Sabado, Pebrero 18, 2017

The anatomy of a Filipino folk-rock singer


By Mortz C. Ortigoza

MAKATI CITY – “Bilib ako sa mga style mo sa piyesa, wala ng kopya-kopya (I lauded you on your series of singing. You did not use a copy in playing your piece),” I told Jun Lahi, a folk rock singer near the seedy Makati Avenue here, after he finished the third of his fourth one hour each gig  for Cuervolito, a 15 tables’ bar.’
CROONER. Folk rock singer Jun Lahi, 49, who could sing hundreds of country and rock songs 
without any guide of a lyric and guitar chord's book. The crooner belts scintillating songs from
 Neil Young, Eagles, America, and others at Cuervolito and CafĂ© Cubana at Makati Avenue in 
Makati City. Photo by Mortz C. Ortigoza

When my 21 years old long haired son Niko and I entered, the bar teemed with European, Japanese and South Korean tourists and their Filipino girl and gay friends they probably picked up from the thoroughfares in Poblacion Makati here, Lahi, who wore the vaunted John Lennon’s style eye glasses, was belting with his electric guitar America’s “I Need You”  (click red words to hear the version), followed by Dan Fogelberg’s Leader of the Band, and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush complemented with a harmonica wielded on the rack attached to his neck just like the Canadian folk singer Young.
“Look Pa, he sings what you sang when Jigger (his older brother) and I were in elementary grades,” my son, a graphic designer of one of the major newspapers in the country, quipped as he gulped the remaining content of his brown bottled San Miguel’s Pale Pilsen while I fished out with my right hand fingers the complimentary fried peanuts given by the waitress.