(Sixteenth of a series)

Age is a wonderful thing when it happens to people who embrace it as fully as they have lived their lives. Some even laugh about the exigencies of aging, admitting that the attendant forgetfulness has compelled them to keep the good ole’ CV in ship-shape. 

Colby de la Calzada—bassist, composer, arranger, and musical director—says he made a CV because “my memory for that stuff isn’t great.” He adds: “Also, I needed that for some job and work visa applications.” 

Just as well, too, because Colby’s resume provides a breathtaking snapshot of a musical career that spans half a century, one that rolled out after winning the earliest iteration of the pivotal Battle of the Bands (the RC Cola Battle of the Bands in 1975) and continues to this day, largely uninterrupted. At the heart of his life story beats the singular devotion to music and his loved ones—and this chance to clear the spelling of his surname, which has all too often appeared as “dela Calzada.”

“It’s supposed to be ‘de la,’ but when they started digitizing public records and docs, the computers back then automatically put [the words] together,” he says. “I guess they were not programmed to handle Spanish names and the encoders didn’t quite know how to separate them in the forms, so some [older] records have [them] separated and others don’t. The correct [form] is ‘de la.’”

But what really leaps out of Colby’s extensive record is the breadth and depth of his musicianship—from rock and pop, to fusion and jazz, playing for, if not alongside, the biggest names in Original Pilipino Music (OPM) and local and international jazz artists on concert stages at home and abroad. He has also composed and arranged TV and radio jingles, and in 2020, he released his all-original, six-track, self-titled debut album, Colby.

Fine-tuned precision

“I had been preparing my compositions on the side for my album project,” says Colby, who turned 70 this year. “When the pandemic hit and the lockdown afforded so much time at home with my computer, I was able to do a lot of postproduction at home. Most had already recorded in Hit studio. We actually recorded two songs remotely by sending tracks or stems back and forth to whoever had to dub over the internet during lockdown. My daughter Angela helped a lot in getting it produced and published.”

Colby has Colby playing bass on most tracks and some keyboard programming on others. Also featured in the album are Chuck Stevens (guitar), Junjun Regalado and Jorge San Jose (drums), Kiko de Pano (tenor sax), and Dix Lucero (flute). Keyboardist Edsel Gomez and percussionist Bo Razón also play in the track titled “Angela.”

Says Colby: “I’m working on my second album, and I want to put my first [one] on vinyl.”

In an interview elsewhere shortly after Colby came out, Colby had told journalist Tony Maghirang: “Fusion, soul, or acid jazz is a branch of the jazz tree. Since my album is more for posterity than anything else, we wanted to be more artistic than commercial in our approach, but with reverence and attention to the craft.”

But if there’s anything Colby has been doing all these years it’s paying close attention to his craft wherever and whatever he finds himself playing. To be sure, he considers himself fortunate to have played with the best.  

“Anytime you play with people better than you, you always learn things and become better,” he says. “I am blessed to have played with a multitude of awesome, remarkable players—Bobby Enriquez, Boy Katindig, Tony Velarde, and Walter Calinawan in my early years.”

From Bobby, nicknamed “The Wildman” owing to his flamboyant piano playing, Colby learned to “concentrate fully [so] that you could see your notes and fingers in your mind’s eye.” He adds, with a laugh: “This usually happens when your eyes are closed!” 

The legendary Emil Mijares, he says, tolerated his “note-reading illiteracy” by just putting sheet music in front of him until he got the hang of it. Walter, drummer of the Circus Band, taught him the value of “keeping impeccable time.” Tony mentored him on “keeping the form of the song not a bar more or a bar less.” Boy eased him into that funky smooth jazz groove, while jazz drummer Mike Shapiro pulled him into “authentic Brazilian grooves and punch patterns, among others.” 

Says Colby: “I could go on and on. In truth, you learn something from everybody you play with.”

