One Jazzy Night

The queue for taxicab was frustratingly long. The cars opposite Mindanao Avenue were barely moving. And even though the sun already set a couple of hours ago, the aftermath of its roasting heat was still palpable, and actually felt worse on my skin when blended with car fume. Impatient drivers blew horns and tried to overtake the cars before them, at least for a little mile of progress. In line, passengers were waiting patiently for their taxi, some furiously fanning to ease the stickiness of the situation; others relieved themselves by sipping ice cold Zagu black pearls. Few street children and sampaguita vendor were trying to make means for their nightly ends by approaching bystanders aside from the people waiting for their taxi, hoping that somebody would buy their stale forgotten goods. Inside Trinoma Mall were packs of shoppers, window shoppers and merely passersby, taking advantage of the free air condition as they went through direct connection to MRT station, which gave an absolute free ride going back and forth from first to last station. Footsteps seemed endless, mass of people walked to and fro. Some strode with quick steady pace; others sauntered in group and hand in hand like a walking block you need to maneuver around them because you couldn’t simply break them or walk through them. They literally take one step at a time on their own sweet tempo. I was standing among waiting passengers as I heard a bang in the sky. Above my head were bright green, red and gold displays of fireworks like a synchronized spectacle of heaven. They formed a small, sometimes big ball of sparkles. Some were swirling like eddies of fire. Others shoot like rocket before it burst hundreds of twinkling light of gem. I figured it was meant for the celebration of the Philippines’ 112th Independence Day. Yes, absolutely, Metro Manila is free, alive and alight.

My friend and I opted to have a night of Jazz adventure on this very night of freedom. We went to Ten 02 Café in Timog with a piece of paper in our hands bearing the club’s address that my friend got from the internet (a very handy way of knowing most about anything), excitement tight in our chest. Unfortunately, when we reached the place, a stocky looking guy, who I think was the owner told us that Jazz session was scheduled the night before and that Rock Metal band was scheduled to perform on that particular night. Being determined Jazz lover that we are, it didn’t dishearten us. We took another taxi ride, this time we didn’t have to get in line. We crossed Scout Ybardolazza Street and moved on to Greenhills, San Juan. It was actually the stocky looking guy who suggested us to go to this place and look for this jazz cafe. So that’s exactly what we did.

I thought the easiest way to find a place, other than map and GPS, is to ask around. But I guess it was either that Jazz clubs are not very popular in this country or I was just asking the wrong person that we had a tough time finding it. We walked from Greenhills Theater, stopped, asked a guard, walked pass a parking lot to Promenade, went back, stopped and asked again. My feet slightly sore as my friend and I walked opposite Mc Donald’s, then turned toward Greenhills Shopping Center.

“I’m sure we would be able to find the Jazz Club before sunrise, and I hope before my slippers shattered into pieces”, my friend said, yet still in high spirit.

I was still in fits of laughter when he saw a glowing neon blue bulb, skillfully bended in handwriting signature typeface - Boy Katindig Jazz Café.

“I knew I had an eye for Jazz”, he said meaning his eyes we’re trained to find Jazz Clubs.

We, indeed, made it before sunrise and his slippers were intact and in good condition. It was only 8pm when we arrived and the performers were expected to be on stage at 9:30pm. While we have to wait, we decided to hang around outside the café while we chatted endlessly accompanied with some bottles of SanMig lights and complimentary plate of chicharon. The heat eventually died down and breeze started to blow symphony in my ears and play strings with my hairs. Two huge speakers were set outside the café where Jazz medleys can be heard. The two of us sat under the eave; beside us are about five unoccupied tables and seats. Sometimes the Jazz medleys shifted to air supply hits and some silly love songs then shifted back to jazz.

