Tonight We're All Manila Girls

Sighting a Ska Matriarch

The post came up on Facebook the way these things do — algorithm catching some signal I'd given off about the neighborhood, surfacing Skarlet's announcement. Skarlet Brown, Jazz Night, Hooga. Bobbet Bernadas on keyboard. I booked early because she fills rooms. Work pulled me out before the set ended.

Hooga sits near Jupiter and Saturn, technically outside Pobla. I claim it for Poblacion anyway, along with another favorite, Cache (the Makati branch). It holds maybe forty people, serves drinks and food. There's a brisk movement of their charcuterie plate. The listening room style and Danish reference are more than matched by the low-key friendliness of its owner.

Manila's Music Force

Myra has been performing as Skarlet Brown since well before Poblacion was known for much besides girlie bars and knock-off Viagra.

Put3ska broke through in 1994 with "Manila Girl," a song with a brisk ska beat that wrote the city back to itself. The band won Best Live Act and Best New Artist at the NU Rock Awards in 1995. She was named Vocalist of the Year by NU 107 in 1997. "Manila Girl" outlasted all of it. Posted to YouTube nine years ago, the song has 392,000 views and is still in rotation thirty years later.

I got to know Skarlet several years ago when she played a Thursday night gig at Ortigas' Metrowalk with an amazing band that featured Aya Yuson on guitar. Her rendition of Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train" made me a regular fixture. Later we would collaborate on an ill-fated recruiting stunt for my BPO with great bands (Urbandub, Radioactive Sago Project), which she hosted.

"Get to This, Get to That"

Watching her tonight, I reflect on how Skarlet is to Manila's music scene what Poblacion is to Manila itself — both refuse to be a single thing.

Poblacion was a residential barangay before it was a nightlife district, was a nightlife district before it was a food destination, is a food destination now while becoming something else.

Skarlet was ska before she was jazz, was jazz before she was a Nick Joaquin poetry laureate (twice — 2024 and 2025), and now she’s belting tunes on a small stage on Jupiter Street.

The Heart of Music NGO she co-founded in 1998 has been running healthcare for low-earning musicians for twenty-eight years. Live performance in Manila cancer wards.

In a less altruistic, yet very communal way, Pobla embodies its own dynamism. New venues keep testing the edge to the stars: Jupiter and Comet, and Mars. New eateries, nightclubs, rooftop venues, boutique hotels, backpacker hostels, live music all pile into Poblacion weekly.

The Queen of Ska plays Jupiter Street.