Dec 28, 2007 - Duo finds distinctly Cuban music speaks to everyone

by Serena Markstrom
The Register-Guard

Guitarist and singer are drawn to filin music by its spare emotionalism

Jessie Marquez and Mike Denny have been playing their filin music live together for about two years. As a slightly tardy holiday gift, they have finally come out with something you can take home after a gig other than a smile.

The pair's debut, "Get the Feeling," is 10 filin or filin- inspired songs. Filin is a genre of Cuban love songs that combines the bolero ballad tradition with traits of American jazz and blues. Denny and Marquez do it the way it originated; with nylon stringed guitars and voice.

Saturday at Luna they will perform a CD release show as a duo and on New Year's Eve they return to the venue with a full band to mix in more up-tempo dance music.

When Marquez brought the music back from Cuba as something she wanted to explore further, she knew she couldn't pull it off alone.

A close friend suggested Marquez's former guitar teacher, Denny.

"I knew it was way out of my skill level," Marquez said, sitting with Denny at a local bookstore cafe.Denny chimed in, "and right up my alley."

Denny's jazz and classical guitar background, and interest in the music, meant that though he had not spent time in Cuban jam sessions, he was an equal partner in presenting something rare in Eugene.

Though Denny doesn't understand Spanish, he understands the mood and emotion behind the songs. Listeners have responded the same way.

Marquez said fans have approached her and said. "I don't speak a word of Spanish, but I understood what you were saying."

Denny explained the response as "a musical understanding that goes beyond words,"

Both graduated from South Eugene High School - Marquez has a son who's about to start there next year - and they have known for each other for about six years.

"Get the Feeling" has two English language originals composed by Marquez and Denny and another is in English but written by others.

Seven songs are in Spanish and often classics of the genre, which is only about 60 years old itself.

Now that the songs are recorded, fans have a chance to deepen their appreciation of both the form and Marquez and Denny's presentation of it.

Marquez has sung with many popular Latin bands in the area, including the Cuban and salsa bands Caliente, Lo Nuestro and Son Mela'o. So when she shifted her focus to a listening music over a dancing music, she said she thinks there are some people who might not have made the transition with her. "This music is just more intimate," Denny said.

Marquez discovered filin music in 2005 after a national bolero festival in Cuba. On a later trip, she spent most of a year in Cuba and deepened her knowledge of filin music and its origins.

She described rooms full of people relating to each other through art. Someone might recite a poem that inspired a response in song, and so on. Not everyone in the room was a musician or participant, but everyone had a stake in that intimate exchange of ideas, mostly about love and loss.

In Cuba, Marquez began to understand filin (derived from the phonetic Spanish spelling of the English word "feeling") as a spontaneous art form that bridged American and Cuban heritage.

"It's stripped down," she said. "It's really exposed. It's really simple in a way ... There's nothing to hide behind. There's not a lot of adornment."

Denny expresses himself through guitar and finds an emotional release from performing filin the same way Marquez does. He said he enjoys being the music's solid foundation, and Marquez has a freedom to explore vocally because of her deep trust of Denny.

He is the rock, and she is the water that moves around it.

"I try to do something more than accompany and be involved with the presentation," he said. Though the music is bare, it can be complex in terms of rhythms and nuances that Denny weaves into a performance, but he never get in the way of Marquez's vocals or shows off.

"One thing I learned early on working with Jessie is she knows her songs so well. I can't throw her off," he said.

"A very focused emotion has to be behind it or it doesn't work," Denny said. "There's an intensity even though it's a quiet intensity."