The genre metafiction is not really new as a literary form, and perhaps hit its peak in the works of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In our own country, Ruiz Aquino is the foremost practitioner of the art of the creative essay.
Now Pepito Bosch was a fixture of the Malate scene a couple of decades ago, until he died sometime during the ’90s – we forget the exact year, except that suddenly there was a vacuum where there used to be his dragon-like presence and woo-woo-wooing whenever a band was around playing to light up the tender night.
A part of "A Fine Madness" has the narrator, Ruiz Aquino, witnessing Pepito even jamming onstage with a particular band, and this is what he observes: As the session bongo player’s face is in virtual rapture with the flow of things, his hands in fact barely touch the skins of his drums, almost as if he were evoking a Zen-like image of music, or doing one hand clapping one better – look ma, no hands!
During the recent launch of the latest CD of the band Pinikpikan, "Kaamulan," one could well imagine a guy like Pepito Bosch being an integral part of the heavily percussive proceedings. At any rate, another Bosch, Dante (a relation, but I’m not sure what exact degree of consanguinity), is very much part of Pinikpikan, whose prime movers are ex-Spy frontman Sammy Asuncion and the vocalist of a thousand trills and bird sounds, Carol Bello.
Let us leave Ruiz and Pepito for a while, though they could very well come along in a metaphysical sense for a ride down memory lane on Apacible St. in Ermita, and a folkhouse and beer joint called Dreams, managed by theater worker Al Santos in the ’90s.
Long since closed down because of another of those nebulous explanations that art and mammon don’t mix, Dreams was where we first watched Spy play, fresh from their stints abroad. Indeed they were a multinational band, meaning, their three members came from different corners of the world – Asuncion from good old ’Pinas, the Caucasian drummer Fritz "Sticks" Barth from the Western world, and bassist Maurice Cassanove, a prancing lover boy from Madagascar, off the coast of Africa.
With such a minimal, yet diversely influenced cast, it seemed only natural that their main repertoire would be reggae, and Asuncion really did sound like the ghost of Bob Marley that night, no offense meant to Rolly Maligad of Coco Jam, while in the patio the widow of Freddie Salanga, Alice, was telling the fortune of anyone who wanted the often abstract future defined.
Well Cassanove is no longer around, maybe gone back to Africa, but Sticks and Asuncion have continued to stick together in Pinikpikan, with former Razorback bassist Louie Tallan on bass for this band that has cooked up what they call "flip tribal funk."
The music of Pinikpikan, much like the mountain chicken soup dish after which the band is named, has an energizing effect on the listener. After listening to this largely ensemble playing with about half of the members handling percussion instruments, one feels fortified with vitamins and minerals if not the overall psychic good nature to face the world at large, which Pepito Bosch by the way had a natural repository of.
The launch of the CD, held somewhere in Makati in a Yuchengco fortress (the RCBC Plaza auditorium, was it? All this alcohol can trigger amnesia if not premature Alzheimer’s), was very likely a rhythmic event, with the ghost of Pepito Bosch presiding over the proceedings.
Let’s just mention some of the songs on the CD, the third of this particular phase of the group after "Atas" and "Obra Enkantada" (the Diokno Pasilan-led version of the band had Metronomad, the day-old chick Pinikpikan’s initial offering).
There’s the title cut, that traverses the neat path between world beat and indigenous rhythms; the driving, ersatz Marley-like Ayoko Na complete with French verses for slippery effect; the reflective and hopeful Butanding and Idasal Mo; even a transcendental remake of the classic folk song Sarung Banggi.
Evidently, there’s more where that came from, and damned if we can’t decipher the voice of backup vocalist Mishka Adams in the background, a child blessed with her own. And could that be Billy Bonnevie’s shaman bells still ringing in our ears long after the last note and kalitong-kitong of the CD has faded, much like Pepito’s woo-woo-wooing, and fingers barely drumming the table top, look ma, no hands!
A fine madness is what Pinikpikan’s music is, an amalgamation of trance dance, such as the listener risks not being converted under pain of cosmic debt.