Letter to a ruined country

The more I listen to Khavn and the Kontra-Kino Orchestra’s The Woman Who Went Mad, the more it sounds like a love letter to a ruined country, hypothetically our own, what with its sparse instrumentation, vocals straight out of desolation row, and arrangements that have seen better days with Kontra-Gapi.

It’s not just because Khavn dela Cruz’s orchestra mines a melody for all its hidden treasures, including counterpoints and split-second distortions off key, the album also has the predilection if not wherewithal of turning the lights down low and taking the listener back to a time and place that formerly existed only in the imagination: the old cabarets of Sta. Ana and taxi dancers ready to oblige their partners with a sweet number for 25 centavos.

It goes without saying then that the opening cut, Ulol Bulol, may well signal the speechlessness of the musicians in addressing the ruined country, as only seven of the songs here have vocals, or less than half the album, with its peg of after-hours closing time Tom Waits, where to wait on a friend is all that matters.

Khavn, however, puts his lyric gifts to good use, if not cutting-edge irreverent rhetoric, in such poems set to music like Alipato, lamenting the quicksilver life of an ember in likely bonfire or razing, and a reference to a person “na pinaglihi sa triple X.”

The Book of Sand is perhaps a salute to Borges, its child-like chorus evoking nursery rhymes, the piano laying out the basic melody for a lighthearted singalong. A woman’s voice helps hit the high notes, a foreshadowing of the other songs to come also with vocals.

Volcannibalia is a lounge jazz ditty that the female singer wears on her sleeve and delivers to your doorstep, the orchestra again in its minimal element.

The last four songs that wrap up the madness of the faceless woman are the centerpiece of the writer’s experiments, proving that what the album lacks in melody more than makes up for with dogged harmonics, putting music as we know it back to the basics: horns, assorted keyboards, random guitar and not a bass in sight, percussion in seamless interplay and inspiration, however limited in improvisation, or could also be the players are holding back or exercising self-restraint.

Epektos has the earthy voice of an alcoholic on the edge of his vices, or is it delirium tremens coming on, with all the bottles surrounding the singer imparting the dangers of vino kulafu, but that is just one interpretation. The effects of alcoholism and/or addiction are at times part of the territory of the creatives, no matter how hard we try to steer clear of stereotypes.

Parental guidance is suggested for Haring Bigti, where the Lolita Carbon-type vocals has the singer bemoaning the glorification of suicide, as those who hang themselves are eventually turned into indisputable icons of generation next. But this is delivered tongue-in-cheek, because the only way to become king of one’s fate is to flirt with the hangman’s noose, and thereby become king of nothing.

Island Monkeys also needs further guidance for the listener, with its historical references to how the colonizers once referred to inhabitants of these wonderful islands. “You island monkeys are the best/ Filipinos fuck the Filipino way,” the phrasing giving room for double entendre, including a very funny verse by the lady singer remarking that her “amber pubic hair tangles with your salt and pepper moustache.”

Finally, Ruined Heart harks back to a favorite theme of Khavn’s, with the singer biding her lover to take care of her ruined heart in his (lover’s) ruined hands. It could also be part of the soundtrack of Love is a Dog from Hell, which premiered in Berlin some editions ago, a certain Lilith as a female Orpheus forever trying to rescue her male Eurydice from the underworld, giving vent to a toned-down Walpurgis night.

The Woman Who Went Mad could be Kontra-Kino’s dark night of the soul, and Khavn as its maestro reminding us the first step for healing of a ruined country is to acknowledge that it is indeed ruined, wazak is as irreversible wazak, and only the music from the Sta. Ana cabarets and the Clover and Dalisay theaters in ancient, forgotten Sta. Cruz might lead to the difficult road of deliverance.