What What a Girl!

"You must hear her. She’s Nick Joaquin’s favorite singer."

So came text messages that made the rounds of cyberspace of the greater part of our noble and ever loyal city, everything but the Girl Valencia, who grew up in the Kamuning area of the almost as great, noble and loyal Quezon City, was singing at Richmonde Hotel in Mandaluyong on Tuesday nights, Exchange Bar, and would we care to drop by for a look-hear?

A slight detour from our humble, medium-rise digs on Boni Avenue, just when we were not assigned night duty chores, would affirm this particular rendezvous with friends at the hotel beside the all but abandoned old Medical City, mostly drinking buddies and card-carrying members of the Girl Valencia Fan Club, of which the late eminent NJ had been the chairman emeritus. The singer was said to have been "discovered" by one Frank Llaguno, also known as doppelganger de luxe of yours truly more than 10 years down the road, as per another recent convert of the yaya brotherhood, Krip Yuson.

But Frankie was nowhere in sight that night, and neither Nick, now understandably six feet under, or was he? Just about all Girl sang in her second set, according to NJ’s and maybe now Girl’s manager Billy Lacaba, were certified favorites of our dear departed national artist, so that we could barely restrain ourselves from exclaiming, "Hulyo sa Mandaluyong! To remember and to sing, that is Girl Valencia’s vocation."

Girl herself looks slight and wispy, an Ateneo girl who used to call the Scout streets her haunts until her family moved to White Plains, you’d never imagine such a voice would come from the depths of her.

"You broke my heart, dahling. You simply broke my heart."

That’s Billy quoting Nick as saying when he first heard Girl sing Someone to Watch Over Me, easily one of NJ’s favorites, one evening in Manila Hotel in 1996 where Joselito Pascual’s band held fort, such that he had asked her to sing it twice, "with intro." It’s a song that is very Nick and very Girl, though there have been versions by Sting, Linda Ronstadt, et al.

Between sets we get to talk to her, talk about everything and the Girl, how she has been singing professionally for 10 years now, doing the rounds of hotels starting with Conway’s Bar in Shangri-La Makati, shortly after graduating from the Ateneo in the early 1990s, where she had been active in theater and musicals. Even as a kid she has always been drawn to old songs, and remembers the first song she heard on the radio that she wanted to sing: Lea Salonga’s I Am but a Small Voice. She pretended her hairbrush was a microphone, and arched her back a la Pilita Corrales.

"She’s like a girl you knew in high school or college. Whom you perhaps once courted briefly or talked with over the phone for a short while, but were never really able to follow up, because you eventually found out that her boyfriend was... Mikey Arroyo."

Sir Yuson speaking, hitting as usual the nail right on the head, even as Girl (who asks later, how did he get that nickname?) launches into one NJ fave after another, as attested to by Billy: Two for the Road, Stella by Starlight, Shadow of your Smile, Bato sa Buhangin, Sabor Ami, I Will Always Love You, except for this last one from set two, Killing me Softly.

Two for the Road reminds us of Elvira Manahan and her violent death, Stella by Starlight of the movie Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando playing Stanley Kowalski, Shadow of Your Smile of a cat by that name, Shadow, Bato sa Buhangin of Pinox box office hits, Sabor Ami of Latino sunsets and other girls from Ipanema to Scout Rallos, I Will Always Love You of how this is so much better than Whitney Houston’s nearly hysterical mouth wringing version, Killing Me Softly of Roberta Flack and radio in the early to mid-70s, when we held the JS prom at Josephine’s, Cubao.

Now Girl tells us, in between sips of bottled water, that though she has never really sang in front of a full-fledged band before (providing backup on multifaceted keyboards that night is Ferdie Borja) because she is "basically a torch singer," she nevertheless hopes to come out with an album of originals, she being a songwriter herself. In 1993, just out of college, she wrote Yan na Naman, which won the Likhawit Values Songwriting contest and appeared in the pari commemorative album with Girl on vocals. She later also won a unesco peace prize for songwriting for Breaking Barriers, that was included in the Ateneo Boys’ Choir album. And in 1997, a stint at the asean songfest in Thailand.

A phrase or melody at times comes to surface, and this she quickly records into a handy cassette, to later develop into a song. She considers songwriting her day job, along with acting for commercial spots, no wonder her face looks verisimilar.

But her voice is anything but plain. "When you look at her while she sings, she is very pretty. When you don’t look at her, she is still pretty."

The poet Marne Kilates there. But when you look at her while she sings, it is as if she is in a zone, the expression on her face a mixture akin to reverence, devotion, a subtle faith, could this be duende?

The third set, largely a jam, open-mic session with the audience, has Girl taking the stage with more old reliables: Don’t Talk to Strangers, It’s Magic, But Not for Me, and the show-stopper I’ll be Seeing You, this last one Billy described as a liberation song for Filipinos, a wartime song for the Americanos.

More cuentos about Nick. Among his other favorite singers, mostly across the Pacific: Alice Faye, Ethal Mermand, Helen Merril, Ella Fitzgerald. Sometimes he would ask Billy, Saan ba kakanta si Kulasa ngayon? In 1999 it was in Rama Sita in a "minor role" opposite Bimbo Zerrudo, in the mornings she would be vocalizing in or out of the bathroom, on Wednesday nights of late it would be at the Monet Bar at Holiday Inn, Robinsons Galleria, where the repertoire is slightly different, including songs by Tracy Thorn of Everything but the Girl. What she sings depends mostly on the requests, as well how keen the keyboardist is to play it by ear.

But as Tuesday night wears on to the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and more writers and singers troop in to lend an ear or song or two: Pete Lacaba, Celina Cristobal, et al, the October-born Girl would sometimes be applauding heartily for the other performers, at times snapping her fingers in time to the tune, and NJ’s ghost would try to slip her a Ninoy bill, which she alas refuses, dahling, you simply broke his heart.

But for everything but the Girl, Nick might be listening still, and like Bitoy Camacho before her, what else can Girl V do but to remember and to sing in this another monsoon in Manila, greater Manila.