Why Mitch Valdes needs no ‘labels’

If Mitch Valdes could have her way, she’d rather be called a humorist than a comedienne.

Not that there’s much difference between the terms. "It’s just that when Don Jaime (Zobel de Ayala) broached the idea, it sounds soooo good!!!!," she exclaimed.

Call her whatever you want. Either way, Mitch definitely needs no labels for her to be remembered. For more than two decades now, she has been spreading her gospel of hilarity and good cheer through her own brand of irreverent humor via her witty one-liners and outrageous spoofs. A regualr crowd-drawer at her solo outings at the Captain’s Bar and her doubly wacky team-up efforts with bosom buddy Nanette Inventor, Mitch now feels the pressing need to reach for the uncommon chord that would resonate sympathetically with the younger generation.

"I guess it’s about time I connected with the bagets crowd," she diffidently admitted. A recent incident compounded her mounting apprehension all the more.

On her way to the presscon for her latest Captain’s Bar concert titled Mitch-Behavin’, she hailed a cab (on her carless day). No sooner had she settled in the backseat when the young cabbie started beaming a recognizing twinkle at her and kept at it until he finally asked, "Di ba kayo yung kasama ni Donya Buding?"

"Oo," she curtly replied, unmindful of the driver’s imminently misconstrued fawning.

"Ahh, sabi ko na nga ba, kayo yung gumagaya kay Imelda, ‘di ba?," the bemused driver proudly retorted.

"Ah, sorry iho, hindi ako yon!!!," she vehemently protested, "Si Tessie Tomas yon!" under her breath , she told herself derisively, " Kailangan yatang lumabas na ako sa TV ulit!!"

And that’s what sets her apart from her peers. While the current crop of comics peddles laughs for a living, Mitch lives to laugh. "I’ve always been leery about stand-up comedy," she explains. "I find it too rigid a term for what I do, which is basically a continuous, observation process."

"If politics figures prominently in my gags and sketches, it’s only because such topics affect our lives on a day-to-day basis, like now. It’s a peculiar Filipino trait, our penchant for laughing at our own quirks."

But don’t get her wrong. It’s not all laughs for Mitch. When she puts on her more serious side, people listen. It’s with the same stern demeanor that she steadfastly steers the reins of the OPM, perhaps the largest contingent of local singers.

The task, after all, is no laughing matter. With such pressing concerns as legal matters, intellectual property rights and oft-neglected issues in the music industry, Mitch realized that a thorough ‘relearning’ process is long overdue.

"We definitely require a paradigm shift in the industry. People have this mistaken notion that music and singing are free. There are no laws protecting the creative works of musicians and other artists. In fact, prior to the enactment of certain intellectual property bills, singers weren’t aware of their rights. That’s what we’re trying to inculcate in everyone now."

Mitch laments the industry’s early days when most of the bigger names were deprived of their rightful share of royalties only because there were no binding agreements. Hopefully, that should be a thing of the past. Despite her noble intentions, however, she sometimes gets misunderstood. "Now, people think we’re being fussy because we’re becoming too finicky about every little detail," she laments.

Once in a while, Mitch breaks free from her more serious pursuits and indulges in what she does best: make people laugh. A recent acting stint found her portraying the role of Regine Velasquez’s manager in the hit movie, Kailangan Ko’y Ikaw.

On Oct. 28, Mitch returns to the Captain’s Bar of the Mandarin Oriental for a special homecoming concert dubbed Mitch-Behavin’ (God Help Us!!!), with the versatile Lorrie Ilustre as her musical director.

Generation Xers who’ve known her as Maya Valdes probably don’t know that Mitch is her real nickname. "I got it from a cowboy character who I loved to imitate as a kid. I’m Cowboy Mitch," she says cockily, putting her hands on her hips, resting them on imaginary holsters while feigning a Western drawl. "Actually, it was Peque Gallaga who suggested that I change my name to Maya during the early ‘70s. He advised me then that movie stars who sported foreign-sounding names didn’t do well," she recalled.

History, as we all know by now, has proven that conjecture wrong.