Karaoke culture

I suppose the story is common to many areas in the country: With a growing urban population and increased mobility, new housing has popped up in what used to be quiet neighborhoods. City folk move into the suburbs, bringing with them habits that some old-school and entrenched residents find disruptive, offensive, or odd.

In the case of our middle-class gated community, this story took the form of neighbors who acquired a large lot in the center of the area. As newcomers, they were subject to the traditional round of rumor-mongering that bored housewives indulge in: Loose lips whispered that these new neighbors, coming from a family of OFWs—and therefore, new

money—would probably be rowdy and loud. True enough, they turned out to have the habit of turning up a karaoke machine at full volume in the middle of the day, to be heard blocks away, to the chagrin of the older residents.

Living barely a hundred feet from their house, I was initially affected by their sudden outbursts of noise; my walls would thump from their machine’s cheap music, worsened by voices that seemed to be either drunk, in pain, or both. Thanks to the power of disposable income, I invested in noise-canceling ear plugs, which solved the problem.

Mulling over the situation with a lawyer-friend, I casually brought up the prospect of suing for both moral (disturbance of the peace) and physical (headaches from the loud, thumping bass) harm. To my surprise, this lawyer, who I’ve always known to be an aggressive litigator, laughed off my wandering thought. If murder takes a decade to prosecute, he said, then we can expect such a case to be solved long after the neighbors and I have all dropped dead.

It turned out that the neighbors were decent people. They would turn down the volume when other residents called for intervention from the homeowners’ association; they would also voluntarily turn it down at dusk, to be shut off at night, allowing us to sleep in peace. Other neighbors have continued to be indignant (often wishing that the association could screen new residents, much like how a posh subdivision in Makati was allegedly hesitant to sell land to Manny

Pacquiao), but my family has kept a kinder stance: These people have no malicious intent, and simply have an unfortunate love of karaoke. Besides, they have the decency to turn it off at night, proving that they are not totally inconsiderate.

With the passing of the holidays—the season for parties—I wondered how negative environmental and disciplinary habits are dealt with in other communities. Literature indicates that the problem of both noise and garbage affects most residential areas in the metro. In depressed communities, there simply is no way to avoid these—as citizens forgotten by the government, tidiness and peace are not enforced by local officials; and because there are no laws prohibiting excessive noise, the police are powerless to arrest offending individuals. In some instances, it is even the local officials who encourage incorrigible behavior, to retain the support of their voter base.

But there are signs of hope. City ordinances against public disturbance now exist and are faithfully enforced in Davao and Cebu (where a case was successfully settled against, of all people, an elected official!). The irony is that people from the capital have this habit of portraying citizens from the boondocks as uncouth bumpkins on the lower end of the income spectrum—when in fact, judging from these cities’ ordinances, their comportment seems to be more dignified and gracious, compared to unruly Manileños.

House Bill No. 1839, filed during the 15th Congress by a statesman from Marikina—not at all surprising considering that city’s culture of discipline—seeks to criminalize excessive noise and public disturbance. Unfortunately, the author of the bill seems to have resigned himself to the fact that it might not be passed at all; the bill’s introduction reads: “[T]here is no law that addresses noise pollution. Either because it is not considered a problem at all, or people simply do not care…”

That, I believe, is the crux of the problem. The Department of Tourism has done a wonderful job of glorifying the Filipino penchant for bright lights, loud sounds, and intense festivities; media coverage of tragedies is never complete without the mention of how Filipinos manage to have fun in the middle of calamity, with images of children whose smiles are as big as the holes on their tattered, grimy clothing.

This habit of merrymaking, if seen from an outsider’s perspective (that is, people from rigidly formal cultures, perhaps like the Germans or the English), is astonishing; I dare say, however, that it betrays a kind of depressing, morbid fatalism. After all, our choice to feast and make merry in the middle of tragedy is an implicit acknowledgment of our ultimate powerlessness against our own self-caused destruction; the euphoria of a Filipino celebration in the middle of a crisis is no different from the bliss of an inmate’s last meal on death row. Moreover, our tendency for flamboyance serves as a sort of escape from the problems that we shouldn’t have created, to begin with—we have always been stunted by our denial and cheap sentimentality. Filipinos love celebrations not because they find life beautiful, but because they know deep within that they live in ugliness, uncertainty, and fear, and are too crippled by their ignorance to do anything about it.

Some may take offense at this, and say that we are simply much too cheerful for our own good—that our happiness may sometimes get out of hand, to the point that we forget our manners. In Manila, at least, this paradigm discourages individuals who seek better standards of living from fighting for their right to peace and quiet. Instead of getting the peace that they deserve as taxpayers, they are branded as scrooges, and are targeted for further harassment by resentful, albeit totally guilty, parties. As the Filipino saying goes, “Ikaw na nga ang naperwisyo, ikaw pa ang masama (You’re the aggrieved party, but you’re made out as the villain).” This is a twisted, selfish, and primitive definition of happiness: Whereas true happiness is profound, existential, and permanent, the “happiness” that most Filipinos look for is nothing more than the destruction and numbing of the senses; deafening music, blinding lights, and strong alcohol are all part of the traditional Filipino celebration—never mind that people, children included, get hurt.

The unseen victims are the educated middle class. The affluent are able to pay for tranquility and are lucky enough to keep undesirables at bay; the working force, which faces the perils of city living on a daily basis, is powerless as its taxes are devoured by government officials who joyfully ignore, if not encourage, chaos and disorder, thus perpetuating in the process a culture of denial, ignorance, and selfishness.

We are, indeed, a karaoke culture: loud, drunk, careless, and full of ourselves.

Aaron Ponce works at an international economics firm.