Jazz drummer, jazz writer

Richie Quirino is one of those rare persons who can just as easily lay down a jazz groove on the drum skins as he can write a paragraph on the Philippine jazz scene. Quirino the jazz chronicler and researcher happens to be an inside man on the scene, having practically grown up surrounded by the music, and his recently released Mabuhay Jazz (Anvil) on jazz in post-war Philippines is the second installment of a trilogy in the works, after Philippine Jazz Traditions a few years back which won a National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle, a fact mentioned by Krip Yuson in these pages some weeks ago in a tandem review with Ayahuasca Y.’s latest CD.

Now the book appears like something of a website, with multiple levels of interaction and appreciation in which the reader can almost hear the music. Mabuhay Jazz is divided into three sections like a triptych, each of which can stand alone but enhances the others. In fact the best way to read the book is not from front to back, but rather randomly, taking in small bits and pieces from the interviews (section 3), the photo gallery (2) and the essay chockfull of recollections and anecdotes tracing the roots to routes of Philippine jazz after the Pacific War (1).

For starters, those who have even a passing interest in jazz will find much delight in the material here presented in a comprehensive, yet conversational manner. Quirino has never been known to be a working stiff, and his natural predilection for improvisation never makes Mabuhay Jazz boring, and yet the writing is never too postmodern or freeform to intimidate the casual reader.

There may be some familiar names that go beyond the mere mention of nostalgia: Esen Bataclan, aka Princess Aristorenas, was a chanteuse of yesteryear who also happens to be a distant relative; the mother of activist singer Leah Navarro, now we know where those singing genes come from; Lolit Llanto doing vocal chores for the Afterbirth and who we would meet years later at Penguin Cafe, with no less than her husband the jazz aficionado EG Hizon in tow; why, even the sister of comedian Dolphy recalling the days of vaudeville in the grand old opera house.

They are like varied images come to life, not the least disembodied, with Quirino the orchestrator making sure these reminiscings hit the right spot. In this wise the jazz drummer as chronicler relies on his impeccable sense of timing and visual flare, because true enough his jazz obsessions have also netted an hour-long documentary on the music.

But how many jazz bars have come and gone through the years, each of them like an emblem of the times and of time passing? There was Birds of a Feather which seemed then too intimidating even to an adventurous adolescent, then the redoubtable Left Alone Jazz Bar on Mile Long mall in Makati in the early 1990s, which featured endless sound loops of Weather Report and video clips of great kisses in cinema. The ambiance of the place was such that the morning after you weren’t sure that you had gone out drinking or if you had dreamed you had gone out drinking in a bar that played A Remark You Made without respite, the bass lines of Jaco Pastorius chasing the pale pilsen down the creek that surrounded the bar in weird, tangential angles.

Maybe we were just imagining it, but Left Alone may have been the first local bar that hung drinking glasses upside down from the low-beamed ceiling, which we looked at wondering about the laws of gravity while a stone’s throw away the fictionist and sometime boxer Erwin Castillo was launching his first novel at a disco a go-go joint.

Then there was Monk’s Dream along Jupiter Street, that had the best local jazz players and where, as per Richie, the Jazz Society of the Philippines or Jazzphil was born, led by Sandra Lim Viray formerly the vocalist of Batucada, the samba bossa nova band of Bong Peñera that hit its stride in the ’70s.

It must have been in Monk’s Dream where we heard bass player Colby dela Calzada play again many years after we first heard him with Mother Earth in the old DZRJ parking lot concerts, and where too we had interviewed a French sax player in town for the French spring music festival Fete dela Musique.

Johnny Alegre also played some in Monk’s Dream, still with a bit of hair, but always with his guitar runs boisterous and searing, bobbing along with scarf. Before we knew it however the Dream had closed and it was on to the next hangout for us professional aficionados, the Wasabi off the Peninsula Hotel, also in Makati, city of Binay.

At Wasabi with the great Japanese food and beer ordered almost non-stop by the publicist Beng, we made the acquaintance and heard the music of Lynn Sherman, Nyko Maca, the Wdouji or Witch Doctors of Underground Jazz Improvisation, led by guitarist Aya Yuson and drummer Koko Bermejo, and though we never heard them play there we were apprised that the Brass Munkeys also had gigs off Peninsula side.

During the time of the great coup threats and Cabinet resignations as the government seemed to unravel in July 2005, it was at Wasabi where prominent officials of the Makati Business Club hied off to in order to unwind and talk of the day’s latest developments, in fact ponder whether the administration was really about to fall, while Alegre’s Affinity played in the background of the jazz joint co-owned by a Yuchengco, a perfect counterpoint to Rome or Manila’s hypothetical burning.

These and more we are reminded of while perusing through Richie Quirino’s rather rich book of jazz memorabilia and scholarly reflection, which takes a trip to the far side of nostalgia on a steady jazz groove, at the same time teasingly giving peeks at what the future possibly holds in store for the music and its minions. And before we can make any chord changes there’s this flashforward to Penguin where Alegre is again playing, not with the complete Affinity but as a skimmed down nevertheless ethereal trio, with Mar Dizon on drums and dela Calzada on bass, and the band launches into a version of Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life with the deadly Pastorius bass line anchoring the song like an angel of Remedios circle.