After-Xmas carol
If there’s one thing the world will never lack, it’s the Christmas carol that can play even long after the season. A carol is always welcome, as each person has a personal favorite that plays in the mind’s audio this time of year, and we can only greet with good cheer the holiday tune put together by the band Fuseboxx in collaboration with Noel Cabangon, Junny Lim of Wild grass studio, and the Anima choir that was launched mid-December. Sa Sabsaban (In a Manger) reminds holidaymakers to turn away from the rush, pause and reflect on this inspiring carol that must now be playing anywhere from Spotify to the jeeps with suddenly reduced fares, the airwaves awash with merry jingles.
The manger is an iconic symbol of the season, and is sometimes better known as the Belen, complete with surrounding farm animals and the omnipresent star overhead with rays shining like the aurora borealis. It is enough to warm the heart of orphans. Abby Clutario of Fuseboxx and Humanfolk did the arranging, admittedly verging on the lush, but what is Christmas without its sweeping crescendos amid Spartan settings? Cabangon as usual delivers big time through the obligatory cliché of nip in the air, but such imagery is unavoidable given the yuletide template. It happens only once a year and Sa Sabsaban makes sure we get the drift and so should make most of this time of giving, always better then receiving, as our elders told us.
As we listened earlier to another carol Diwa ng Pasko by Humanfolk, with Clutario singing lead and which you might want to dust off to hear alongside Sa Sabsaban, the songs are like long lost twins who have finally found each other. In the day of the 45 rpm single, the songs would make a pretty pair of a double-barreled hit, indeed as if they were both A-sides. Almost like the Beatles’ Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out, or Rain and Paperback Writer, two sides of the same coin, though the coin be given to Caesar because it is Caesar’s.
Sa Sabsaban was recorded in Wild grass studios along A. Roces Ave., Quezon City, the former Pink Noise and erstwhile office of Midweek magazine, beside what was once a burned-out shell of a building that sold beer and junk food, and where understandably there was hardly any electricity but the gas lamps burned in the heart of the cold, cold night as if it were winter in the tropics.
It was John Lennon of course who sang about Happy Xmas (War is Over), the Beatle shot to death in December 34 years ago, so this is Christmas what have we done? On A. Roces a stone’s throw from Amoranto stadium where way back when there were “Pa-Morningan” concerts held, the great big jam till the wee hours and Pulp slam was not yet a twinkle in the eye of its rock and roll founders. Cooky Chua drank her five-year-old rum backstage before the Color it Red set, while the artist Yeye Calderon lay back on the sloping grass to look at the sky in search of the borealis of his mind, of his muse.
Calderon is part of a group of 10 Filipino artists based in Singapore currently holding a group show by the collective, “Siningapor,” which runs from early December to yearend at Volvo Art Loft on Alexandra Road, but rest assured that the work here is eons away from the much-maligned “art fair art” so in vogue not only in the self-styled art hub but in other crossroads of culture like the Art Basel Miami.
“Siningapor” also features Straits Times mainstay Ludwig Ilio who dourly remarked that though the group may sound like sinigang, it really doesn’t matter as long as there is sour mash at the opening. Sour mash or sinigang, a bakuteh is by any other name still bakuteh, as Singapore has plenty to live up to if it wants to shake off that not entirely unwelcome tag of Asia’s art capital, with accent on the capital as collectors rule the day to the point of almost dictating what artists should create, alas, try looking for that essay on art fair art posted by 13 Artists awardee Kleng de Loyola.
A sining by any other name is still art. In a manger the animals are assured of going to heaven, enlightened theologists will tell you. In the evening and early morning there’s a nip in the air, and we lay back on the wild grass in search of our mind and muse’s borealis, like Yeye vonel till the wee hours.
