Sitar man

The stillness in Joey Valenciano’s face belies the intensity with which his fingers pluck the sitar, making it sound, at times, like children laughing, a woman humming a soft and whimsical tune to herself, a brook gurgling as it makes its merry way through rough rock.

Joey’s supple fingers pluck at the heartstrings of those who listen to him.

Seated on the stage floor with his sitar, Joey simply plays what seems right at the moment.

"When I play, I try to hugot (pull out) what there is in there and not be a poser," he says.

Unlike many musicians, Joey did not have an early start in music. Though music is in his blood–he and singer Gary Valenciano are first cousins–Joey had taken up zoology in college at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He switched to music literature because the zoology subjects he was studying just did not catch his interest.

Joey was introduced to the sitar by a woman who played the traditional Indian instrument at the university and, from that moment, he was hooked. Besides the lessons, he read up on the topic and extended his interest to Indian classical music.

In 1979, at the age of 19, he went to India to take up further studies in playing the sitar. Joey says he experienced culture shock when he first set foot on the subcontinent. To his chagrin, upon asking for a hotel, he was directed to a restaurant. "Hotels" in India are dining places.

He took up a diploma course in music at the Delhi University to "get a piece of paper," but also studied the sitar privately under the acting dean of the college, Debu Chaudhury. "I learned more with him," Joey says of his guru.

To him, sitar playing is best learned in a master-disciple relationship: "It doesn’t work well within a university setting, (since teachers ask) why should I teach this student? He’s not my disciple."

He says his college interest in jazz music helped him bridge the gap between Western music, with which he was familiar, and Indian classical music.

"Jazz is improvisatory. So is Indian classical music. Both (disciplines teach you) to make music up as you play. It’s very honest, uncontrived," he says.

For three years, Joey practiced playing the sitar for 10 hours each day. Long after he finished his diploma course and returned to the Philippines, he continued this regimen. He also had a sitar custom-made, a recommendation made by those who teach the sitar which he took to heart.

When Joey approached the craftsman who made his sitar, he was asked to place his hand on a gourd, which was later scooped out and dried to form the body of the instrument. Another dried gourd is attached to the other end of the sitar. This joining of gourds, Joey says, makes the sitar’s sound "whole".

When Joey returned to UP, he discovered that the university had discontinued offering his course. It had changed the syllabus and named the new course "musicology," which teaches a musician to be a researcher as well as an artist.

So demanding a mistress is music, that Joey no longer recalls exactly when he finished his college degree, though he also holds a master’s degree in art studies from UP, and he teaches the course there.

Now 46, Joey has been playing the sitar for 26 years and has collected four sitars as of this interview.

The sitar he uses for performances is engraved with intricate, swirling designs as fluid as his music–designed to draw the eye as much as please the ear. The sitar he uses for practice sessions, though, is simple.

While he plays the drums for local jazz trio Majam, it is the sitar that really holds him in thrall: "Indian music has a much longer tradition. It is much more refined, it is much deeper."

Joey adds that he gets a high each time he plays the sitar because its music "reaches somewhere very deep" and has a spiritual element to it that has also influenced the way he plays jazz.

Joey defines this element as a "pure truth" or "basic goodness" that is different from religion, which he says is "basic goodness interpreted in a more poetic form."

He plays the sitar regularly at the Bollywood Indian fusion cuisine restaurant at the Greenbelt 3 mall in Makati City, interweaving the music of his instrument with the beat of Charanjit Wasu’s tabla, a traditional Indian percussion instrument.

Each of the two sets they play at Bollywood lasts an hour, which Joey says is different from the way Indians enjoy music.

During his stay in India, Joey found that a night’s performance is literally that–the musicians play until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes until dawn. What is surprising is that they enjoy the audience’s rapt attention from start to finish.

Those who take up the sitar usually learn one or two ragas, melodies that Joey compares to one "language," during their lifetime and improvise endlessly on them.

He has learned 20 or so of these languages and is the only Filipino sitar player thus far with this level of expertise.

Joey is set to give lessons in sitar-playing at the Shalimar Yoga and Meditation Center along Mayapis Street in Makati City. It is co-owned by Charanjit and his brother, Punnu Wasu, who says that they will import sitars of various sizes from India for Joey’s students.