Cynthia Alexander
July 2001


"Let's stay there," Cynthia points to a pedicab. We are in the middle of a road where moments ago she was walking up and down while lip synching her own song. She's shooting her first video, The Weather Report.
Cynthia sits herself at the wheel, tucks her hair behind her ears and holds the pedicab’s handle bars tightly. Behind us, jeepneys loudly pass by.

E: For some reason your music sounds so silent. Rather, it complements silence.

CA: Silence? Silence is when you quiet yourself and you listen so you can hear...the sound of your body, the sound of your thoughts, the sound of what goes underneath your feet, and the voice of God, the voice of creation.'
My father is a painter/businessman/poet/short story writer. My mother’s a poet, she’s a painter too and a housewife. I’ve got five siblings so there’s six of us. Basically, we grew up with space. I grew up by the beach and I grew up with and by myself. I had that space. It was like a canvass. That space without anyone really telling me what to do. I grew up with no television. I grew up with books. I grew up with music, a lot of indian and classical music. And there are lots of elements in the house-paints scattered all over, there were instruments you can lay your hands on. There’s a piano, there’s guitars.

E: Have you ever felt any pressure to excel?

CA: My family is supportive of the work I am doing. Having artist parents and my brother of course is Joey Ayala, who is the icon of ethnic rock in the Philippines, there’s like a certain level or quality I have to maintain. I feel that I can’t muddy their works.

E: Aside from writing songs, do you dabble in other forms of expression?

CA: I was a painter and I guess a poet too. But I said to myself I’m going to be a musician because I wanted a medium that I felt that was my own. Something that I’d be able to go off on my own. A medium that I was comfortable in and that I would be able to express myself with.

E: What instruments do you play?

CA: I’ve written a song on a door. I’ve written a song on a milk can. I played gongs when I was with Bagong Lumad and it was the first time I played percussions in my life. And it was fun because I was given that 'okay, you do what you want' freedom. But I realized that playing gongs was no easy thing because it comes with a certain culturization. You have to learn about a tribe who made these gongs, you just don’t get into it. I play guitars. I play bass. I play the keyboard. I play the piano. Anything that makes a sound. Anything which you can build from silence. Basically, ears.

E: It seems that ears and hearing prefigure in your life…

CA: Ears! [laughs]

E: Would you say that they’re your favorite part of the body?

CA: My ears are a main source of insecurity when I was growing up. It was always that my ears are too big and I would hide it behind my hair. But then in the course of my life, I realized that ears do figure greatly. My ears are my main instruments on stage. I have to have ears. Then I was kind of vain about them. I had my ears pierced three times but my ears rejected the piercings. So I kept them clean. I’m thinking of tattoos but I think that wouldn’t work either. Why mar my instruments, my ears? What for? I could say, yeah, it figures highly in my life. And I didn’t realize what I kept on hiding when I was growing up was what would bring me, in a way, to this life.

E: Your thoughts on independence.

CA: Being independent has given me the freedom to do what I want provided I have the money for it. I just want to bring peace across, making the world a better place to live in given what you are given. Going independent was the best thing for me with that in mind. How could one be at peace with one’s self, with one’s music and one’s living and art? How do I do that by signing up with a label when somebody tells you that you can’t do that or you can’t do this? I have to be able to do what I feel is best.

E: Are you an insomniac?

CA: I’m not an insomniac! But everytime I see a pillow I want to hit the pillow and die. Well, sleep is called the little death. It’s when you’re body goes to rest.

E: Do you hear music all the time?

CA: I hear music when I’m walking. When I’m dreaming. I hear music when you’re speaking. I hear music when I’m lying in bed and doing something. Then I hear the cacophony of sound and sight and then I hear music. Little details. That conglomeration of everything. I hear that.

E: So what is music?

CA: Music, that’s spiritual. It’s a very spiritual thing. It’s sound, I guess, is my life.

---