This is another of my off-topic ramblings. Please ignore if you don't like reading. (I'm on the verge of asking Rob to stake me to my own piece of turf on this board - maybe calling it "Bruckman's Booth" for various reasons - where I can write these philosophical meanderings).
No, the title of this thread is not a pun. Nor is it a pun on thread, for that matter. "Manila String Circle" is not a type of twine or rope, though there is such a thing as manila rope (or hawser - a hemp product, it's commonly used to tie up ships). The Manila String Circle was a band. How many were in this band is difficult to state. From listening to one of their pieces, I can state with good certainty five, perhaps more.
I came across this band the other day when I checked out a CD from the library. Since Pils' Picks is in hiatus, I chose a CD called "Classic Ragtime" and on it, about 2/3 of the way through, is a tune called "Bigay Na Pagibig" performed by the Manila String Circle. Don't ask me what "Bigay Na Pagibig" means. It's isn't pig latin and my Tagalog is, well, next to nonexistent. I'd like to think it has some cheerful connotation.
This is a ragtimey composition for at least 2 banjos, a bass fiddle, a violin, and perhaps a cello. So it's fair to call the Manila String Circle a quintet. It may be larger; there may be more than 2 banjos; I can pick out one carrying the melody and another keeping time by accompanying the bass player. The sound quality is somewhat informal, a "garage" sound that suits the cheerfully melancholy twang of the music. Is there a sitar in there? Maybe. The players tend to run a bit to the shrill edge of the octaves. They aren't in perfect synch all the time either, yet the complexity of ragtiome tells me they weren't amateurs and had to possess some form of compositional training, at least whatever was available to Flilipinos of that era. Was classical training available to young Filipinos? Whatever they paid for their instruments would've amounted to a lot and represented considerable personal sacrifice. Even then, their instruments were likely American-made, and probably secondhand.
The liner notes give very little information on this group. Obviously, they're from the Philippines, but none of the members are listed by name; hence my mystification at just how large a group this is. The recording of this tune took place in Honolulu in 1933.
The tune itself is catchy, one of those which, by its very theme-and-variation type lodges in your head. It's an upbeat tune with, yet, just a touch of melancholy in its sound. I'm not a musicologist and cannot offer explanation for the melancholy tone which infuses its sound. It's ragtimey jazz with a slightly Oriental - dissonant sound. One can picture this group playing in a Manila nightclub catering to American sailors. Maybe at times they played Schubert, say, at a tea dance held by the wives of American officers. I can't quite envision MacArthur doing the turkey trot to "Bigay Na Pagibig" but somehow, the sound of this ensemble calls to mind Eastern formality leavened by American insouciance. I can picture them playing on the Manila docks to serenade passengers on one of the big American passenger liners of the interwar years - gloved ladies in broad-brimmed millinery, tourists taking snapshots, boys diving for coins thrown by bored busniessmen (keep in mind that liners were the only way across the Pacific in 1933; any liner would've had a fifty-fifty mix of business and pleasure comprising its passenger list, especially the faster vessels). Or maybe they're playing outside on a lawn at Subic Bay in the shadows cast by windblown coconut palm fronds, playing for American officers in their tropical whites while the officers' wives sip lemonade.
But it's amazing what you can reconstruct of the past from what you do know. Apparently, in 1933, the Manila String Circle was offered a contract to record some of their tunes. They would've traveled by liner from Manila to Honolulu. Honolulu may not have jad state of the art recording facilities, but apparently they were better than anything in the Philippines. The Circle probably didn't have much money. If they had, they would've gone to the States. Very likely, they were not sailing on one of the big white Matson liners. They probably went second class on the Dollar Line. Maybe they entertained people during the trip by performing on the promenade deck. They made five recordings that were documented. Perhaps they made others in the Philippines but we don't know. Seventy years and a bloody invasion has erased all the other signs of these performers' existence. So they sail back to Manila, hopefully a few dollars richer for their recordings. It's hot, the days are languid. They're Filipinos and in 1933 a Filipino was not the equal of a white man, at least not on board class-restricted liners. Possibly they enjoyed their little voyage; maybe they hoped for better things, a contract which might take them to California, radio, movies.
And then what happens? What became of these men? I don't even know how many there were, and this frustrates my sympathy more than any other lacunae in this story. What became of them when the Japanese invaded? Did the bass player hide his fiddle under his bed? Did the banjo player take up guerrilla warfare? Were they marched to Mindanao at the points of bayonets? I don't know. I can't tell you. They disbanded. That seems certain.There's no place for cheerful ragtime in war. Was someone humming "Bigay Na Pagibig" on the Bataan death march? I hope so. Because what hope resides in humanity rests on such absurdities. It's the one thing which ties us to a receding past. A seventy year old recording is like a mote of dust caught in a beam of light: you see it only when it crosses that light shaft, you catch only fragments, and almost by chance. We're here in the present and much as I'd like to know who (or why) recorded "Bigay Na Pagibig" and what kind of musical training they'd acquired, and why Filipinos would enjoy ragtime, the liner is sailing, and the water between the ship and the dock is increasing all the time, and I can't see their faces: all I can make out is the strains of this plunking, minor-keyed bit of jazz drifting across the margin.
