Wine, women and song

Last night I went to Conspiracy bar in Quezon City to watch my friend’s pantasya du jour, Lyn Sherman, and was wonderfully surprised by another singer, Ms. Susan Fernandez. My friends and I were drinking in the garden when I heard what I thought was a softly-playing Esther Satterfield CD in the background. Turns out it was Ms. Fernandez and let me say this: you can’t sing “Love Is Stronger Far Than We” unless you have a pure, exceptionally beautiful voice. Anything less and the song would lose its pathos and become just another maudlin love song. Susan Fernandez had it. My friend JL helpfully clued in my ignorant ass (“Sino siya? Bakit di ko siya kilala?”) by explaining that Susan is, in fact, a well-known folk singer who used to be married to political scientist and writer (and “asshole husband”) Alex Magno. He further added: “Nung bata ako crush na crush ko iyan si San-su. Grabe ang ganda niyan nung araw.” (Aside: I was mildly amused by his comment. As the son of newspaperman Jose Burgos he probably did see a lot of these activists and folk artists when he was still a young boy. In fact, “San-su” is probably his father’s name for Susan which lends a touching gravitas to his innocent remark.)

While much of her repertoire leaned towards more popular songs, there was something about her quiet singing and the way she would occasionally preface her numbers with little back stories that gave her performance a certain depth. I suppose it’s the calm certainty of a woman in her middle years. In contrast, Lyn Sherman’s performance relied more on clever arrangements and stylized vocals that betrayed her relative youth and still precarious place in the world. But there’s no doubt that she’s good and can hold her own against even Fernandez though I had a sense that Susan’s performance threw her a bit and left her a little too awestruck. (Later, Mon and I would have a discussion: While I agree that pretty young things are great for sex, it’s really women closer to your age who are more compelling.)

The evening ended as all bangenge evenings should: with a heated argument about jazz, a clumsy reconciliation and unabashed, if drunken, declarations of “I love you” before we all staggered back to whence we came.

Postscript: I love you too, Egay. Your musician’s heart is true. The same holds for your writer’s heart, Charleson.