This June and July I have a couple of slots open for 90-minute sessions over Zoom or in person (in Manila); reach out if interested.
Hello from Quezon City. I’ve been back for almost a week now, finally recovering from 2 days of traveling and 5 weeks in Malmö/Lund and Berlin. The most important bit of news I want to share here, for now, is the impending digital release of Galíng, my first collaborative album with Morgan Sully, on Berlin-based label L-KW.
The tracks in the album are live recordings of jams I did last month with Morgan at his home studio as well as public improvised performances in Berlin with our friend, the immensely talented bela. To make the cover, Morgan invited me to hang out with him at the park near the flat he shares with his partner, Taïca. We laid out my blue inabel woven mat and wove a little web of Sundanese beads, little synth cords, and dandelions and flowers.
This is an early draft of the album cover; I requested that Morgan put his name first since it’s thanks to his creative spark and commitment that these traces of sonic conversation make it to a wider audience.
Morgan was taken by my thoughts and ideas about “galíng”, a complex Tagalog word that translates directly as “well-being” and “excellence”, and immediately suggested that we use it for the album title.
Now I am home in the house my father built, back in Quezon City. The aches in my knee and hip joints soften in the damp cool humid air in between rains. Tropical weather at last, back into the rhythms and routines of my family’s schedule. I am holding a couple of Zoom sessions, practicing singing and improvising. Reading and scribbling down notes for old and new projects. I’ve visited close friends in their homes for halo-halo, lunch, coffee. That old easy flow of catching up with totally foreign new stories and incremental updates on long-running sagas. I’m very glad for these two years of (f)unemployment and the many opportunities I’ve had to deepen and savor my favorite relationships. Friends I’ve known for almost 20 or 30 years now. The time together, the nearness of it, all of that has to be chosen and I’m glad I did.
I feel like I’m a few new steps closer to framing the migrant musicians book the way it needs to be framed. I feel too that the sense of what I am saying is clearer. People respond more strongly, and listen more closely. I first thought of the topic and the need to give it form as a book somehow, in late 2010. Thinking about it has taken me this far, it could stand another few months of drafting. This is what I tell myself anyway. We’ve come this far, thus far. No signs of ceasing.
I do not know what is next, necessarily. If all goes well I’ll be moving to a different place to set down new roots. I do know that right now the space is clear for enduring and worthwhile things to come in. I know which teachings to hold fast to. Like the one koan from Suraiya, six years ago in ceremony: don’t channel shit.
When do you channel shit? a new friend asked me.
When I’m trying to impress people, I said, without hesitation.
In Berlin I did three gigs - 1. a collaborative gig with electronic musicians and sound artists Morgan and bela at Morphine Raum, 2. a lecture-performance at a listening session series in an event space owned by a diasporic culture bookstore, and 3. A chant performance in response to an archival sound and an exhibit at a community art space. Here were the audience members who walked from one end of the gallery to another (in an accidental kind of procession) to meet me halfway and follow into the performance space. Some sat on the floor to stay with me as I chanted.
From the start, I’ve held fast to the persistent inquiry about what kinds of spaces are created by and possible for musical sound - that go beyond our stereotypical assumptions? Outside proscenium stages, ticketed shows, and the self-construction of cultural identity held by the listening gaze of another, how can we be with sound? Especially sound that comes from deep inside the body that houses my most immediate subjectivity, originary matter if not “original” material.
What makes you take a selfie?
For me it’s the moment when a thought comes to me and lights up my face from inside. Then I feel like taking a picture to see
what’s going on out there, on my face, exactly?