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“This is devotion,” said poet Nerisa Guevara, as we battled traffic late Friday afternoon, April 17, en route to Whitespace Manila on Pasong Tamo Extension in Makati.
We were on our way to an awards night for independent musicians hosted by Jack Daniels, but for all intents and purposes, it might as well had been an excuse to welcome home a beloved artist we’d thought to have lost indefinitely.
In early April, Cynthia Alexander casually posted on her Facebook page about performing in Manila — and what songs would we want on the setlist please? The comments thread exploded with raised hopes and excited chatter. Her status update was shared several hundred times, quickly becoming viral. Social media went buzzing. Cynthia Alexander, award-winning songwriter and musician, was coming home.
Cynthia had been living in Seattle for almost three years now, and when she left, she also left a gap in all of us, who would make it a point to see her perform in the bar circuit, music festivals, and various scheduled performances. She had built a steady and loyal following as an artist, releasing four critically acclaimed albums in a little over a decade.
For all the connectivity that modern technology has bestowed on humanity, it knows nothing about the relationships and the communing that occur when people gather together to listen and watch an artist perform.Cynthia gig attendees had been quite regular; it was impossible not to know them by face and/or name after a while, as the same people tended to show up. And we all unabashedly put her on a pedestal so she could administer her music to us, cure our ills and ease our minds.
A gig of Cynthia’s is always incredible. She’s a very skilled songwriter and performer, to put it ever so lightly. Apart from technical proficiency and her pursuit of excellence, there is also always that generosity in spirit. She shares her truths in her songs so wholeheartedly that her music becomes a part of you as you go home.
Such connection between song and listener is truly personal; we do tend to attach our own interpretations of each lyric as to a reflection of our particular life events and stages. In some ways, a Cynthia Alexander gig is sacred. It is beauty and honesty and celebration and community; a gathering of kindred souls searching for a safe space for an hour, a moment, an evening.
And so that Friday night, we of gigs past, heeded the call to welcome home our Cynthia. To welcome her in the present day, we carried our personal time capsules with us, and we exchanged stories and anecdotes as we waited for her to arrive.
The gates had opened early, even before 7pm, and word was that she was going onstage at 11pm. “I’m here for Cynthia,” was the excited refrain heard throughout our wait. There was an impatience that marked us faintly, knowing we had to share this space with the younger ones whose turn it was to make their own marks in the music scene.
Eventually, at way past midnight, Cynthia Alexander took the stage. As she positioned herself, and her band took their places, so did her flock. Familiar faces that were lost earlier in the night came closer and closer. These are faces I had not seen in years, and now, they were emerging and moving in to surround the left stage. The gathering of an eager audience had just formed a giant embrace for someone terribly missed. Suddenly, the massive venue had transformed into an intimate setting.
The faces on stage were familiar as well. With her that night were Mlou Matute on keyboards and percussion, Sancho Sanchez on guitar, Rommel dela Cruz on bass, Jonathan Urbano on violin, Zach Lucero on drums, and CJ Wasu on tabla. It could easily had been a night at ’70s Bistro, or at Conspiracy, or Republic of Malate, or at the Verve Room, or 19 East. Mid-set, as natural as any bygone night, Cynthia called on Nerisa Guevara to dance as the band performed ‘Dumaan Ako,’ the song that held the words of the late Maningning Maniclat.
The setlist was a journey through fan favorites, like the upbeat ‘Malaya’ and ‘Motorbykle,’ the stirring ‘Daisy Chain’ and ‘Walk Down the Road,’ and the serene ‘Owner of the Sky.’ Throughout the set, there were shouts of gratitude, exclamations of affection, hoots of admiration, and a lot of singing along. The music swelled and carried the crowd, ebbing and flowing until the solemn ‘Comfort in Your Strangeness’ closed the set.
When Cynthia left the country in 2012, after a series of poignant send-off shows, life moved on. She had packed up and gone to start a new chapter elsewhere, and the rest of us picked up our lives the next day, went to work, carried on with our relationships, got married, got heartbroken, had babies, changed careers, lived, and loved, and learned. The world, by no means, stopped.
But that night, our beloved Cynthia stood a few feet away, guitar in hand, unmistakable voice soaring in song, reminding us of what we had missed all this time.
When the first strains of opener, ‘Om Shanti,’ filled the air, there was a palpable feeling of satisfaction, an appeasement of longing. And as it turns out, that spontaneous embrace was more than just a welcome for a much-missed person; it was for us, the audience. It was a shared homecoming — to past lives and romances, dreams and wishes. Cynthia Alexander had come home, and so had we.
Catch Cynthia Alexander on Friday, April 24. 8:30pm. Teatrino, Promenade, Greenhills Shopping Center, San Juan. Tickets start at PHP500. And then on Saturday, April 25, 8pm, at Conspiracy Garden and Cafe on Visayas Avenue in Quezon City.
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