Noli Aurillo: 'Gitarista'

It takes the death of a comedian for a nation to mourn, it takes a singular guitarist to remind the audience of magic.

What a strange week it has been, just days before Dolphy dies, who do I run into at Bar 1951, the former Penguin in Malate, but the guitarist Noli Aurillo, whose shadow I hadn’t seen in years.

Must have been a decade since I first met Aurillo, at the ’70s Bistro along Anonas for the interview with the reconstituted folk rock group Asin, an assignment for Pulp magazine. The band’s remaining core of Lolit Carbon and Pendong Aban had assembled a new review of musicians, among whom were the guitarists Aurillo and Lito Crisostomo, studies in contrast not just in looks but also in chords, one long haired and lyrical, the other bald with a touch of metal. In the comeback album is a song titled Aves de Rapina, birds of prey. Around the table the musicians and others are gathered over beer and pulutan and the subtle twilight, the band manager someone named Ana who’d one day write a script about the rock and roll life.

Cut to: a music theater or auditorium somewhere in Quezon City, where visiting foreign guitarist Antonio Forcione is holding a concert. Among the surprise guests is Aurillo, and during the middle of the show he is called up on stage with Cynthia Ayala Alexander, and the three of them do an unforgettable rendition of Moon River. Three guitarists are better than one if you want to jazz things up a bit. But not only was that particular Moon River jazz, it also seemed to give the listener the power to levitate.

Then it’s Katipunan Avenue Magnet, the painter Rock Drilon’s place, where Aurillo is performing some magic card tricks to some friends and kibitzers in the patio. It is just after his set, and as usual he is full of good humor.

In ’70s Bistro again during one reggae night, and in a corner upon seeing an old face Aurillo does a splendid imitation of a person staring at his navel.

In 2012 on Adriatico Street the night of the Forcione concert crops up in the conversation, on the second floor of 1951 surrounded by new works of Dante Perez and Mitch Garcia, multimedia frames and art matchboxes.

Cynthia had called a day or two before the concert asking if he’d like to watch, then again not only watch but perhaps also play. Aside from Moon River, the trio essays a take from the McLaughlin-DiMeola-De Lucia sessions, layers of guitars and chords building temples in the air.

“My first love was magic, then drawing, and music just comes in third,” the guitarist says with a glass of light beer in hand, waiting for a bebop band to finish before his own set.

Noli makes a fine distinction between being serious and playing with sincerity.

“Those guys were serious,” he says, when I mention that like him, the late guitarist and original Asin member Saro Banares wrote poems, stories, plays, even occasionally joined the Palanca contest.

Aurillo says his manuscripts, at least the bulk of them, are in his hometown of Tacloban.

He gives a sample of a rhyme variation:

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water,

Jill came down on Jack

Who soon came after,

And they washed themselves

With a pail of water.

Well, before long someone volunteers that he should put together all the stuff in a book, which Aurillo says should be highly visual, a kind of scrapbook of artistic and detrimental philosophies.

He also recounts an anecdote about Picasso, whom a stunning woman had asked to do a portrait of her, and when she saw the finished product of a long curving line, she asked the artist what gives?

“Picasso said that that was his impression of her, and that he had spent a lifetime learning how to draw.”

At one point he regales the small congregation at the table with a Zen-like verse about a waiting game with a lizard, and how the lizard knows that you know it is waiting. 

Soon enough the guitarist is down on the ground floor for his solo set, but not really alone because the guitar and the music make him somewhat less lonesome.

The music in the pub has an ethereal quality, the notes round and ringing, with just the right mix of muffled reverb. It is as if he is drawing, or performing magic card tricks.

Cut to: a rainy Tuesday in Makati, the night of the King of Comedy’s death, and at an art opening on Guijo Street Aurillo is slated to play (with drummer Jayman Alviar and bassist Igan D’Bayan). Just days before he said that he might go gothic.

In the crowd is Sinosikat? vocalist Kat Agarrado, Jack Daniels going around. Aurillo at one table, and he calls out in recognition, or is it precognition, at a familiar looking friend not too gothic.

Of the numerous clips about Dolphy that have flooded the TV stations lately, a standout is one of an ensemble dance number, a rhythm in step with vaudeville, never missing a beat.

Of the many memories of dueling guitars, there’s a special place for the showdown between Aurillo and Jun Lopito, son of another beloved comedian.

For what will happen to a nation that has forgotten to laugh? That might not be a nation at all.

And when a guitarist picks up the instrument, there’s magic. And when there’s magic, there’s laughter again. And if laughter is possible when we thought comedy had died, isn’t it a great gift to be able to listen again, to be able to see the muse in a curved line, and make the lizard wait until the next twilight time?