He emphasizes that becoming a professional musician requires versatility. “You have to play all genres,” he says. “I did musicals with the Manila Theatre Guild, and choral with The Ambivalent Crowd with Ryan Cayabyab [our musical director]. That’s why I would join different types of groups. You get more gigs as a versatile musician who reads notes. But any paying gig is good. I had to feed and put six kids through school! The self-improvement you do on your own—that’s called woodshedding.”  

Changing times

Becoming even better requires hunkering down and getting busy with as many playing hours as one can possibly put in. “The 10,000-hour rule of dedicated practice makes perfect sense,” says Colby. And jazz “is a logical choice for the ‘overthinker’ musician who doesn’t enjoy playing the same song dozens of times in the same way.” 

He shares a pro tip: “Learn how to play beyond the diatonic scale, try to sound fresh saying the same things in a new way and, importantly, in your own unique voice.” And then offers a practice example: “Explore new ways to play over a II-V-I progression [the most fundamental and commonplace chord progression in jazz harmony]. Record yourself so you can objectively find your weaknesses and improve on it.”

Colby may now sound very much like the cool music guru, but it’s a state of being that’s partly the result of countless “smokin’ hot” late-night gigs and hectic schedules back in the day. “When I used to play six-days-a-week gigs I would wake up noontime,” he says. “You achieve absolutely nothing during the day because you’re conserving energy and preparing for the evening gig. Then there’s the airport-straight-to-gig situation. When we go on a concert tour with, say, Apo Hiking Society, we stay in so many hotels that we can’t remember our room numbers anymore.”

Of course, this no longer happens much these days, as fatigue and lack of sleep had at some point caught up with him, leading to a minor medical event. “At my present age I wouldn’t have the energy to cope,” he says. “Two gigs in one day—or lagare as we call it—is also exhausting and not possible nowadays because of the traffic.”

But Colby is confident that jazz is in good hands—both from the points of creation and consumption. True, there is a very small market for jazz here. “But at the same time, I’m so encouraged by the new generation of patrons who really listen,” he says. “They’re not just there to drink or celebrate a birthday, but really listen. Moreover, they are not influenced by peer pressure; rather, they’re free to choose what they like whether it be jazz, K-pop or Hip Hop.”

Such freedom is good, says Colby, because therein lies growth: “The past prepared the present. We should deal with whatever is at hand. If the jazz market grows, well and good! If not, we can always carry on just like any underground movement.” He takes a moment to call our attention to the shifts happening all around: “Right now, mostly everything about this ever-changing world surprises me—like all these new abbreviations and acronyms, [and emerging] moral values and political alliances.”

In this gentler season, Colby regularly plays with the Apo, his quartet (with Bond Samson, Dix, and Jorge), his trio (with Henry Katindig or Yong Aquino and Lawrence Nolan); and at concerts, Hotel Okura, Wolfgang, and Tago. He also plays with the worship team at Victory BGC.

“Jazz is an acquired taste for sure,” he says. “And people who listen to it like it for a variety of reasons—the way it makes them feel, the sound, the vibe—and some may even appreciate it intellectually. I had a friend who, no matter how I explained jazz, said that…it was all noise to him because he couldn’t hear a familiar melody.”

“As a player and listener, I appreciate the spontaneity and freedom of the players as they interact as the setting permits,” he goes on. “Then there’s the challenge of being technically proficient on the one hand while being able to emote feelings that only music can, on the other. Some listeners attempt to explain why they like what they’ve heard, but sometimes I’m thinking, where did they get that from? [The whole experience] really is too subjective.”

Despite the challenges, jazz endures, continually evolving within a global community of avid musicians and listeners who ensure its vitality and push its boundaries into exciting new zones.

Colby’s jazz radio app, for one, offers a dozen categories, so he just keeps it playing and lets the playlists catch him by surprise. “A good listener can sense trends and current ideas,” he says. “Jazz is alive and there are nuanced developments in rhythms, arrangements, melody development, and improvised solos that are more current.”

Read more: Portraits in Jazz: Sandra Lim-Viray never says never