In the house of jazz

Anyone who wants to take that long strange trip called Pinoy jazz need only to read through Richie C. Quirino’s Pinoy Jazz Traditions (Anvil 2004), which helps address the dearth in scholarly music journalism in the country. The only other comparable book that comes to mind is Eric Caruncho’s own extended chronicle of the rock scene released some years ago, also by Anvil.

Quirino though has a double whammy going for him: Not only is he a musician, having been drummer of the avant-garde rock band Destiny in the mid-‘70s, he also seems to have a natural historian’s eye, being the son of National Artist for Historical Literature Carlos Quirino.

Just how jazz has evolved on these shores is Quirino’s main concern, from its earliest beginnings courtesy of Federico Elizalde, to mainstays of the mainstream such as Lito Molina and Angel Peña, all the way to the diverse improvisations of Ryan Cayabyab, Tots Tolentino, John Lesaca, wildman Bobby Enriquez and world beat impresario Bob Aves (co-founder of Destiny with Quirino).

While there are rare photographs, poems as well as artworks that are jazzed up fusion-like versions of the aforementioned photos, easily the meat of the matter is the one-on-one interviews by the scholarly drummer with a plethora of local jazz greats, at times by e-mail or otherwise face to face, indeed to flesh out the dynamics of the music form they all revere. Reading through slices of these interviews, one cannot but stumble across nuggets of worldly-wise musician’s wisdom, the better to enlighten the uninformed browser. There’s pianist Romy Posadas exhorting aspiring jazz players to get back to basics, while lamenting that many of today’s oido-trained musicians don’t even know how to construct the 12-bar blues. Or bassist Johnny Gosalvez, saying how true musicians are the most unselfish people one is ever going to meet. Or Aves detailing his evolution from rock to jazz fusion to his present world beat concerns.

It is worth noting that Quirino’s generation of musicians had the means to enroll in elite music schools abroad, such as the Berklee School of Music, while the pioneering one preceding his cut their collective teeth playing anywhere from obscure dives in Sta. Ana to swanky pubs along the former Dewey Blvd. in Pasay which exists now only in the memories of oldtimers hanging on to the last note of song.

As it stands Pinoy Jazz Traditions is a heavily edited version designed for mass consumption, notwithstanding that the music form itself has a certain snob appeal. No matter, Quirino makes these reader-friendly essays and interviews accessible to all without once sounding condescending or pandering to the coarser tastes of the quick-fix hoi polloi.

The book reads like a preliminary volume of a longer-term project, complete with asides and digressions (Tadao Hayashi), candid disclosures (Wildman’s wild wild pride), as well innuendoes and codas (the Executives Band showing how politics and jazz do mix).

Already we get some hints of what a sequel volume should include, among them some personages peering out of random photographs in the accompanying folio. Maybe a definitive interview with faithful jazz guitarist Johnny Alegre and his new band Affinity, now since long removed from Phase Two and Hourglass from the RJ parking lot concert days. If Alegre had chosen to be a punk rocker, he would have been known as Johnny Allergy and the Rash. Either way, the cassette recorder would have difficulty trying to keep up with him.

Maybe some updates on recent acts, like Majam, the defunct Wdouji, and the new generation chanteuses Mishka Adams and Isha Abubakar. These kids are children not of a lesser, rather gentler god.

Of course ages and genres cannot but overlap in some instances, as when ex-Wdouji drummer Koko Bermejo and bassist Simon Tan jam and play session for both Adams and Alegre. Then former Spy, current Pinikpikan frontman Sammy Asuncion and ex-Razorhead and current Pinikpikan bassist Louie Talan suddenly play also for Adams, and what you get is not the Adams family but a very possible music of the collective spheres, call it what you want – Pinoy jazz, fusion, world beat, baroque rococo, tropical gothic, barok y loco in a gadda da vida.

We might also be wondering whatever happened to the old jazz haunt Left Alone Jazz Bar along Mile Long in Makati, a stone’s throw away from Makati Cinema Square, where Weather Report constantly filtered in through the vents and glasses hung upside down from the mirrored ceiling. Or the original Monk’s Dream where Colby dela Calzada reminded us of the power of the bass guitar.

It is plainly astounding how jazz, Pinoy jazz, cuts across different paths to reveal a familiar even recognizable identity and fusing bloodlines: from Annie Brazil, who herself sounds like a title for a musical, to Richard Merk, not to be confused with the legendary Tour de France cyclist.

In Pinoy Jazz Traditions Quirino lays the groundwork for another epic composition, and in his chronicle improvises on the words of bassist Gosalvez: subsuming the "I" to the music, a work of selfless devotion.