A Mystery Unsolved
#155: Notion, Dad in New Orleans, Art, Drewscape, Japanese Book Binding, New Canon Theatre, Grant Snider, Pawshire, Randy Gonzales, Filipino & Chinese Fishers, New Orleans Stompers, & Reinhardt Buhr
HERE & NOW
After announcing that I was going to shut down my paid website and stop selling my art online,1 I started looking around for free platforms where I could maintain a simple art website that has basic information about me, and perhaps keep a record of art that I make.
At the moment, it looks like that platform is Notion. I found out that you can build a website for free using one of their templates. After playing around with it, I realized that perhaps the major strong point of Notion is its database capability. It’s pretty easy to categorize your art, books, or whatever, and set up an expanding gallery of your work, while tracking information about each piece.
That was the pro. The con is that your URL will have about 25 numerals attached to it, and nobody will ever remember it.
At this point, however, I sorta don’t care. I can link to the site from here (when it’s ready); people can see my art if they’re interested, and if nothing else, the database alone will be very useful, even if I decide to employ JeanVengua.com again on another platform.
Here’s a screenshot of a portion of the website-in-process. The simple template was created and offered for free by photographer Sipho Nkosi. The categories for his photographs still show in the menu—I haven’t changed them yet.
THEN & NOW
I wish that I knew more about the period when my father was in New Orleans, performing with a band called the Royal Hawaiians. I wish he hadn’t thrown away his photo album with its photos of the band and of people that he knew during that time. One can learn so much from an old photo. This period (1930s) was before WWII, and before he met my mother.
Here’s what I know: Dad played guitar and ukulele for the band. They performed for radio on the top floor of a hotel. And he spoke of crossing Lake Pontchartrain—to an island or to another spot—perhaps the Manila Village at St. Malo? [Update: I just learned that St. Malo was destroyed in a 1915 hurricane, but I believe the Filipino community itself survived and continued to live in the area].
That’s not really much to go on.
However, I do have an old address book of his which dates back to the 1930s. It’s made of black leather with “Memo Book“ stamped inside an inverted triangle with wings. Half a dozen song lyrics were scribbled throughout the pages—so, clearly, he carried this around with him while performing in Louisiana. And there are several names in the book with Louisiana addresses. These include Pablo Laput (my godfather), who had two addresses, one of them c/o the Cabinash post office in Manila Village, St. Malo, and another at the seamen’s bethel on San Thomas St., in New Orleans.
The Manila Village is known as the site of the first Filipino settlement in the U.S., as first recorded in 1883 by writer Lafcadio Hearn. But the village, whose presence was reportedly seen as early as 1763, has since vanished with the rising tides of climate change. The Village is now recognized by a memorial marker in the area.
Andrew Haime, of Algiers, La, is listed in the address book. The Algiers neighborhood is a ship-building area where there is now a naval station.
Jerry Lailay was another person listed in Dad’s address book who lived in New Orleans. He lived on Burgundy St., but he also had an address on Bourbon St., and yet another at 2209 Chartres, in Fauberg Marigny.2 I looked up the addresses on Google Maps—they are the locations of very old buildings in historic districts.
One thing I know about old-timer Filipinos in the U.S.: whenever they migrated to a city, they tended to stay in Chinatowns. The faces and the food were familiar, other Filipinos lived there, and you were less likely to get roughed up and booted out of the neighborhood. I have since learned, in an article by Kat Chow, that there were two Chinatowns in New Orleans, and that “in 1937, the merchants in the first Chinatown lost their lease on Tulane Avenue,” which caused them to shift their businesses over to Bourbon St., thus creating the second Chinatown.
