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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
From coffee to cocktails
There’s a new kind of jive brewing at East,West Ayala, and we’re not talking about something in a cup. Angelo Kangleon meets DJ Coke,
whose repertoire is definitely something you can’t bottle either. Grace Jones, anyone?
It’s 9 p.m. of the fifth installment of East,West Thursday Nights, and Franco “Coke” Monsod II is neither early nor late—he’s right on time.
Immediately, he eases into the dim corner where they have set up camp for him, and then unloads his weapons. Karunesh’s “Returning to Now” oozing from the speakers is cue that it’s official: cocktail hour has arrived. For something that is multi-textured—subdued shrills of what could’ve been a zither, a sarod, or a sitar (or all three together), coupled with the clang of wind chimes, the whisper of exotic flutes, and half-murmured vocals—it is very foolproof, light, almost spiritual.
Hard to believe that this music was dished out by someone who looks more rock star than Deepak Chopra, and whose adopted moniker is more pop than Sanskrit, but then whoever said that tonight wasn’t going to be full of surprises? Even more astounding is when Coke begins to verbalize his extensive résumé: “Back in ’92 and ‘93 I was a resident DJ for Faces in Makati, then in ’94 I was with Bai Disco [at Cebu Plaza], and then in ’95 with Delta Philippine Dream’s Waves, and for a time there I was also with Iloilo’s Tivoli. You can say I’ve been around,” he nods.
But the icing on the cake would be when he did a stint for Kasbar, the swank, unabashedly chic Marrakech-inspired nightclub/bar at Dubai’s One and Only Royal Mirage Residence and Spa. Run by the London-based Juliana’s Leisure Services, the self-proclaimed “architects of entertainment,” under whose wings Coke became a talent, Kasbar then was already establishing itself as a world-class joint, luring beautiful, influential people from all corners of the world.
It was time to say goodbye to Dubai, though, after Coke decided that two-and-a-half years of not getting to watch his kid grow up wasn’t exactly his idea of responsibility. But in his head, a mental picture that wouldn’t go away: someday, somewhere in Cebu, a place would just break the surface—more lounge than SRO, more downtempo than techno. “You know, where people can just lounge around.” The vision and the dedication was there—all that was missing was “someone to back me up.”
That finally came in the form of O Roldan, one half of the genius that brought us East,West. Coke found himself sitting down with O, who divulged to him the idea of introducing the lounge culture to this ZIP Code via his reputable café. “East,West has been around a good five years, I felt it was time to infuse something new,” O chimes in. “So he needed a sampling,” Coke continues. By the end of the night O was just blown away. East,West Thursday Nights was born.
Fast forward to tonight. “Slowly but surely” is the mantra of the moment. “Cebuanos are, like, stuck in the disco phase,” Coke cuts in. “It’s your responsibility to open them up to something new and encourage them to have a sense of adventure.”
At the moment, O Roldan is regretting having handed me that carafe of Blue Kamikaze, because now I am refusing to go. Indeed the whole thing’s been addictive, and now my friends are having a predicament: how to convince me that I still have work early the next morning. He would call me impolite, but I ask Coke anyhow to play one last song before I leave, a Césaria Évora. He obliges, of course, and I get my one last fix.
When I finally get up to leave, Coke doesn’t say goodbye. “There’s always a next Thursday,” are his parting words. Pushing the envelope—now that’s something I haven’t seen before.
(April 20, 2005 issue)
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