It was another slow night with only a handful in the audience, but it mattered little either to DT or WDOUJI, both real professionals who went on to do their job, no questions asked.
It was a night I finally met DT’s Herbert Go, having interviewed him once over the phone for an article. He had just come from the CCP where he was conducting a theater workshop.
"My students at the National Arts Center are much better than the CCP workshop participants," Go disclosed to us in Tagalog, beer in hand.
I had only planned to watch WDOUJI, whose set was at around 11 p.m. yet. Since I arrived early, DT’s Rolly Inocencio who was at the gate invited me to watch the Tinio play he directed, which was into the second act, the confrontation between the two sisters in the tambakan (dumpsite).
"You’re not that late yet. Come inside. Anyway, that is the main part of the play," Inocencio said, adding: "And maybe you can just mention it in passing."
It turned out that DT’s production of Isang Buhay sa Tambakan was quite a bonus indeed for one who was just raring to hear a little jazz music.
It had been quite awhile since I last saw a play, and immediately the magic of theater was quick to cast a spell. It felt a little odd, too, that I had stumbled on actors mouthing lines from Tinio, the late National Artist, whom I’d met 19 years ago in Dumaguete, when I was just a teenager tagging along with his dad to the summer workshop. The two writers were the panelists from Manila that year, 1973.
And though this was now Sanctum, it could well have been North Pole in Dumaguete, with Tinio telling my erpats about the nuances of criticism, how a work has to be read through several filters of past works and by which the present one is to be judged. A kind of rose-colored glasses, but not quite.
Here now were the sisters Annie and Millie, played respectively by Teresa Jamias and Mailes Kanapi, in their merry-go-round of reversed fates.
Sometimes you could see in their eyes that they were preparing to say the next line, which on the other hand didn’t harm their acting one bit.
There was a lone tattooed guitarist to accompany musical numbers used to punctuate a particular scene, in the mode of troubadours on stage. The male actors, on the other hand, looked very ordinary, as if DT just plucked them off the street, which made for effective simulation of life in the run-of-the-mill slums.
Particularly outstanding was the actor who played Salud (Bong Antonio), the perfect stabilizer for the potential fireworks whenever Annie and Millie appear on-stage together.
I’m not too sure if there is ultimately a moral in Tinio’s play, or what exactly he was trying to say, but Isang Buhay sa Tambakan could be a prime example of theater verité, and the long-running absurdity of one’s social status being most of the time superficial.
Like it or not, DT proved an excellent advance foil for what was to follow, the two sets of WDOUJI, which waved high the dizzying bebop banner.
Guitarist Aya Yuson pointed out that their music should not be referred to as "Pinoy jazz," if there is such a thing, but just jazz, no more, no less, take it or leave it.
Yuson brandished his guitar like it was a laser sword, or maybe it was a laser sword before he put some strings on it. Drummer Koko Bermejo bobbed and weaved and shuffled on the drums, sometimes the pounding seemed heavy handed, at other times light as a brush stick on the skin canvas.
Bermejo also had a habit of letting out a swoon – I’m not sure if that’s how you call it – but it was similar to the sound the pianist Keith Jarrett makes when delirious on his instrument.
Saxophonist Roland Tomas seemed to be the spokesman for the band as he did most of the talking, or what little of it was necessary to impart to the audience about their CD, "Ground Zero," out in the market. Simon Tan on the upright bass was self-effacing as usual, as expected of any bassist with an ancient looking instrument that laid the foundation for the quick shifting wall of sound that is the band’s trademark.
Comparisons between WDOUJI and Majam, whom we saw in the same venue weeks earlier, were inevitable; the latter being more piano and keyboard-based, while the former’s drums were most of the time up front, the guitar mainly used to color and shade the various nuances of each composition.
An ideal jazz concert would be having the two bands playing back-to-back, to further drive home the point that jazz has no nationality, the ever striving gypsy of musical forms.