Kiss the Bride, Ruby Ibarra and the Long Arc of OPM

By Joey Salgado

I recently came across two albums on vinyl that show how far the arc of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) has travelled, and why it remains vibrant and evolving, piercing genres and barriers.

KTB
Kiss the Bride

On their first vinyl release on Backspacer Records, the long-running jazz collective Kiss the Bride builds on the previously recorded tracks of the late percussionist Uly Avante to offer a reimagining of their previously recorded works.

Exploration would be a more precise description of the album, simply titled “KTB,” as the band travels the endless improvisational roads one can bring a musical composition. If the playing sounds effortless, credit decades of woodshedding, gigs, and recordings by the individual members. Avante and guitarist Joey Puyat, for example, were former bandmates in Mother Earth, Phase Two, and Hourglass. These bands from the early 70s pushed the boundaries of Pinoy Rock beyond the arena-rock wet dreams of pimpled adolescents.

As a jazz band, Kiss the Bride has been performing and recording for 16 years, with keyboardist Tony Razon, Cecile Rodgers, and Puyat as its core members.

Kids, this is not your tito’s idea of jazz fusion, not the typical playlist from those ubiquitous 90s-era jazz bars that reek of air freshener, cigaret smoke, sizzling squid, and spilled beer (In one of these bars, a friend once drunkenly remarked, after requesting the DJ to play David Benoit for the nth time, “It’s not jazz if it’s not Benoit!” I was too smashed to flip him the bird).

With Avante providing the rhythmic foundation, KTB treats the listener to an outstanding display of musicianship and improvisational chops, from latin-tinged workouts conjuring sweaty Caribbean beach nights, funky hard bop, to mid-tempo ballads. Puyat’s bluesy angular fretwork on “Freddy-Come-Knockin’” will simply blow you away.

Avante died in 2017, and “KTB” is both a tribute and celebration. Throughout the album, he is a living, dynamic presence, the reworked compositions serving as heartfelt reminders of the void he leaves behind.

Ruby Ibarra
Circa91

Hip-hop artist Ruby Ibarra’s groundbreaking performance of “Bakunawa” on the NPR Tiny Desk Concert builds on the narrative themes introduced in her 2017 debut album, “Circa91.” The album has been long out of print on vinyl, which is a shame. You can listen to the album on You Tube and Spotify, but the sonic experience is not the same. That’s the vinyl nerd talking.

“Circa91” is a confident debut album from an authentic voice. Ibarra drops rhymes in English, Filipino, and Waray, and the tracks, featuring several Fil-Am hiphop and R&B artists, are insistent and cohesive thematically, a concept album that is both autobiography and manifesto. It’s an unsparing, sometimes heart-rending urban chronicle of one family chasing the American Dream, an uncertain journey of promises and disappointments, and Ibarra’s own search for community and identity.

Distance from the homeland, however, does not mean dissociation, especially from the issues of the day. Ibarra takes on extra-judicial killings and corruption during the Duterte regime with focus and ferocity. Here, Ibarra is of two faces and one torn heart, trying to belong in a country that pushes her back and being pulled by events in the country she left behind.