Jazz, poetry & antiques

As a teener in the early ’60s, I remember risking life and limb on weekend visits to Gagalangin in Tondo, where an older friend from UP had a "pad." The purpose was to listen to jazz records from the burgeoning collection of Bnn Bautista.

No, not Ben Bautista, the bon mot charmer of a literary artist who’s turned into a regular choice as a judge for short story competitions. The writer Ben still has a bottle of single malt whisky waiting for me and common buddy Pete Lacaba, with whom I have to settle on a date for an evening at Ben’s place in New Manila.

Bnn Bautista of the double "n" is in turn the second son of the legendary educator Fernando Bautista, Sr., also the father of the University of Baguio. Bnn was an architecture student at that fabled Tondo time. Little did our little band of brothers know then that over thirty years later, he would author a significant coffee-table book on Philippine architecture.

Also an Archi senior at the time was Bnn’s enigmatic buddy, Primo Libatique, whose junior Tau Alpha fratmate Eric Villegas in turn got me tagging along on those smoke-filled hours listening to jazz at Bnn’s pad.

Jazz seemed to partner well with sophomoric discussions on existentialism and watered-down variants of somber philosophy. We spouted Kierkegaard and Buber, and when we got hooked on fiction, swooned over the rugged individualism of the architect-character– said to be patterned after Frank Lloyd Wright – of Howard Roarke in Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead.

Ahhh, jazz and the romance of camaraderie.

Bobby Enriquez is gone. The revered Lito Molina still provides sweet, silken memories. Metro Manila needs a jazz haunt, as much as it does a blues bar, although I understand that something like it has just come up at the Julio Nakpil strip in Malate.

In the early ’80s, there was My Place on Shaw Blvd., where the band Xenelasia played with Jaime Fabregas on guitar and vocals, Carlitos Calaguian on the keyboards, and the sexy Pete Canson on the saxophone. Monday nights we empathized as Jaime wailed, "It’s either sadness or euphoria..."

Pete was something else, his sax oozing a curdling clarion call to all loners, even as we recalled Robert de Niro under a lamppost in Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, bleating out his soul on that sexiest of wind instruments. Years later the magic would be revived by that love duet in Miss Saigon that went: "Song, played on a solo saxophone..."

Ahhh, the sax of reverie.

Last year the Fil-Am poet Luis Cabalquinto introed me to the fine poetry of Billy Collins, his fellow New Yorker. Much-praised is Collins, his collections garlanded with back cover blurbs to die for. Such as this one from no less than John Updike: "Billy Collins writes lovely poems – lovely in a way almost nobody’s since Roethke’s are. Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides."

Edward Hirsch pitches in: "Billy Collins is an American original – a metaphysical poet with a funny bone and a sly, questioning intelligence. He is an ironist of the void, and his poems – witty, playful, and beautifully turned – bump up against the deepest human mysteries."

Luis sent a copy of Collins‚ The Apple That Astonished Paris, a 1988 collection. I just had to share the wonderful poetry with my Ateneo class. Recently, a former student who’s a highly promising poet herself lent me Collins‚ fifth collection, The Art of Drowning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).

Stunning poems, of which I loved quite a number. In particular, there are three poems saluting the music of the night. One is titled "The Blues." An excerpt: "...But if you sing it again/ with the help of the band/ which will now lift you to a higher,/ more ardent and beseeching key,// people will not only listen;/ they will shift to the sympathetic/ edges of their chairs,/ moved to such anticipation// by that chord and the delay that follows,/ they will not be able to sleep/ unless you release with one finger/ a scream from the throat of your guitar// and turn your head back to the microphone/ to let them know/ you’re a hard-hearted man/ but that woman’s sure going to make you cry."

From another poem, "Nightclub," comes the following haunting lines: "Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,/ borne beyond midnight,/ that has no desire to go home,/ especially now when everyone in the room/ is watching the large man with the tenor sax/ that hangs from his neck like a golden fish./ He moves forward to the edge of the stage/ and hands the instrument down to me/ and nods that I should play./ So I put the mouthpiece to my lips/ and blow into it with all my living breath./ We are all so foolish,/ my long bebop solo begins by saying,/ so damn foolish/ we have become beautiful without even knowing it."

Ahhh, beautiful poetry.

But the centerpiece I must share in full is this paean to the instrument a midnight child cannot help but be enamored with.

This poem by Billy Collins is titled "The Invention of the Saxophone."