A short documentary on Chinatown, New Orleans, by Maria Neal:
I tried looking up “Royal Hawaiians+1930s+band” on Google, but apparently many bands were using the name “Royal Hawaiians” and traveling in the U.S. back then. In the 1910s-20s, some Filipino musicians, such as the Filipino Collegians, and Ne Pomocena’s Filipino Quartet, were even traveling in the mid-western Chautauqua Circuit, a Methodist-based traveling show that aimed to educate and “uplift” audiences by (among other things) introducing international music and culture to Midwesterners. Hawai’ian performers also participated in the Circuit, introducing Hawai’ian-style steel guitar music, possibly contributing to its popularity in the U.S. during that period.3
I recall that the musicians pictured in my dad’s photograph were clearly Filipino, and I imagine that they, and many others, were taking advantage of the latest music craze by adopting that name.
At this point, it seems that the mysteries—or rather the details—of my father’s musical sojourn in Louisiana will likely remain unsolved. How long was he there? Who was in the band? Where did they stay, and what clubs did they play at? I’ve never been to New Orleans. But the few hints I’ve received have introduced me to other stories about Filipinos in a part of the world that I have yet to experience.
ART
Below is my first attempt at making a sketchbook with Japanese binding. No glue involved—just paper, thread and large needle, X-ACTO knife, ruler, a push pin, and old art that I cut and recycled into book covers. While it’s a simple process, I managed to muck it up and had to re-do it, since the paper I chose was too heavy, and I got the thread tangled up on itself and couldn’t draw it through the hole.
Also, I learned that an awl is a lot easier on your fingers than using a push pin to make holes in paper. By the time I was done, I had to take a couple of Tylenol because my hands were aching.
Anyway, I’m glad I did it. All this was precipitated by some videos on sketching by Drewscape (aka Andrew Tan), an urban sketcher and comic book artist from Singapore. I had an aha! moment when I asked myself, “Hey, why do I rarely draw in sketchbooks?” It would be great practice in loosening up; it would encourage a more “meditative” state of mind; and it would help generate more ideas for making art.
My hands and fingers often get sore when I draw with a pen, and I think that—aside from arthritis in my hands, and despite the fact that much of my art appears “loose” and abstract—I’ve also got a subconsciou perfectionist mindset that I tend to repress. It’s one reason that I don’t often draw figuratively; there’s a little voice in my head that keeps telling me I’m just not getting it “right.” Drewscape encourages an openness to “mistakes” and holding one’s pen higher on the shaft, so the line becomes even more relaxed.
Also, I love the narrative possibilities that sketchbook drawing presents (and which seem to drive Drewscapes’ drawing and comic-book making). He doesn’t just draw to practice; he draws to remember and tell stories about both the art and his life.
RABBIT HOLE
Drewscape on “drawing loose”:
From the Long Beach Public Library, Richard shows you how to make a sketchbook using Japanese binding:
Poet and community historian Randy Gonzales on climate change and the history of the Filipino fishing village of St. Malo:
New perspectives on “Filipino and Chinese Fishermen of Coastal Louisiana, featuring Michael Salgarolo, Winston Ho, and Randy Gonzales:
Just a shout-out to local (Monterey County) playwrights: New Canon Theatre Lab’s mission is to workshop and develop new works. They are seeking full-length and one-act plays from established and emerging playwrights. They are part of New Canon Theatre Company.
From Grant Snider’s Incidental Comics newsletter (Substack): “We Are the Introverts.”
Pawshire bought her own art from a seller in Etsy. But there’s still a problem.
SOUNDINGS
No, it’s not New Orleans—this is in Tokyo. The New Orleans Stompers4 performing “Chinatown, My Chinatown,” written by William Jerome (words) and Jean Schwartz (music) in 1906 .
Reinhardt Buhr live-looping ambient melodic house music with multiple instruments, including his own voice and shofar, somewhere on the coast of South Africa. Love those two kids watching/listening with fascination:
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…but still sell at in-person venues.
Just learned that this was the home of famed musician Jelly Roll Morton.
Back in the early 2000s, I did quite a bit of research of the topic of Filipino musicians in the traveling Chautauqua circuit, publishing an article in Our Own Voice (no longer available online), and even traveling to the University of Iowa’s archives, where I found a wealth of materials including the images found in the links in this paragraph.
The name is spelled wrong on the video. Recorded at The Minton House Nishiogikubo Tokyo, Japan.