The new album Pag-ibig Ko, Vol. 1 by Matthew Muñeses and Riza Printup offers a set of graceful, easygoing and thoroughly beguiling airs which at times call to mind traditional Spanish music or Hawaiian slack-key guitar as Printup’s harp resembles that fingerstyle and its alternating bass patterns. In fact the duo are busy exploring the beauty and versatility of kundiman, a genre of Filipino love songs which are characterised by their flowing rhythms and emotionally heightened intervals.
Stretching out over the sun-kissed Pacific, on what is hopefully the first of several volumes the duo delicately lull the listener in, at one moment sloshing like the waves upon sandy beaches and the next waltzing both rhythmically and figuratively through flower-strewn fields like the one depicted on the album cover, which was designed by the Milwaukee-based musician Jamie Breiwick of B Side Graphics.
The saxophonist Muñeses has released a couple of albums at the head of a quintet, with the second Noli Me Tángere serving as a tribute to the late nineteenth-century Philippine national hero José Rizal, whose writings and execution at the hands of the Spanish colonial government worked to inspire the Philippine Revolution. The harpist Printup has recorded frequently with her husband, the jazz trumpeter Marcus Printup, while also performing alongside a diverse array of musicians including the late saxophonist and flautist Frank Wess, Lady Gaga and Yo-Yo Ma.
‘Pag-ibig Ko’ translates from the Tagalog as ‘mi amor’ or ‘my love’. From the languidly sentimental and flamenco-flecked ‘Dahil sa iyo’ which opens the album, on ‘Kundiman ni Rizal’ the harpist supplies her own springy and squeaky bassline to an almost baroque string solo before the burnished horn of Muñeses returns to round out the piece. And on the achingly tender yet more urbane ‘Minamahal Kita’ a shimmying saxophone cadenza livens up the fading moments of the composition, as the duo sound dreamy and at times even a touch forlorn but never too nostalgic, always savouring in the fleshy fullness of the moment.
From amorous ballads to lilting or rhapsodic instrumentals, many cultures possess a romantic tradition which may be tinged with eroticism or shaded by the sadness of separation or unrequited love. Kundiman on the other hand are a traditional form of serenade in the Philippines while also bearing a patriotic aspect, which Muñeses and Printup as first-generation Filipino Americans conceive not only through a sense of wistfulness and appreciation for their ancestral homeland but also by virtue of real pride in their upbringing and a diasporic community which endures and thrives even in the face of anti-Asian sentiment.
‘Kundiman ni Rizal’ and ‘Canto de María Clara’, both of which Muñeses revisits from his last record, are bound to this concept of patriotism with the latter piece opening anxiously and allowing the duo to really stretch out, as wafting and pensive saxophone lines then Printup’s glistening arpeggios from the mid-point of the composition finally cede to a slacker rubato, the pair embracing in stately though never solemn fashion the slower pace.
Other songs are more winsome and languorous. ‘Maalaala mo kaya’ which ponders ‘Will you remember?’ and ‘Nasaan ka, irog?’ for ‘Where are you, my love?’ are suitably yearning and ardent, with the latter featuring a trawling harp solo and some especially clean lines on the horn. With more of a flutter on the saxophone, the album closer ‘Sampaguita’ is a fitting wind-down, opening with a faint trace of the Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke jazz standard ‘Like Someone in Love’ as Pag-ibig Ko, Vol. 1 proves perfect listening for the summer to come and the enveloping warmth of a late afternoon.
