twenty bodies from the crowd would have thinned out the bleachers considerably.

this is just a theory, of course. if anyone knows otherwise, i'd like to hear from you.

The eight beat was really catchy. We used to have fun teaching it to Maryknollers or Assumptionistas during Gals. They would be so impressed how such a simple drumline could be so powerful. But we used to segue from eight beat to another drumline when we felt it was time to change the pace of the cheering.

well maybe that's what happened, ha ha. misterkodaker taught the eight beat to high school girls who went on to attend other UAAP schools, became cheerleaders there and taught it to their drummers. this explains why it's popping up all over the place. meanwhile, the babble is dismayed by all the copycats and stops playing it. mystery solved. :-)

i loved the 8-beat. it was the first number that i heard during my first "live game" way back in HS. i think it's more angas than the go ateneo (w/c is a favorite of mine, btw) and back then, it was so distinctly ateneo. that's the beat we used to sing "ateneo, ateneo, goooooo... go and fight" to when our boys trooped to the floor, right?

the full eight-beat version i remember starts with snares and then these really ominous bass drums entering on the eighth beat.

after the bass drum sequence, there's a transition that goes seven beats and then "fight" on the eighth beat again. BOOM. boom-BOOM. boom boom BOOM BOOM, FIGHT!, although the "fight" is usually silent. note that this part happens to sound exactly like the "go, la salle, go go la salle" cheer done in drums, which is curious, because in la salle circles they document this cheer as being only of 1988-1989 vintage. that's all i'm going to say on this matter :-).

after the three "fights" the band concludes by playing a drums-only "blue eagle spelling."

i've never heard an "ateneo go and fight" variation to eight beat, but the formula does allow for a lot of improvisation and tinkering.

yeah medyo on the decline na ngayon ang 8beat, in fact less people are singing ateneo...go and fight sa 8beat. baka nahihiya na sila to sing. but at least the current BBB is still using it during the start of the halftime show. this is a distinct Ateneo trademark that i hope will not "go out of fashion"

All I'm going to say is that we should have seen it coming back in grade school. The guy responsible after all was cast as Gollum in ACT's "Lord of the Rings".

There was always something about College graduation ceremonies that would irritate me. Whenever it came time to sing the alma mater, quite a lot of graduating seniors would have to refer to a lyric sheet.

You've had (at least) four years (or more if you're a super senior or a super-duper senior ) to memorize the lyrics! What were you doing all along? Studying?

But I really find it inane and stupid that some graduating seniors aren't even familiar with the lyrics. I would understand if it were a some arcane cheer that was recently revived. But that isn't the case.

One of the old-time Babblers (Paredes, I think) once came down to the Covered Courts to teach us to do the cheers the "proper" way. His version of the Fabilioh had him running down the court with one hand on his waist and the other held high simulating a wing. The "Fabilioh" was long drawn out ("Fabilioooooooooh..."). He then stopped and made a sweeping gesture with his out-stretched hand and both hands came in front of him. He pushed his two clenched fists forward and that's only the time the crowd said "Fee." The cheerleader actually controlled the pace of the cheers and he could drag out the "Fabilioooooooh" for as long as he wanted. He then ran in the opposite direction with the same moves for the "Fabilioh Aye." The "Eeneecadeema..." part was done with a two-arm pumping motion. If you have a tape of the 87 championship, you can see Manglapus doing something like this move although since we no longer drag out the "Fabilioh" he looked kind of "lost" in the first part of the cheer.

For the Blue Eagle Spelling -- well, first of all, we were told to call it as "Blue Eagle! Spell it!" instead of our "Blue Eagle, Spelling." Then, we were told that we spelled it too quickly. We were told to take pauses in between the letters. Then, we were told out movements were wrong. It was: (assume familiar wide-legged stance with left hand on waist and with the right free hand: B (point to the crowd) L (point away from the crowd) U (point to crowd) E (point away from crowd) E-A-G-L-E (right hand makes chopping motions on the as it goes down near right waist much like what the Babble does now with the Rhumba Yell) Blue Eagle! (without getting into a crouch, just swing right arm around the body) Blue Eagle! (swing left arm around the body) Blue Eagle the King (jump up).

Re: 8-Beat - Yeah, I heard the La Sallites do this too. Was in the middle of their band during a baseball game and they started OUR 8-Beat. No originality. No originality.

LOL! I can just imagine myself a few more years down the road. I'll show up on campus and teach the cheering band the 'proper' way to play 'X' (or Mr. X, or Mrs. X, or Ms. X) and 'Ateneo Go-go's' (To tinker or not to tinker? That is the question )

here's another peeve of mine on graduation rites -- singing the song for mary with accompaniment. eh kung yun banda pa eh yung camp crame brass quartet -- pangit pakinggan (wonder if they still do that today). there's something about singing that song a capella. it's just more stirring maski sintunado yung mga kumakanta.

camp crame band pa rin ba? para yatang may lifetime contract sila sa ateneo ha ha. i guess you need a band to play "pomp and circumstance" or "aida" for the marching graduates, plus the national anthem. so pagdating sa singing of the school hymn they're just sitting there. i imagine some admin person makes the call every year to get them to play the school hymn as well, para sulit. there is no doubt the song is better unaccompanied.

on the long-drawn-out "fabilioh" old-style version: yeah, i saw that once, can't remember when. it looked strange because of that crouched cheerleader running to the center of the court with one arm extended out to his side. my impression at the time was that i was having some sort a weird flashback to the igorot scene in "apocalypse now," when they were dancing around the carabao prior to hacking it to death.

on the loss to UP: heard their crowd cheered great. any "UP-is-our-worthiest-opponent" arguments yet? :-)

about the long Fabilioh (modern jargon for that version hehe), it was last done when i was in freshman year during the cheer rally. i entered the battalion durin my sophomore year and i've been longing to do it ever since.

we did it that way in several games during the 96 season. from a V formation ... running Fabilioh to an X formation

stumbled on this US election item in the economist :-)


"We, the Yale Cheerleaders for Truth, call upon Yale University President Richard C. Levin to release the Yale Cheerleading Squad archives so that the American people can learn whether Bush's Varsity letter was justly awarded."

cheerleadersfortruth.com

This is THE David Nye. I'm fascinated by all the deceit and hatred you've showered on me--especially in a public forum!

Have you no decency left in your being? The least you could have done was to keep it to yourself, or to discuss your misgivings privately among your new-rich cohorts.

Suffice it to say, I've requested for full disclosure of your true identity and whereabouts, and will proceed with whatever action is necessary to vindicate my good name, and to thoroughly have you punished for your slanderous and libelous statements.

Get ready to fork it out kid!