Name: Queso + Wahijuara MotoMashup
Location: Manila
Relationship Status: Single
About Me: The crazy beautiful mashed up sound of Queso Formerly known as Cheese, Queso is a seven-piece band that started playing in 1994. They are considered to be one of the most unpredictable and uncompromising groups to hit the Philippine music scene. Previous writers have described their sound as ‘indescribable’ and ‘not for the weak of heart’. Every time they play a gig, they claim the stage as their own and perform with a passion and energy that is uniquely Queso. Through the years, they have earned the moniker ‘the bad boys of Pinoy rock and roll,’ and their fans have come to be called ‘mousies,’ ‘the rats’ or ‘ang mga daga.’ Their audience, according to Ian Tayao, isn’t simply a fan base, but a family. “We get a great sense of belongingness from being part of such an extended family,” he reveals. Queso is Ian on vocals, 8 Toleran and Enzo Ruidera (guitars), 2ts Calinawan (bass), Robert dela Cruz/ Paolo Manuel (drums), Cj Olaguera (percussions), and Biboy Garcia (turntables). For MOTOMASHUP 2.0, Queso works with Wahijuara to come up with a mashed up track that is hopefully un-rigid and unpredictable. “Mashups provide a forum in which artists with completely different sounds can come together, blur the boundaries, and in some way challenge the need for all those boundaries in the first place,” Ian says. But here he offers a fresh thought and says that just being in a band is the ultimate mashup. “We all have different interpretations, different influences,” he explains. “The magic happens when we compromise and blend with each other, which is how we came up with our sound, which we’d like to think of as a genre-less sound anyway.” Queso has already released three widely acclaimed albums: Cheese (Warner Music Philippines), Pilipinas (Warner Music Philippines) and Queso (independent release). Apart from various awards (from the NU 107 Rock Awards and the Awit Awards), they have also performed at the Pusan Rock Festival in Korea in 2000, released and practically gave away the DVD home video ‘Buhay Queso’ in 2003, and won the local World Battle of the Bands in 2006, which sent them competing for the World title in Hong Kong. Queso has achieved quite a lot, and has managed to create their own brand of a “crazy beautiful mashed up sound” because the band members never allow their differences to segregate them, but rather unite them. “(We) come from different lifestyles, (we have) completely different points of view, but our music is the common denominator; we let our idiosyncrasies and personalities blend,” Ian concludes. Wahijuara offers some sauce for the soul One can't expect anything less than intricate from a band that has saxophone and trumpet players. Wahijuara (pronounced wa-hi-wa-ra) is one such band. Their music is like some ornate fabric you can wrap around yourself, ride and command to fly like a magic carpet, get into or under, run with while letting it trail behind you, twirl between your fingers, step on and jump on repeatedly, smell and caress your face with, and a host of other creatively fun stuff you might want to use it for. In fact, if you have ever caught yourself tapping your feet, nodding your head and really getting into the groove while listening to a live band, that is most certainly what you'd also do when faced with the Wahijuara experience. Junji Lerma is the guy responsible for the breathtaking riffs and jaw-dropping solos. He is also partly in charge of coming up with musical ideas that, he says, he hears in his head. Anthony Morris is the other composer, who also happens to be the band's mighty saxophonist. Francis de Veyra is ever versatile and suave with his bass lines. Percussionist Arwin Nava plays as if the sticks and all those drums are extensions of himself. And Richie Gonzaga on trumpet expertly gives every song the buzz it rightly deserves. Motorola is proud and enthusiastic to include Wahijuara on its roster of Mashup 2.0 artists. Those who know what Wahi music means would rightly understand that a mashup would be right up the band's alley. "When you put different kinds of music together," Junji explains, "that's the way to come up with something new." And that is perhaps why he and the rest of the band of course are very open to the concept. He looks at the Moto Mashup campaign as something from which fresh music could come from. Anthony thinks that mashups are generally good both for the listeners and for the music genres in question. But at the same time, he realistically realizes that mashups could "bring out both the best and worst in two genres." Fans of a certain genre might not think it's a good idea to mash their style up with another type of music. Like jazz and hiphop, for instance. But mashup is just another word. As far as their music is concerned, Wahijuara has been doing mashups for as long as they care to remember. "Being in a band is doing mashups already because every member has his own ideas," Anthony explains. "Even if (some members) are not part of the composition process, they will still be the ones who will interpret (the music)." And it seems that the five can work so seamlessly now that they've been at it since 2001, when they were young music students in UP Diliman. The band's name, by the way, comes from a Cal Tjader and Dizzy Gillespie piece from the 60s called Wachi-Wara, which means soul sauce. Three years after Wahijuara was formed, the band released an independent EP which made their brand of Latin-Jazz/Latin-Funk music accessible to more people. Richie, the trumpet guy, couldn't help being funny: "It's a combination of Jazz and Funk, so we call it Junk; and Funk and Latin, or Flatin." Whether it's Junk or Flatin, what's certain is that Wahijuara has won its share of fans and followers. And they will not be disappointed because according to Junji, the group plans to record again and to release a full-length album with the current lineup. Wahijuara's musical magic comes from different sources. One would be the group's ability to turn a disadvantage into a blessing. Sometimes, in the course of creating music, instrumentation may be lacking in terms of keyboards and percussion. "But that's space for us to walk on, to experiment with," Anthony shares, "I use that characteristic to write the music that we play, to make it effective and make everyone enjoy playing it." Arwin shares another detail, "We like to keep the music open," he says. "We often change the musical arrangement of our songs such that what you hear tonight won't be the same music that you'll hear next time." They are aware of the basic structure but that's not what will always happen. During gigs, they always have to be sensitive as to which direction the piece is going, and play as if the music has a life of its own. "With this band, you can't expect the same thing to happen every night," Richie confirms. "We can suck one night and kick ass the following night, and even we are amazed that we're that way--we are so consistently inconsistent. On our best night, it's really Wow, which is great, we don't get bored. But it's a mystery, because sometimes we practice hard and when we play, it's horrible. Yet sometimes we don't see each other for months and when we get together to play, everything's just perfect. It's one of the best things about playing with Wahi--you just never know what you're going to get." Check out the other Moto Mashup artists
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