Few Strings Attached

Ruffy Magbanua

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”-Bob Marley

UNWINDING on a Saturday night with soothing live music in uptown Cagayan de Oro makes a great respite for the weary heart and hungry soul, at least even just on that particular instant.

More so if you are sharing the most of your evening off with someone nearest to your heart, your gig completes the color of the day.

And listening to a  local jazz band  with a peculiar name,  “Few Strings Attached,” the music gets you the extra high, something that inspires the audience with chilling effect amid a windy Saturday night breather.

“Few Strings Attached,” a young group of millennials composed of Nicole, Omar, Mark and Alain, has been  making raves in Cagayan de Oro’s music scene.

A metro in the making, Cagayan de Oro’s night strip, mainly along Corrales Avenue is growing by leaps and bounds.

With its skyline squirting like mushrooms, the city’s night life is also in harmony with the phenomenal growth of Metro Cagayan de Oro.

The city’s night strip is all about clean fun, thanks to the accelerated peace and order efforts of Mayor Oca Moreno. In fact, he added some 200 more of the RTA field personnel to man the city’s vehicle-congested roads and streets, now swelling to the max. But no debate about it, the number of traffic officers outsmarts the increasing population of vehicles day in, day out.  The city’s traffic scene gets heavier day after day as well.

The good mayor has admitted though that the city faces a worsening traffic problem all the more with the opening pretty soon of  Mindanao’s largest mall along Recto Avenue, the city’s version of Edsa of Metro Manila.

The traffic mess is a serious concern deeply associated with the lack of infrastructure connected primarily with the absence of new road network that could tone down traffic woes of the city.

Undeniably, the old and narrow city streets could no longer hold on to the swelling number of vehicles, most of which are SUVs of latest brands, courtesy of the city’s robust economy and the unstoppable invasion of car dealers from all corners of the globe.

Meantime, let’s sing our blues away.  Listening to good music is one hell of unloading that extra baggage on the city’s traffic burgeoning mess.

Now to while away the blues, “Few Strings Attached,” an acoustic band, performs different notes for different folks. They can play the best of classics, jazz, bossa nova and soul in pure  blend, bringing out the best of music.

The group can also play a wide range of genres like blues, R and B, alternative and pop music to soothe ones mood.

Something about their songs, rendered in soft tones, impacts the audience  in many ways that other sounds don’t.  Their music can inspire such strong feelings and binds so tightly to other people in the crowd.

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.

Attest to this is my good friend Herbie, the top honcho of MGSD’s editorial room who, from time to time, belts out along with his guitars, songs of the eighties and even way back from the sixties to while away life’s boredom vis-a-vis the city’s traffic stress.

And the good mayor too, who loves belting out on special occasions  his favored masterpiece “What a Wonderful World.”

Take this Virginia, music is the language of the heart and soul.

E-mail: ruffy44_ph2000@yahoo.com