Culture, rhythm
After graduation, it’s the season now for all kinds of welcome and orientation assemblies for undergrad freshmen, graduate students, new faculty.
These events haven’t been too tedious; in fact, I’m realizing they can be quite entertaining. Filipino-style, they turn out to be musical extravaganzas. To give you an example, the UP Diliman welcome assembly had, between speeches by university officials and student representatives, presentations by Kontra-Gapi, UP Singing Ambassadors, UP Street Dance, UP Pep Squad, Sinagbayan.
The fare was varied, from Kontra-Gapi’s ethnic musical instruments to Sinagbayan using hip-hop for political protest. Many readers have probably seen UP Street Dance and UP Pep Squad at various competitions and athletic events, with their virtuoso combinations of gymnastics and dance challenging the image of the UP nerd.
Watching all these presentations, I thought of Jessica Sanchez’s performances in “American Idol,” and how other “hyphenated Filipinos” have been climbing to celebrity status as music performers in different parts of the world. I googled and found singing competition winners in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Japan being described as “half-Filipinos.”
I don’t think all this is accidental, but neither do I think Filipinos have special genes or a kind of musical DNA. We’re seeing cultures at work here. It’s striking that Jessica’s father is Mexican-American while her mother is Filipino. Another singing sensation who has made it to the professional circuit is Bruno Mars (“Count on Me”), who has a Puerto Rican father and a Filipino mother. We’re talking about Latin cultures here, and those cultures include the Philippines.
Sing and dance
Latin cultures celebrate the body and its movements. Children are encouraged at an early age to sing and dance. When visitors come to the house, the youngest children are called out to dance for Tito and Tita—and they duly perform. Later in school, the kids are encouraged to join choral groups, rondallas, dance troupes. What we see here is cultural “authorization.” This is why you’ll find even Filipino adults—waiter, store clerk, taxi driver, even cashier—suddenly singing and swaying at work. I’ll say this cultural authorization is stronger, too, with people from the Visayas: If you feel it, sing out.
All this is not without tensions. Religious conservatives everywhere frown on music that’s a bit too lively, worried that a body that moves in rhythm might become too stimulated, too incited. Religious conservatives are especially worried about female bodies that move, fearful that weak men will be tempted. There was a recent extreme case in a remote village in Pakistan where several women who had dared to sing and dance at a wedding were said to have been tried by the local Jirga (elders’ council) for “fornication” and bringing shame to the village. There were initial reports that the women were executed, but these turned out to be false. Nevertheless, the incident did cause controversy, not just in the village but also in other parts of the country where conservatives pronounced the singing and dancing as unacceptable.
In the Philippines we see some of this tension, too, but religious conservatives find it much more difficult to rein in the rhythms. In fact, many evangelical groups, while ranting against the dangers of the flesh, have found it useful to tap the singing and dancing for religious functions. But there is still a constant worrying about the thin line between being moved by the Holy Spirit and being possessed by demons.
Political activists at UP were also caught up by this puritanism, once frowning on rock music and dancing as “bourgeois decadence,” so I chuckled when I saw UP Sinagbayan hip-hopping its condemnation of high tuition and of P-Noy as a “panginoong lupa” (landlord). If you can’t fight culture, then use it.
I can tell you it was also a very different scene growing up ethnic Chinese, even in the Philippines. It was unthinkable, even vulgar, to call on young kids to dance for visitors. The idea of dancing or musical boys was even more unacceptable, seen as a sign of femininity (read: inferiority). In so many words, real men don’t dance, or sing. No wonder the stereotype emerged of Chinoy males having two left feet.
All that’s changed. Xavier, a school that once had a reputation of being populated by tone-deaf Chinoy nerds with two left feet, now has rock groups (still tone-deaf, I have to say, having been tormented by several) as well as street dance performers who have fared much better, winning not just in science and math competitions but dance contests as well. The reason this has happened is that younger generations of Chinese-Filipino parents now find it acceptable to have their children sing and dance.
Bodies, especially children’s bodies, are by nature a bundle of—and I will borrow from the physicists—potential and kinetic energy. Wiser cultures saw it useful to harness that energy through music from an early age, and here again we find variations. Hunter-gatherer societies value independence and innovation, and this is reflected in the way music has much more improvisation and spontaneity. Agricultural societies create more regimented musical routines, the dances resembling the coordinated movements of planting, harvesting and other agricultural activities.
Disciplined, free
Today’s industrialized societies, such as the United States, have evolved parallel musical cultures. On one hand, there’s a tradition reflected in classical music, of grand symphonies and choral groups that follow musical notes and a conductor. On the other hand, there’s popular rock-me-baby music, more flexible, allowing more inner rhythm.
Listening to Jessica Sanchez sing the American national anthem during the Pacquiao-Bradley fight made me think of her Filipino-American brand of music. Filipino and Latin cultures “authorize” the body movement, but a liberal US ethos gives more room for creativity. Her rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” veered away from the traditional; if she did that with our “Lupang Hinirang,” she would have drawn criticism and accused of mangling it.
And yet amid this room for creativity, Jessica also faced intense pressure in the competition; thus, beneath the surface of easy, almost whimsical and coquettish singing, she had had to go through intense coaching and rehearsing. Even more interesting is that her style is now being copied by other voice and music coaches hired to train wannabee Jessicas, including quite a few Filipino-Americans.
We could learn from this, allowing the next generation of Filipinos to move freely and to improvise, yet with discipline, as we are seeing in the street dance and pep squads. Who knows, we just might find ourselves excelling in sports that require team-coordinated synchronized rhythms. Might we perhaps see Filipinos, here and abroad, shining not just in song and dance but also in such performative sports as gymnastics?
