17 Ways of Listening to Cynthia

It’s not the first time I’ve heard her, but it could be very well the first time that I am hearing her.

There are 17 ways of listening to Cynthia Alexan-der, not the least in some air-conditioned room (17) with Turquoise Blue playing in one’s head, in the artificially dark afternoon.

Or it could be on a beach (16) in Iho, Davao, and the year is 1988, year of the total solar eclipse, and she is heavy with child, who is to be her firstborn, Gabriela. Some visiting poets come up with an impromptu installation of found objects on the shore, and afterwards retreat to the house of the Ayala patriarch Joe for some beer and durian. It is early in the afternoon, and though she doesn’t sing it as if we are hearing her in our sad windswept heads, full of sand and anticipation for the forthcoming eclipse when day turns to night and back again, in a brief, winged span.

We hear her too possibly in an office room (15) along P. Tuazon, Cubao, through poems she has sent to Jingle magazine for publication. She in fact wins a prize in the magazine’s poetry writing contest, and her picture appears on the inside pages, just a girl really, with a mouth as if ready to break into a grin. Years later, over the phone she would tell me it was her mother, Tita Lacambra, who sent those poems to the magazine. That’s because she doesn’t know if it qualifies as poetry, and leaves it to her mom to decide.

Sometime in the late 1980s into the early 90s, Cynthia would pick up the bass (14) and play the instrument for the band The Hay’p both here and gigs in hotels abroad, such as in Japan and Singapore. In a momentary lapse in memory I ask her if they hadn’t played in Baguio and only later realize that I was confusing Hay’p with the Blank band. Hay’p as far as I could gather was a metal, part glam band, with Noel Mendez on blazing guitars and Cynthia on bass a la Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads. But the Hay’p was no Talking Heads. Cynthia recalls how the artist Tence Ruiz would catch the band’s gigs at a hotel in Singapore.

We could perhaps listen to her at an art exhibit in Conspiracy Garden Cafe along Visayas Avenue, and her painting entitled Sleep the Unwinged One (13). It is a rather small painting, maybe fit for a wall in the study, in oil or acrylic, which a friend of hers purchases during a group show at Conspi. It somehow reminds us of a song from an early album, Insomnia and other Ballads, entitled Comfort in your Strangeness (12), which by her own admission is her most popular song.

She reveals this little known fact during her joint concert with the guitarist Antonio Forcione quartet at the Convenarium in Quezon City (11) early in the not so merry month of May, and as she strums the opening chords to Comfort the crowd breaks into scattered applause, strangers recognizing a kindred tune.

At the Convenarium, which has the feel of a converted church house ready for alleluias or at least some honest to goodness soul music, we notice that her band is heavy on the percussive rhythm section (10), evident in her sidekick Malou Matute’s handling of indigenous percussion, as well the presence of an Indian tabla player and also the exuberant, occasionally heavy handed drumming of the ubiquitous Koko Bermejo, who may have the unusual gift of bilocation.

Because of the chants and stuff we are also reminded of her elder brother Joey Ayala, elder statesman of progressive and ethnic rock and rhythm, in whose old band Bagong Lumad Cynthia also did some time with (9), but why does that sound like a prison sentence? Her being in Bagong Lumad during its so-called twilight years seemed like a natural chord progression, as sure as day follows night and vice versa, and as sure as C is followed by G and then D, because we all know that the first cut is the deepest.

But back to Conspi. We must have heard her sing there too, or haven’t we (8)? For some reason there is always this image of her pointing us to a row of blue lights in the garden, and ourselves pouring a glass of brandy for her, in the still of the dark dark night.

And in the background a Joni Mitchell song is playing A Case of You, how she can drink a case of you and she would still be on her feet, she would still be on her feet.

Obviously Joni Mitchell has been an influence, not only in songwriting but also in vocal style and perhaps phrasing, and with Cynthia picking up and learning the bass she has also adopted the Jaco Pastorius persona, the legendary bassist who played in some of Ms. Mitchell’s best records before he was beaten to death by some bouncers in a nightclub who failed to recognize him. That type of bass we hear in Joni Mitchell CDs, Cynthia tries to approximate in her own recordings (7), though now lately with a touch of Indian spices (6) and other exotica of the far east.

Sometimes we hear her on her CD Rippingyarns (5), like the others also independently produced, and a song there called Motorbyke almost has a Pastorius-like bassline, and as we later put on Comet’s Tail (4) her latest dedicated to her late pop, we can’t help but note how different it is from the former.

In Comet’s Tail there is the heavy use of synthesizers, as compared to the more straight ahead singer-songwriter approach of Rippingyarns; Comet has the poem of long lost poet Lilia Lopez Chua set to music and whose lyrics "I am empty I am full" resonate in the memory, while Ripping has Frost & Glass that could sound best as the waiters are putting up the chairs on tables and getting ready to close shop; Comet because it is dedicated to her late pop has a tendency to become depressing, even as Ripping has a lilting tune like Weather Report that was made into a music video complete with chimes, Chinese style.

"It will be happier, this time," Cynthia now says of the next album she is working on, though she won’t say if the synths will be as prominent. More than likely the Indian influence will be manifest, as Cynthia has more or less regular Thursday gigs at Bollywood (3) at Greenbelt 3, and she was recently at a punjabi summer slam, not to mention her regular tabla player, all of which would make her no stranger at the Sikh temple in Paco.

We recall once catching her on TV after she had just won a major prize at the Metro pop fest (2). She was all ears and smiles wide and giddy as the moon.

Most days would find her working in her home in a neighborhood off Quezon Avenue near Delta Theater, maybe writing some songs or poetry or putting together some bronze copper wiring sculpture, a stone’s throw away from the school of her younger daughter Tala (1), knowing full well that any independent artist selects her own company (0).