I do not know a lot about Jazz, neither do I play any jazz or non-jazz instrument, but my aural perception of fine music is dependent to my earlier exposure to music and sounds. I grew up listening mostly from 70’s to 80’s songs and remembered that it was Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Ebony and Ivory that I learned first to sing by heart. I didn’t care less whether it was Jazz or non-Jazz. I learned Sinatra’s later on and Ray Charles’ by hanging around with the oldies while they sang the videoke. Then, I was clueless whether these vocalists were crooning Jazz, but I remembered how the melody made me close my eyes and sway my body. “Misty”, for instance, might be a signature song of Johnny Mathis, however, it was the voice of Ella Fitzgerald that made me nostalgic. Sometimes I thought I was born in the wrong era because I was more interested with artists before my mother let me out into this world. Fitzgerald’s scat singing is terrific as it varies from performance to performance of the same piece of One Note Samba. Contemporary Jazz singers emerged. My admiration to Jazz musicians varied just as Jazz itself evolved and encompassed different eras like Swing, Bepop, cool jazz, Latin Jazz, Soul Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Smooth Jazz and many others. However, same magic put me to spell whenever I heard David Benoit thump his fingers on the piano, almost like hearing his entire body move while playing Freedom at Midnight, and I thought it would also be very timely if ever the band would play it that night. I am enthralled (so as my mom) with Michael Buble’s singular voice, a reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles as he did his own rendition of their original songs.

The time finally came when the band congregated on the stage; took their rightful places with their assigned instruments to play. Rhythm filled the small café the moment they stood in front of the audience. It was like they had been ready for us. Perhaps the numerous nights of performance perfected their music and came out almost like their second nature. It was definitely relaxing. It drowned all the noises in the world and I, momentarily, forgotten the quagmire of daily tumult of Metro Manila. The band’s melodic improvisation came out naturally. It seeped even in the tiny holes of my skin going through my brain, exploded in harmony like the fireworks display I had witnessed earlier. They took the melodies from songs of James Taylor’s ‘I Don’t Want to be Lonely Tonight’, Dianne Reeve’s ‘Bridges’, and The Beatles' ‘Fool on the Hill’. Jazz is simply marvelous. It has traveled a long way from early 19th century, and up to now, Jazz still challenged the ears of both Jazz neophytes and experts. And the thing I like most about Jazz is that it is like a good story where you draw different meaning each time you read it. In jazz, the musician provides an “unprogrammed”, almost unpredictable melody, and not each one is repeated on performance, giving the audience the creative freedom of interpretation.

For me, that night was exhilarating. It was a night dedicated to be a source of aural beauty. And like I was told, “beauty is everywhere”. I just have to learn how to find it.

On Translation

Something about Sunlight


Something about sunlight -
Slanting behind trees
Streaming into windows
Glancing on walls
Dappling the peeling paint
Glinting on the steel railings
Gilding the new buildings
Dancing the dust eddies
As if calling out the name
Of everything it touches -
Reminds me
Of some childhood afternoon
When I was alone.


May Kung Ano sa Silahis ng Araw (Tagalog Translation)


May kung ano sa silahis ng araw -
Lumilihis sa likuran ng mga puno
Dumadaloy sa mga bintana
Dumadaplis sa mga dingding
Kinukulayan ang natatalop na pintura
Kumikinang sa mga bakal na barandilya
Ginigintuan ang mga bagong gusali
Umiindak sa mga ipu-ipong alabok
Animo'y pinupukaw ang ngalan
Ng lahat ng kanyang mahawakan -
Sa akin ay nagpapagunita
Ng ilang hapon ng aking kabataan
Noong ako'y nagiisa.


At Mt. Samat War Memorial


Into the bowel of Mt. Samat
my son and I descend,

into the caverned memory
of the war of my fathers:

Their pictures smile at us,
or stare in the distance,

their heavy feet stir
the dust of the Death March.

I muse on the noble causes
for which men go to war,

my son and admires the guns
that defended or killed them.

