A jazz hideaway in QC side street

You’d never know it was there unless you heard the band playing inside, the club entrance separated only by a black curtain from the street across which a sari-sari store may be selling cigarettes to a young man. Is that where Tago Jazz is? The young man nods and disappears like the smoke in his cigarette.

“Hard to find” may be an under description of Tago Jazz Café, which one Friday in May launched the album “Show Me Your Kung Fu” on the same night painter Benjie Lontoc opened a show of recent works in acrylic and oil pastel, the synergy between art and music perhaps at its finest, the band playing well into the humid night while paintings bled on walls draped by black curtains.

The band is led by Joaquin Reyes, described on a website as an abecedarian guitarist, a term novel enough to suggest he and his fellow musicians can make jazz as simple as A-B-C yet also as complex as x-y-z. Up front alternating on solos is saxophonist Tots Tolentino, his latest incarnation of channelling Coltrane and Shorter, though understandably he has his own demons to contend with dating back to the UP College of Music Conservatory where on any given day a student can be heard rehearsing a passage, an arpeggio or two.

The other soloist is Gabriel Lazaro on trumpet, quite a young dude and most probably a millennial or even Gen Z like Joaquin, essaying his best black sound ever because sayang ang Miles in this intergenerational band, from Boomer to Gen X all down the line. Gabriel has played at Oarhouse Manila in impromptu jams with his own fledgling band of hungry young musicians, while his dad, the actor, hovered proudly nearby.

Completing the six-man setup are the rhythm section of Dave Harder on bass and Rey Vinoya on drums, like in all such outfits, the glue that holds proceedings together, and whose interplay reinforces the notion that live music is better, even Neil Young says bumper stickers should declare it. Not to forget keyboardist Yong Aquino, never an afterthought, smoothing out the rough edges and segues between the generations.

It is only now with the music washing over you like a sudden Agua de Mayo can you appreciate jazz as a running emblem or symbol not given to compromise, reason it was once called devil’s music, only have to listen to “Show Me Your Kung Fu,” CD going for P500 and other merch available at the back, is that the name of the band or the album itself? Maybe both, for all we know, it wouldn’t hurt their cause, in fact, even further it, simple as A-B-C.

Also available via streaming on Spotify, Kung Fu is easily the most significant jazz band since WDOUJI (Witch Doctors of Underground Jazz Improvisation) whose members included Koko Bermejo, Ronald Tomas, Simon Tan and Ayahuasca Yuson, no strangers to getting lost in the music and smoke themselves. As well Humanfolk of Johnny Alegre, Abby Clutario and Cynthia Ayala since resettled in Seattle, incorporating as their name suggests a quality of folk as heard in their Christmas song, you wonder why it hasn’t been played when the season comes around buried under the glut of elevator music. Or Majam for that matter, including Joey Valenciano’s experimentations with the sitar.

The last song the band played that night at Tago was La Nina, which in turn was the opening cut of the album, so maybe full circle was it? What goes around comes around. Playing the album at random mode on Spotify, La Nina is almost always followed by Burr Hole (El Nino), actually a counterpoint to the other, not far-fetched to think that one was written with the other in mind, again a synergy or complementarity working.

Tanawin would do well to push Department of Tourism-favored spots better than any beautiful smiling face of a Cabinet secretary, past, present or future, while Point of No Return parts 1 and 2 are harbingers of hazy weather or fair warning of time signature change in the manner of bebop or Weather Report. One might even name-drop John Scofield and not entirely be out of league, the guitarist who breaks down stuff as complex as x-y-z. Still Cookin’ indeed, and as the song title suggests, a worthy tribute to the masters who played anywhere from Birds of a Feather to Left Alone Jazz bar, though not so much the latter that was more of a bar than gig place but completely rearranged the landscape of Mile Long Island Makati.

So, next time someone asks you, “Is that where Tago Jazz is?” You can either say, “Beats me,” or nod your head, especially if the off-white split-level room with paintings hanging is separated from the street by a black curtain at the station a stone’s throw from Main Avenue in Cubao, very near Mariposa Loop of the butterfly dreams, except that butterflies, alas, have no memories.