Noel Cabangon
Noel Cabangon usually needs no more than his soul-stirring voice and a guitar slung over his shoulder to enrapture a crowd.
But this wasn’t your usual Noel Cabangon affair.
It was fitting, given the venue, that the 52-year-old musician kicked off proceedings on the second night of his recent concert, “Traffic Jam,” at the Peta Theater Center, with an amusing little skit: organizers acting all panicky, while big screens displayed a video of Cabangon in a car, stuck in, well, a traffic jam.
When at last Cabangon entered the stage, he was not by his lonesome, but with—at least, by his standards—an army: a live band with a three-piece horn section, two back-up singers, three special guests.
Together, the sound they produced was an infectious mix of jazz, soul and rock, as in the sprightly, brassy renditions of “Usok” and “Yakap sa Dilim.” In “Tinitiis Ko,” he injected grit into his singing, grunting the notes every so often, as he strummed away on his guitar. And in the ballads “Paano” and “Araw Gabi”—soothing and sultry with quiet echoes of bossa nova—Cabangon dialed down the volume, but not the passion.
Cabangon, a folk singer-songwriter and ex-member of the band Buklod, related that he has always dreamed of becoming a jazz singer. For a handful of numbers, he got to be one. Playing without cradling an acoustic guitar, in front of many people, however, was as good as being naked, he said.
And it showed. Most of the time, he seemed unsure about what to do with his arms. But his singing was nonetheless just as fluent in “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” and especially, in “La Vie en Rose,” which had him using his sweet and crumbly falsetto.
In between program segments, he brought out a guest: He invited Aicelle Santos onstage for a duet on “Tadhana”; he channeled his inner crooner once again with Jason Dy in “The Way You Look Tonight”; with Renz Verano, Cabangon had everyone in stitches with riotous banter, before bringing the house down with “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”
He likewise paid tribute to a recently departed fellow artist, Snafu Rigor, by playing a rollicking medley of Cinderella classics that had everyone singing along.
The concert, in some ways, was a departure from what people would expect from the seasoned artist; his set list contained more foreign songs than it typically does; the arrangements, more elaborate. But, as his staples “Tatsulok” and “Kanlungan” showed, Cabangon’s core will always stay the same—a musicianship built on love for humanity, life and dignity.