Sa Bantayog ng Bundok Samat (Tagalog Translation)


Sa kaibuturan ng Bundok Samat
ako at anak ko'y lumusong

sa yungib ng alaala
ng digmaan ng aming mga ama:

Kanilang mga larawan sa amin ay nakangiti
o nakatitig sa di kalayuan,

binubuhay muli ng kanilang mabibigat na hakbang
ang alabok ng Martsa ng Kamatayan.

Napagwari ko ang dakilang motibo
ng kalalakihang nagtungo sa digmaan,

anak ko'y humahanga sa mga armas
na sa kanila'y nagtanggol o kumitil.


Choosing a guinea pig for my Literary Translations project was not that hard. I just picked whose poet’s work is readily available in my personal library. It was actually last term when Dr. Marj Evasco gave us a view on how to read a poem that I first heard of Marne Kilates. His emailed reading of Dr. Evasco’s poem made the first introduction. It was casual and informal. I even mistaken him for a woman (somehow Marne sounds female to me), however his close reading of the poem sparkle to me like a gold with genuine worth of carat. I began to research more about him. I also bought his latest collection of poetry, Mostly in Monsoon Weather and wrote the date on the right corner of the first page - just a little habit of mine.

I decided to choose the required 5 poems as easy as picking flowers. I chose the ones that tickle my imagination, the one that left vivid images on my mind and which I could somehow relate with. “Something about Sunlight” was the first poem in the collection and the first among my choices. The mystic effect of the sunlight also brought me to reminiscence when the world looks bright and beautiful in my young eyes like how the speaker of the poem was reminded of his childhood afternoons.

The poignant and contemporary sound of Kilates’ poetry allures me more to continue on my venture of translation. I picked the rest of the poem relying only with my senses and not with a strict standard or category in my head. “At Mt. Samat War Memorial” for instance, was an experience I shared with the son in the poem. I have visited Mt. Samat and watched the showcased memorabilia. The remnants of war caught my interest and I was impressed by its antiquity and foreignness though I somehow missed its historical essence like the son in the poem, caught in the “what” and not “why” the guns were used during the war.
I translated the poem with faith that Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation would guide me towards its closest meaning. I started rendering word per word and line per line using English–Tagalog Dictionary and the very handy medium of the internet. I laughed at the outcome and felt afraid at the same time that I might have undermined the original language of the poem by translating it wrongly. My attempt to transpose the language to a new tongue distorted the original. However, Kilates himself said, a translator is a traitor precisely because he is, by nature and function, betraying the “secrets” of one language. For instance, both Gujarati and Swahili are Greek to us so we need a translator to betray to us their secrets. He also said that if one language does not grow in the understanding of another language, if it does not reveal its secrets, it will die
As my translation activity started, reality of word flashed on the page. The Tagalog translation is richer in syllables though both languages gave me the same word count. After literal translation, choosing of words was my next task. I had a problem in the word “bowel” in the first line. Literally, it means intestine or inside. When I wrote it in Tagalog, the sense and the sound suffer. I knew I was about to make a great violence to the poem that could possibly lead to destruction. I spent many days on this single line before I settle to a word which I think sounded right. I sought to transport the word(s) to Tagalog by not merely focusing on the equivalent words but also its context.

The same challenge of word equivalence hit me again in line 9 /I muse on the noble causes/ which I believe is the thought of the whole poem. I translated it to /naisip ko ang sanhi/. My bowel churned in disagreement and my heart didn’t leap for the impact I felt in the original. I went back again and again on this line for several days as if coaxing the right words to come.
The next issue I work on was how to make it sound like a poem. Following Barbara Reynolds’ advised in Pleasure Craft, I tried to take care of the sense and let the sound take care of itself.

Neither the poem nor the voice is mine, I wasn’t sure whether my choice of words are the best, either for meaning or sound, but Marne Kilates said that there is one thing the translator is not. The translator is not a critic. His work is to help the author’s intention across the gulf between two languages, transpose it in the familiar habits of the translating language.
However, submission date is ought to come. I knew my last draft is not really the final. After all, translation is never really finished.