"It was Adolphe Sax, remember,/ not Saxo Grammaticus, who gets the ovation,/ And by the time he had brought all his components/ together – the serpentine shape, the single reed,/ the fit of the fingers,/ the upward tilt of the golden bell – it was already 1842, and one gets the feeling/ that it was also very late at night.// There is something nocturnal about the sound,/ something literally horny, as some may have noticed on that historic date/ when the first odd notes wobbled out of his studio/ into the small, darkened town,// summoning the insomniacs (who were up/ waiting for the invention of jazz) to their windows,/ but leaving the sleepers undisturbed,/ even deepening and warming the waters of their dreams.// For this is not the valved instrument of waking,/ more the smoky voice of longing and loss,/ the porpoise cry of the subconscious./ No one would ever think of blowing reveille/ on a tenor without irony./ The men would only lie in their metal bunks,/ fingers twined behind their heads, afloat on pools of memory and desire.// And when the time has come to rouse the dead,/ you will not see Gabriel clipping an alto/ around his numinous neck.// An angel playing the world’s last song/ on a listening saxophone might be enough/ to lift them back into the light of earth,/ but really no farther.// Once resurrected, they would only lie down/ in the long cemetery grass/ or lean alone against a lugubrious yew/ and let the music do the ascending –/ curling snakes charmed from their baskets–/ while they wait for the shrill trumpet solo,/ that will blow them all to kingdom come."

Collins‚ poetry is itself as numinous as an angel’s neck.

I wish I had read the poem before we threw a homecoming party for another New Yorker, Luis Francia, and our expat poet-returnee from Belgium, Jovino Miroy. That night last month, a couple of jazz musicians played live music for us. And I could have handed them photocopies of Collins‚ poetry that exalted their profession.

One of the guys was Ronald Tomas, who played on both the tenor sax and soprano sax. Last Monday I had occasion to listen to him again. And I thought back on those Tondo weekends of jazz music.

We should get together again, that old teenhood foursome with Bautista, Libatique and Villegas, and on a Monday night assemble at Freedom Bar on Anonas off Aurora Boulevard, where the recently formed jazz quartet with the improbable name of WDOUJI does a weekly gig.

In fact, last Monday Eric Villegas and I did just that. It was a special session too that we enjoyed with his wife Chit, a fellow bibliophile to whom I had to pass on a copy of her favorite writer Clinton Palanca’s new book, The Mad Tea Party: The Pleasures of Taste.

WDOUJI (the Witch Doctors of Underground Jazz Improvisation) launched its first CD, "Ground Zero." And quite a large groupie crowd there was too, cheering the quartet on.

Saxophonist Ronald Tomas and the other fellow who played at that party a fortnight previous, the guitarist slash composer Aya Yuson (yes, a very close if sometimes distant relation), formed WDOUJI some months back together with Simon Tan on upright bass and Koko Bermejo on drums. And now they’ve come up with original compositions for their first CD that’s been independently produced, and distributed through N/A Records.

The media was treated to cocktails and a special set from the new album of ten distinctive cuts: the title number Ground Zero written by Tomas and Bermejo; Dear John, It’s All Good... the Boulevard... Jail, and The Dark Cloud of CDC by Bermejo; A-Modal by Bermejo and Yuson; and the rest – What It Is, For You and You Alone, Blues in a Borrowed Flat, Ron-Ron the Flower Angel Blues, and Tiffany by Aya Yuson. Yep, that’s my son, but he’s no chip off the old block who can’t carry a note, blue or otherwise.

In the crowd were writers Conrad de Quiros with his lovely wife Tita, Pearl Abubakar, and Lourd de Veyra, who’s an outstanding musician himself. (By the by, let me be the first to congratulate Lourd in print for winning a prestigious and highly profitable Writers’ Prize for a poetry collection. A lot of smackeroos are coming his way soon, so I hope he doesn’t forget his promise of batong balato.)

Felt good to be a proud Papa, as the former music reviewer with the byline Wes, Jr. unfurled and waved his bebop flag.

For a penultimate plug, let me quote from the press kit hoo-hah: "WDOUJI plays from the heart. Their repertoire is a mixture of classic jazz standards and intriguing original compositions. Jazz for the 21st century. Jazz for the head, heart and feet."

The CD is available at Music One and at PowerBooks. The band plays Mondays at Freedom Bar, where you might spot another quartet of goateed old folk, and hear them during somnolent breaks discussing Buber and Kierkegaard, or how they’ve outgrown the fiction of Ayn Rand, but are now warming up to the poetry of Billy Collins.

Lastly, another good friend from the memorious 60s, Toto Arellano, has opened a Chinese antiques store on Libis or C-5, right beside the entrance to Corinthian Gardens. Specifically, Arellano’s Antique Collections is located on the ground floor of Corby 1 Bldg. on E. Rodriguez Ave., across the CitiBank Bldg. and the entrance to Eastwood City. Their telephone number is 687-72-20.

Its opening sale features 20 percent discounts. If you believe that the economy will perk up in six months, as a Manila Chinatown delegation optimistically alerted our Madame President at the Palace sometime back, then it’s as good a time as any to pick up distinctive, genuine Orientalia – ranging from a million-plus worth of large marble Buddhas to other authenticated antique pieces such as opium beds, cabinets, life-sized lions and dolphins, brass and copper ornamentalia, and Chinese swords that could have served as models for the weaponry flashed in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The Year of the Horse gallops onwards from Feb. 12, followed soon after by Valentine’s Day. Well, there’s a humongous, old-wood horseman guarding the middle of Arellano’s shop, ready for the picking by someone smitten by the idea of good feng shui for his or her relations with a significant other.

Kung Hei Fat Choi well in advance!