What I lament about jazz these days is that it has put on designer threads, hired a stylist, caroused the audience with dead standards, and cured insomniacs in the process. Everyone is doing oldies these days – from Rod Stewart to Michael Bublé (a videoke machine with no soul, a purveyor of loopy spa music). Jazz has become a career move, something for dabblers, a dead-end. What’s the point of singing cobwebbed classics if you don’t put your personal stamp to them – pointless and pathetic.
(The legends knew how to do it: Miles’ My Funny Valentine is different from Chet Baker’s My Funny Valentine. Same song, different sorcery.)
If you told me a couple of years ago that a 21-year-old Filipino-Brit singer-songwriter would dust off international anthems like God Bless The Child and Somewhere Over The Rainbow, add elements of folk and world music (like her idol Sting), and make them her own, I would have given you the expression of someone who has heard free jazz for the first time. What the…?
Unlikely, but undeniably. Mishka Adams has given a new face to old sadnesses. Much has been written about how she got signed by UK-based label Candid Records (the label of jazz hobbit Jamie Collum), how she made sweet music with musicians adept at the language of jazz, and how this young girl has made a career out of reinterpreting (not just rehashing; there is a difference) old songs popularized by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Much has been written, yes. (Even by scribes who wouldn’t know what jazz is even if Thelonious Monk conked them in the head.) Much more will be read.
A digression: The good thing about Mishka is that kids (weaned on hip-hop and crazy Mariah Carey) could start researching on, say, blessed Billie Holiday or Louis Armstrong (who Adams mentions in interviews), and on their own learn to appreciate the sweet brew of horns and voices. And take the A-train ‘round midnight to the heart of Birdland.
Mishka recently held her first major solo concert with Blue Echoes at the Music Museum in Greenhills (also a "farewell" gig since the singer-songwriter will be embarking on a career in the UK – and we wish her well).
She started off with three numbers including When Did You Leave Heaven. What a kick-ass band, I should say. Blue Echoes is composed of guitarist Edgar Avenir, keyboardist Ria Villena-Osorio, saxophonist Mike Guevarra, percussionist Arnold Casinto, drummer Koko Bermejo and bassist Louie Talan. Talan (who plays with Razorback, Spy, Cynthia Alexander, etc.) was extraordinary that night: maintaining the pocket, swinging, and adding tricky fills (even doing a solo on a six-string bass). He also played the upright bass exceptionally well, which is – for inferior bassists like me – the musical equivalent of shadowboxing with King Kong. I also liked how Mike Guevarra went through a coterie of saxes – including the soprano sax (the preferred instrument of Coltrane in My Favorite Things). A caveat, though: I was sitting on the right side of the stage, so the loudest thing I heard all evening was the drummer. This was jazz, man. I wanted to hear the nuances of the guitar and the keyboard comp. Great thing Mishka’s voice cut through everything. God bless that child.
When Mishka and company played God Bless The Child, one was left wondering where this young girl musters the world-weary wisdom to do justice to the Lady Day tune. (To think that Billie was a prostitute and a heroin junkie who lived her songs, and was immortalized by U2 as the "Angel of Harlem.") Props should go to Mishka for sheer bravery.
Entered one of the many gig guests: Sammy Asuncion of Spy (Adams’ co-songwriter in a couple of songs in her debut). Also with Sammy, who was garbed like Carlos Santana, was singer Nyko Maca. They played two new tunes (which will probably be included in Mishka’s second album). First was Brazilian Sky. Well-written tune. Ill-advised move to have two Capoeira practitioners "sparring" in a corner. Nyko sang her Brazilian lines so adeptly. The second was inspired by gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, starting off like an apocalyptic tune in a minor key and then segueing into a perky jazz number.
Then came guitarist Noli Aurillo. Another digression: I first saw Noli in a set with guitar great Jun Lopito at the Republic in Malate. Noli was one of the most awe-inspiring Filipino musicians I’ve ever seen. The guy has spidery fingers; you have to be a gymnast (or a practitioner of black magic) before you can finger his impossible chords.
Noli accompanied Mishka in a melancholy reading of Somewhere Over The Rainbow using mostly harmonics. How difficult was that? Try making your guitar resonate like a glockenspiel. This number was a welcome respite from, in the words of Mishka, "the sheer burst of madness" of the preceding tunes.
The singer called in another guest, Cynthia Alexander. Mishka admitted that Cynthia is one of her idols because of the palpable beauty of her music and lyrics. The three performed the immortal Moon River, which was arranged by Cynthia into a piece that fused jazz with world music. Great exchange of verses between Cynthia and Mishka. Great guitar interplay between Cynthia and Noli. The three proceeded to perform Noa’s ethereal tune called Space (from the "Noa Calling" album) It was an aural riot (courtesy of a dueling voices and guitars). Cynthia and Noli should also be sent to England.
Mishka also played with the UP saxophone quartet called Saxoforo with guest Tots Tolentino. The singer said that when she was 10, the saxophone was the instrument she connected with. They did an all-sax rendition of James Brown’s I Feel Good. The highlight of that segment was Tots’ funky solo – complete with quotes, squawks and "sheets of sound." Another guest was pianist Elhmir Saison, who played with Mishka and Tots on a languid tune (I believe it was Love Came On Stealthy Fingers).
Followed a string quartet (plus Avenir) that accompanied Mishka in That’s All and Stormy Weather. She then performed Mama’s Garden, a tribute to her late grandmother Liwayway who died in the fire that razed the Arellano’s ancestral home. Mishka saw her in a dream and wrote down the song. Good string interlude.
Another original played that evening was War of the Skies, which I believe is Mishka’s best composition. I like the lines, "I’ve been asking questions, looking for directions/But something tells me to listen, as though the wind knows where to go." Hey, a 20-year-old wrote them. Startling. (The stuff I wrote when I was 20 would be scoffed at even by Shakira or Fred Durst.)
Jazz vocalist Mon David was also one of the guests. He sang with Mishka on two numbers: one by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and another by Carmen McRae and Betty Carter (Stolen Moments). Mishka said she took up voice lessons from Mon who lent her the McRae-Carter album containing that track. And oh yeah, Mon scatted.
In an AVP, Mishka talked about the influences in her singing (Ella and Billie) and songwriting (Sting). She said her mom, sculptor and former folksinger Agnes Arellano, taught her how to sing Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game when she was a kid.
Well, according to Joni, seasons go round and round as painted ponies go up and down in the carousel of time. Mishka’s special guest that evening was her mom (together with Deo Arellano on flute and backup vocals). Life, indeed, has an ineffable way of coming full circle.
That, for me, was the highlight of the evening. Agnes taught Mishka the songs she used to sing with her sister Citas (who also died in the fire). One of those songs was the New Christy Minstrels’ Today, which mother and daughter performed in a heartrending manner. The welling up of emotion was quite obvious.
(Appropriately. Jazz, after all, is not just about hitting the right notes, or achieving technical virtuosity. Billie Holiday recorded I’m A Fool To Want You when she was a living wreck with a rough voice – broken down by drugs and doomed relationships. But it was a moving performance, one of Billie’s best.)
You’ll know who I am by the song that I sing… Something tried to climb out from the throats of Mishka and Agnes that night, and it wasn’t a song. It was something else.
That 21-year-old jazz singer is something else.