Aireene Espiritu: Making Waves in Americana
Filipino-American singer-songwriter Aireene Espiritu has been making waves in the regional US music scene for the past decade. Born in the Philippines, Aireene and her family immigrated to the US when she was ten years old. She is active in California’s Bay Area music scene and is a mainstay of that area’s community of musicians who play traditional roots-influenced folk music also known as “Americana.”
Aireene has four critically acclaimed albums and two EPs under her belt. She is a veteran live performer who has toured regionally, nationally, and internationally since 2010. Her last album, Back Where I Belong, released in 2016, received positive recognition and reviews from KQED’s The California Report, the San Francisco Chronicle, Living Blues, and No Depression magazines, and got 4.5 stars out of 5 review from All About Jazz. The album, a tribute to legendary Filipino-American blues singer Sugar Pie DeSanto, features blues and soul classics and covers of three iconic Tagalog songs.
I recently had the privilege of speaking with Aireene. Below are highlights from our conversation.
How did you get started with music and as a full-time musician?
I grew up with my uncles playing guitar. I loved the fingerpicking style they played. I was also always interested in folk music. I stumbled across the book The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax which introduced me to Mississippi delta blues. I listened to Alan Lomax’s field recordings of folk music not just from the South but from all over the world.
I started writing my own songs in my twenties. I began with acoustic blues. At open mics, it wasn’t the people who were excellent at singing that attracted me. It was the people who sang with heart. I eventually started writing my own songs for self-expression and I added covers to my repertoire as I performed more.
Around 2009–2010, I lived in Oakland and was playing in various musical projects. I held a day job and was dating another musician with who I also performed as a duo. In the span of two months in 2010, the relationship ended, I moved out of our apartment and was laid off from my day job. I put my belongings in storage and stayed with my mom and her partner in Vegas while I tried to figure out what to do next.
My mom and I went to the Philippines to visit my grandma that year. While there, I decided to travel solo. My travels took me to the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. It was in Chiang Mai that I decided I will play music till I can’t play anymore. I had no other plan. From a cottage in Chiang Mai, I built my website by hand and booked a tour based on where friends lived. That was in 2010–2011, how it all started. Now in 2021, here we are.
Tell me about your recent projects: Cowbella EP and Color-Coded Symphony
Cowbella was released in 2019 as a tribute to alt-country band the Bum Steers and holds a special place in my heart. Their lead guitarist and songwriter also produced my first full solo album, Put Back Charlie. We put together Cowbella with vocal and instrumental recordings from members of the Bum Steers, two of whom had passed away. All the music you could hear in Cowbella was performed by the original artists from the Bum Steers.
Color-Coded Symphony is a culmination of my life and work experiences rolled into one about dealing with racism. It is built on the premise of “What if people listened to you with eyes closed?” The idea for it started when I had an opportunity in 2017 with the Little Village Foundation to play at the Asian Art Museum.
Color-Coded Symphony is a three-part program. The first part is played in the dark. The audience first fills out ethnic origin cards. They close their eyes or wear a bandana to cover their eyes. The musicians play familiar and unfamiliar sounds such as lullabies in different languages.
For the second part, we turn the light on for a performance that features a different country each time. The first performance in 2017 featured the Philippines with Kulintang (Filipino gongs). For the second show in 2019, we featured India — Bollywood and traditional Indian music.
The third part of the show is interactive. We pull from the ethnic origin jar where people filled out the country where they came from. We play 30 seconds of recorded music from that country and the band would improvise and create new music inspired by those 30 seconds.
I have other ideas in mind for Color-Coded Symphony. The show is evolving. I would like to incorporate other perspectives in future performances. For example, the perspectives of Blacks and indigenous people. I am trying to figure out funding for the project and hopefully take it to schools and areas that are not widely exposed to diversity.
How do you feel about being a performer in a genre in the music industry where there are not a lot of Asians?
I feel like I have to exert more effort to prove myself. I also play the ukulele and when people see me with a ukulele people seem to always assume I play Hawaiian music. But I play folk and original singer-songwriter stuff. I feel I must prove myself more and keep pushing for presence and for representation. I’ve been attending Folk Alliance International meetings and they created an affinity group for BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color). It is great to have a space where we can discuss these things. As I get older, I feel the need to speak out more and represent Asian Americans and Filipinos.
Final comments to readers of this interview?
Be open and curious about different genres. It is not just about learning new music but also learning about different cultures. I’m grateful to have sung with a gospel choir and a world music band. My brother was into hip hop, and I was into rock. After enough exposure, you can appreciate different types of new music. Be open and be curious. It is like eating candy, you will find something juicy.
Learn more about Aireene and her music
https://www.aireeneespiritu.com/
