The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and saxophonist Matthew Muñeses with harpist Riza Printup. Their new album, Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1, will be released 4 April via Irabbagast Records. Links to both artists’ websites can be found at the end of this article.
Matthew Muñeses is pulling double duty: interviewing about his and Printup’s new album, and monitoring his young son as he marauds the playground. “Can you please just slide in a little bit more of a conventional way,” he half-pleads off-camera, “so that you don’t bang your head on the thing?”
There was little conventionality to how the saxophonist and harpist slid into Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1. For one, this was a highly specific undertaking: it grew out of Muñeses’ 2022 album Noli Me Tángere (Latin for ‘Touch Me Not’) which honed in on the songs of 19th century Filipino author José Rizal. In this context, the harp-saxophone duo format is highly unusual.
Yet, this is what makes Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1 bracing and beautiful. The album plumbs the tradition of kundiman, a canon of unabashedly romantic Filipino ballads. Read on for how the collaborators threaded cultural and artistic strands to make it happen.
UK Jazz News: How did you expand the concept behind Noli Me Tángere to the one behind Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1?
Matthew Muñeses: Noli Me Tángere shares a name with a novel Rizal published in 1887. The underlying message or theme of that novel is societal injustices, [so I was] writing all that music, and borrowing some of that music from that standpoint. I was like, How can I get deeper?
I wasn’t necessarily planning on a whole new record of original stuff. But I was listening to a classical guitar record that one of the professors in my undergrad did, and I heard all these other kundiman, all these other folk songs from the Philippines.
Originally, doing [Noli Me Tángere], I was intending to do far less original m usic, but I couldn’t find all of Rizal’s music. I was legitimately trying to do an entire record of everything that Rizal had written, because he wrote a lot of music, believe it or not.
So, I ended up writing more. I wanted to explore that type of music more, and upon hearing all that classical guitar stuff, I was like, I’ve gotta do this with Riza. Classical guitar has its own sonority, and I was like, How do I get that delicate sound, but still be playing? How do I participate in that?
Partnering with Riza on this was going to be the best way to approach that. It was a different way to connect with the culture, so it’s been cool learning these songs and going through that songbook. Talking to my dad, aunties and uncles, they were like, “We sang this all the time! We would sing it in Cebuano!”
It was about trying to figure out what the sound was, and explore what that specific diaspora sounded like.
Riza Printup: Do you want to explain what Cebuano is?
MM: In the Philippines, there are more than 7,000 islands and seven major geologic centers, and each of them has their own main dialect.
Or at least they call them dialects. In the Philippines, some linguists say they’re just different languages, but they’re similar enough that we as Filipinos just call them dialects, because there are a lot of commonalities. Cebuano is technically, based on population, the most spoken, but Tagalog is the main one. Which is why I went with Tagalog for the name of the record, because most of these songs are originally in Tagalog too.
RP: This was really his concept, and I was just happy to jump on board and add whatever I could. I’m a Filipino American; I was born here. But it’s that weird existence where my parents were trying to instill the culture of the Philippines in us, yet we were immersed in American culture. Who are we? has kind of been the thing.
Diving into the kundiman has been beautiful, because this is something that I grew up listening to; my mom would sing these love songs. As a jazz musician and a Filipino, how do we present this music? It was a beautiful process and experience to think through a lot of different layers to get to what we eventually recorded.
UKJN: Riza, which schools and traditions do you come from as a harpist?
RP: I was classically trained as a harpist. But prior to studying harp formally, I always had a love for jazz — the chords, the harmonies, the melodies, the improvisational element. And even though I was trained classically, I would try to implement certain concepts on the harp, trying to emulate what I was hearing on [jazz] albums.
I took jazz courses in college, but when I asked if I could actually pursue it as a minor or a double, I was highly discouraged to do that. The harp studio is very well known for its classical training. So, it’s been an interesting journey for me to start implementing all these different things.
With the kundiman, much of what I play on the piano, I try to play on the harp and see if I can still emulate the chords and get the harmonies and rhythms the same way.
MM: Getting to explore this music with unconventional instrumentation, where we were both responsible for more than we normally would be, encouraged us to be even more sensitive about what we were playing and how we were playing it.
RP: It was just a matter of hearing him and being able to feel the vibe in our rehearsal; not just getting a road map of the tunes, but getting his vibe, and seeing where he likes to take things. Then, just trying to bring what I bring to the table to help support and partner with that.
UKJN: And what do you see when you observe the jazz-harp landscape?
RP: The harp is starting to come out a little bit, with Brandee Younger going out with her trio. She’s got her own thing, of course. [Fellow harpist] Edmar Castañeda is a beast, diving into the music of his culture and the way he’s fusing it with Béla Fleck and all these cats he’s on the road with now.
MM: It’s just exciting to be able to be part of getting Filipino music out there. There’s a beauty to it that is distinct from the cultures that it came from. It’s so heavily influenced by Spain, but it isn’t purely Spanish music.
There are different ways that colonisation has spread something good through bad. Not the best of means, but it produced something beautiful in the spirit it [instilled] in the people. To be able to share that with wider audiences is the real reason we’re doing this.
There’s a lot of beautiful music out there, and I just wanted to make sure that a little bit more was shared.
