Jones’ Cubao

It’s the first time of Norah Jones in the Philippines, it’s her first time in Cubao. She doesn’t know how much Cubao has changed from the adolescent hangout it was in the 1970s to the ’80s, just as a number of her audience on a Saturday night she played at the historic Araneta Coliseum might not have been aware how much of a departure her music is from that of her old man, Ravi Shankar, Indian sitarist and guru of the late Beatle George Harrison. Or are they all that different?

Jones is more jazz and country, as far away from the Indian cosmic chants as the plains of Texas are from the metropolitan center that Cubao has become of late, dotted with multinational restaurants while struggling to keep its old face from completely fading out.

We can forget anyway the accompanying traffic that caused some of the fans to be late for the show, even as Ms. Jones started her set at 8:30 and promptly whipped through three songs, including one about turning us on, in a way assuring us that she wasn’t going anywhere at least for the next hour or so.

When a tardy lovestruck fan in the bleachers then shouted for Norah to turn him on, she could only nonchalantly say that she already did.

Just as we were turned on years ago by the one-armed bandits in the now defunct Quezon arcade, which rained tokens during one such adventure of teenage beginner’s luck

But it wasn’t beginner’s luck that made Jones dominate the Grammys a couple of years ago with her debut CD, Come Away With Me. A song like Lonestar can be sung by anyone but a greenhorn. In fact if one were looking for an Araneta Center epiphany, then look no further than when she sang that tangential tribute to Texas, and how she’d give anything for it to shine down on her.

The pirates were well behaved that night, hiding somewhere in the sidestreets of Aurora Boulevard and alleys off P. Tuazon, although we ourselves were unaware that the teenager in the house had a Norah Jones CD stashed in her roomful of gewgaws, the disc burned for her by a cousin.

There’s no belaboring that Ms. Jones has a solid, not to mention sound music foundation, as heard in some cover songs rendered by her quietly efficient band that night: Gram Parsons, the late legendary founding member of the Flying Burrito Brothers; Tom Waits of the raspy growl; the Band with the show-stopping Life is a Carnival, even Hoagy Carmichael with The Nearness of You.

This last one she dedicated to the mosquitoes hovering nearby and feasting on her exotic bloodline.

We can’t say enough of the democratic setup in her band, consisting of two guitarists, a bass player, drummer, backup vocalist aside from Jones on piano. Just about everyone writes and contributes songs to the repertoire, each player given a chance to shine and bask in the spotlight. The drummer with contained combustion a la Steve Gadd, the bassist keeping things together in the lower registers, the guitarists alternately effusive on slide guitar or gearing for a hoedown on banjo; the backup voice Oda whom Norah has known since they were 14.

Ms. Jones admitted in the homestretch of the concert that their stay in the Philippines, not necessarily Cubao, was too short, and that they planned to come back for a longer look-see, perhaps of the beaches, not necessarily of Pasay.

The music was over before 10 p.m., but not before the band obliged the mystified crowd with three encore numbers, including the finale about a loser’s Las Vegas, a hoedown if not hootenanny complete with country guitar, the real one in Nevada and not the Sapphic dive in Quiapo, shouting eeeehaow!

Afterwards we were quite at a loss trying to search for the old Cubao, trying to eke out stray memories of familiar landmarks: Rose Canton no longer there, neither the old record store near the departed Fiesta Carnival where we bought Blackgold label and Benny Goodman records.

Bamboo House was now Bamboo City, where perhaps their tokwa was just as crispy good, and where through the glass we espied a female singer performing karaoke style, no sound coming from her lips but she may as well have been singing Norah Jones.