Satya

Last night, we watched a Berklee Jazz band here in Manila. GP, being from Berklee, knew the band leader/keyboard player and was given complimentary invitations to what should’ve been a 2,000 peso per ticket show.

The band was ok, but there were a couple of major turn-offs on the whole event. One was the crowd were all sponsors. It kinda gave it a whole “pointless” feeling to the show. You want to share your music to the world but all people that ended up watching were “required” to because they actually are the same people that brought you here hehehe.

Another was the vocalist. She practically sucked. Sure she had a high voice, and could carry a pitch, but my god, jazz being jazz (and were still debating whether or not most of the repertoire should be considered as the “jazz” that we should’ve been expecting, as Katz would say, it was simply CityLite 88.3 music, hardly old-school)… especially in the “Berklee” context (as GP explained to me the Jazz culture in the school) she was definitely mediocre. The instrumentalists were good though, so basically if she hadn’t been there, we would’ve probably enjoyed it more.

The thing that really turned us off was the fact that they felt bad and verbally expressed their disappointment to the crowd when they didn’t see people dancing on the dance floor.

They said things like “We’ve been blowing our brains out, its hot here, and we don’t see anyone dancing… are we doing anything wrong?”

I would understand their frustrations as musicians who can’t seem to get the crowd going, but they have to understand that our culture isn’t like that. If they wanted dancing, then they should’ve played in Boracay or something.

Plus the fact that the audience really didn’t appreciate the music for itself. They probably just used the event as an excuse to rub elbows with other hotshots. How can we tell? We were the only group starting the applause whenever a great solo (or line) was done. Of course this could be because our group were actual instrument players – so we appreciated their efforts more as musicians rather than the regular “listener.”

But going back to the issue: they should understand that they shouldn’t expect a reaction from the audience. Let your Music speak for itself. If people respond then good. If not, then either they don’t understand it, or that your music simply wasn’t good enough.

Although our group did react to some musical lines, we still agree that it was more of the latter (they weren’t that good, considering the brand of music they’re supposed to be representing)

GP said that he hated how condescending they were… as if they were somebody, when he sees them in the cafeteria along with the other Berklee students everyday in school. I’d have to agree. Though I respect them on a technical level being able to do what they did as mere students… the fact remains that they are only students. They have no right to expect people to treat them in any special way. They should be glad that they’ve been sponsored in the first place. Wasn’t a trip to the Philippines with free food, lodging, venue, marketing enough reward?

Oh well enough of that, after all they are students so we can’t expect them to be mature, so we’ll let it slide…

Going back to a positive note, its nice to see what a Berklee education can produce. No matter how rough around the edges they seemed to be, there’s no denying that they are still fine products of the school.

It was just tough luck for the vocalist though: she was in the Philippines. Filipinos are like one of the most vocal-critical society one can come across. Even if Filipinos don’t understand the other aspects of the music, when it comes to vocals you better watch out! Because it is probably the only thing that we can be critical about… wether we realize it or not. hehehehe.