SUPREME COVER: Rage against the dying light
MANILA, Philippines - What if you’re a singer — one whose voice and style defines a genre for generations — and you found out one day that you won’t be able to sing? Three times a week, Basti Artadi jumps from the top of a three-storey scaffolding smack in the middle of Bonifacio High Street Central — and he’ll be doing so for two more weekends as the star of 9Works Theatrical and Globe Telecom’s local production of American Idiot, a rock musical adapted from pop punk band Green Day’s seminal post-9-11 album of the same name. Artadi plays St. Jimmy, the trippy manifestation of the id of protagonist Johnny (to be played by former Rivermaya vocalist Jason Fernandez), flamboyant as he goes nuts with the vocals as well as the footwork. To the Wolfgang frontman, even the musical theater stage is his playground.
Artadi is no stranger to musical theater, notably when he headlined Atlantis Productions’ Jesus Christ Superstar some 15 years ago. Age has widened the scope of what he is game to do — Artadi is working on painting the images in his mind down on canvas as he prepares for an exhibit — but it was the discovery of a benign facial nerve tumor, immobilizing movement on one side of his face, that drives his willingness to document his artistic expressions. “The last diagnosis was there was a big chance I won’t be able to sing in the future. This 2016, I want to do everything I can possibly do. If you ask me to work with you, the chances are really high. I just wanna get as much of my voice out there, recorded on anything,” he says.
F***, right? That was how he found out. Something else prompted him to say the f word, but it came out wrong. He explains its technicality: “F is the hardest thing for me to pronounce ‘cause you have to put your lips together.”
People gossiped online, making up stories that Artadi’s face was a side effect of years of drug abuse. Contrary to stereotypes people cast on rock stars, he doesn’t do drugs, much less have a drug problem. He had to speak up.
After a friend confirmed what he suspected, he finally got it checked by a doctor. The diagnosis was Bell’s palsy, but the more Artadi read about it, the more it didn’t connect with what he felt when he tried to move the right side of his face. Even when the doctor discouraged him from getting an MRI, he went anyway, and discovered what it really was.
Live and onstage before an audience, he was able to hide it for months, but because one side of the face worked more than the other, the unaffected side of his face pulled the other side whenever it moved until the other side’s laxity became more prominent opposed to the firmness the mobile side of his face had. People gossiped online, making up stories that it was a side effect of years of drug abuse. Contrary to stereotypes people cast on rock stars, he doesn’t do drugs, much less have a drug problem. He had to speak up.
The support Artadi received was overflowing. Illustrator Marjun Lazarte did a drawing of Artadi’s face for free, and it became the print on the t-shirts Artadi sold (along with a free single launch) to raise funds for his treatments. “It’s a symbol of what I hope to get back to,” he hopes. The fight isn’t over.
He first produced 100 and thought he would sell 70, at best, but it sold out, and is now being reproduced as everyone came forward with ways to help him. Artadi’s next move is to find a way to give back.
“I think I sing better now than I do before,” Artadi says. “Back in the day I can just sing it, hit the notes correctly. Now I can sing with my emotions.”
The kind of release fans of his music found, he also finds in the genre. “Rock is strong because it’s rooted in the blues and the blues are inside everybody one form or the other. You release your inhibitions through it. It can wake you up.”
It was rock or bust for Artadi at the peak of his youth, his mind was closed to trying other things and through the years, while age makes most people more nostalgic and unwilling to explore beyond what they already like, here was Artadi, expanding his repertoire.
“Good music is good music, no matter what genre,” he says. Early last year, he put together a brass band called The Jazz Bastards where they performed popular new music in period styles. He also went the other way around, stripping the music down to barebones vocals and a guitar, doing acoustic covers with Marco de Leon, guitarist of Wolfgang, performing slower rock songs like those by the Eagles. His latest project in the works is Plan of Fools, a multi-performer outfit which he differentiates from the others as having “a country tinge.”
Artadi confesses he had to relearn how he sang. Wolfgang was on hiatus and Artadi worked as a coordinator for the corporate operations department of Gap in San Francisco. He spent his lunch breaks on the service floor of the 16-storey building, singing to himself amid the hum of the engineering area of the building, trying to do what he had done for over 23 years in Manila with Wolfgang and in his other projects in San Francisco. In a year, he got it down pat.
“I think I sing better now than I do before,” he says. His voice is like a muscle that becomes stronger the more it is exercised, and he has clocked in a good 23 years of it. With wear and tear, he admits there are notes he can no longer hit, but he knows how to use his voice better — and consistently, like when he is recording. He can now capture his live style on record on demand.
“Back in the day I can just sing it, hit the right notes correctly,” he looks back, never one to do a disservice to his craft, but there is a deeper sense of expression. He admits, “Now I can sing with my emotions.”
In Manila, as we shot these portraits against backdrops of the American Idiot set, passers-by instantly recognized him, some discreetly taking pictures. One did acknowledge him aloud, reiterating what we already know: “Basti Artadi, man, you’re the real rock and roll!”
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Tweet the author @marbbiedoll.
Photos by REGINE DAVID
Produced by PEPE DIOKNO
