Just three hiccups before the Sunday Malasimbo concert of Joss Stone:

First, a friend from the Dutch Embassy wished us good weather before she left for Manila. Uh oh.

Naturally, it rained.

We  were now worried about shelter, soaked grounds and, of course, slippery  trails. The night before (Saturday, March 2), we noticed, while walking  down to the amphitheater, how the terrain was quite steep.

Second, except for a  few lucky souls, we missed  the Malasimboat!

We asked  about it at the gate the other night, just to be sure. But they couldn’t  tell us the schedule for certain. Our bouncer cum tech nerd friend even monitored it in Twitter.  No luck.  We just decided to kill time and nap before the evening gig.

Third,  brown out! Another friend, a Materials Engineer, was already worried  about the juice on her cam----yes, we never even thought of worrying about  the light and sound for the concert at all.

What could an advocate do? Plead for the case (read: pray).  And, mercifully, the power outage lasted only an hour.

So up Mt. Malasimbo many went, hopeful and armed with banigs (straw mats) and garbage bags. Just in case.

To  perch us longer on the suspense noose, the Sunday big event started  much later than Saturday’s main act, Jimmy Cliff. Eleven-ish. We just  lost track waiting because the sound engineers and the agent were very thorough on the prep.

60 minutes thorough.

After they set-up their own impressive array: Wurlitzer piano, Yamaha  Motif Synth, drums and percussions, base (Strat?) and Taylor Grand  Concert guitar, they checked all the connections and all the possible  permutations. Until they lost sound.  At first, they lost reception on  the right half of the keyboard, then on the left half and then again on  the right.  Uh oh.

So they had to replace a few cables. Sound check part two. One exasperated kibitzer finally said that their Grammy-certified equipment couldn’t mesh with the low-fi Raon bangs and whistles of the organizers.

60 minutes…. Tick tock....

Crickets.

More whistles from the crowd.

But when she set barefoot on the stage....

She owned all four corners of her space.

She lit up the crowd.

She was radiant.

She crooned.

She flirted with the band. And the crowd.

She was perfection.

It was past midnight. The crowd was bewitched.

All worth the wait in the end.

NOTE:

*The  Malasimbo Music and Arts Festival is an international music  and arts event held yearly in Mt. Malasimbo and set against the tropical  beaches of Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines (Malasimbo Festival)

**For those in the portable karaoke underground economy, Raon Street in  Quiapo, Manila is the capital of cheap vinyls and audio cassettes and other  chop-chops, custom-made and refurbished carcasses of electronicas---faux  or branded.