The songs on the soundtrack &ldquo;Zamboanga: Poverty, War, Music&rdquo; are stories about the people and places Barclay Martin visited during five trips to the Philippines over the last several years.</p><p>The opener is called &ldquo;Raindrops,&rdquo; and it takes place in a remote place called Dumagat. </p><p>&ldquo;We took a two-hour bus ride from a suburb of Manila, dropped off the bus and then did a three-day hike just to reach this place,&rdquo; Martin said. &ldquo;It was only accessible by foot. We had to climb up and over these enormous rocks &mdash; boulders, really. I was slipping all over the place, but the people we were with, who were carrying all our stuff, were springing over these things like gazelles. </p><p>&ldquo;In one spot, we slept in a house where there was a huge fire going, and it was really smoky,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I felt like a slab of short-ends.&rdquo;</p><p>The rest of the three-day stay was much more hospitable, Martin said, and it introduced them to people living with dignity under harsh conditions.</p><p>&ldquo;It was a big deal for these people to get visitors, especially from the West,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So they gave us the full welcome everywhere we went. There was lots of food &mdash; rice and freshwater fish. At one place, they killed a wild pig and cut it open and took out the liver and plopped it into my hands. It was still hot. I was like, &lsquo;Ahhh, thank you?&rsquo;&ensp;&rdquo;</p><p>There was lots of music, too, on these trips for the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging.</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;d sing into the night,&rdquo; Martin said, &ldquo;and then I&rsquo;d crash, and they&rsquo;d ask to borrow my guitar, and they&rsquo;d sing for several more hours, sleep for about 45 minutes, then get up and sing some more.</p><p>&ldquo;So the song &lsquo;Raindrops&rsquo; is about our trip to Dumagat and meeting these people and showing who they are and how the foundation programs can improve the lives of these kids,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>&ldquo;Zamboanga&rdquo; is the soundtrack to the film of the same name, which documents Martin&rsquo;s travels for the CFCA. The group raises money to feed and educate children in undeveloped regions all over the world. A longtime friend who works for the foundation asked Martin to work on the project, in part for his music resume in Kansas City. He has been well-known as a singer-songwriter since the mid-1990s, starting with his work in the band Potato Moon.</p><p>On each visit to the Philippines, Martin and the film company traveled to parts of the country where visitors usually don&rsquo;t go because of rebel insurgency and violence. Once there, they conducted music workshops and recruited children to learn to play indigenous Filipino instruments.</p><p>&ldquo;The story is about the 13 kids who, despite everything else going on in their lives, stuck with the program and learned to play these instruments,&rdquo; he said.</p><p>The film&rsquo;s producers are still cutting the footage from more than 300 hours down to a tight and tidy 80 to 90 minutes. It culminates with scenes from a concert in the wild outside Zamboanga. The concert was held in a swath of jungle that was cleared to make room for the site. Martin recalled the beginning of construction.</p><p>&ldquo;I remember guys pulling cobras out of the ground &mdash; just reaching down with bare hands and pulling them out. When we started, a Catholic priest came to the site and blessed it with holy water. They also performed a live-chicken sacrifice at each of the post holes. It was a pretty exotic scene.&rdquo;