"The Learning" and the teaching: Episodes of education

Class is in session at UC Berkeley

Filipino students become indoctrinated

Yesterday was a day packed with education.

I had the privilege and honor to appear via video chat for Professor Griff Rollefson's music class "Planet Rap: Global Hip Hop and Postcolonial Perspectives" at the University of California, Berkeley.  The students were assigned my article "Hip hop over homework: Filipino Americans 'failing'?" and my documentary Lyrical Empire: Hip Hop in Metro Manila.   

In a bizarre performance of pedagogy through technology (I'm picturing my 20 ft. talking head lighting up an auditorium), I had the opportunity to answer student questions about the article and the film. The questions were a great exercise in thinking through the value of studying the topic of Filipino Americans and hip hop culture, and the urgency (if any) with which to approach political projects involving hip hop. Some of the questions were quite provocative, including the following:

-"What is the usefulness of postcolonial studies when studying hip hop?" In other words, why should we study hip hop using the same lens that we use to view the contexts of formerly colonized nations?

-"How can one make sense of hip hop if it is both an expression of radical politics globally, but it is also an object of global commodity capitalism?"

-"Are there possibilities of Asian American and African American collaborations with which hip hop plays a role?"

-"Do you see Filipino Americans seeking 'stability' as the goal of 'success'? And why should Filipino Americans gain consciousness about the Philippines?"

Thanks for the opportunity to "appear" for yall's class. Hopefully I gave sufficient responses to some tough questions. I hope to do something like this again in the future.

Angel, a Filipina teacher recruited by Baltimore's school district, performs Pandango sa Ilaw with her students.

Later on that evening, I was able to catch the PBS premiere of Ramona Diaz's documentary The Learning, which documents one year in the lives of four Filipina contracted teachers recruited by the Baltimore school district.

So while I am teaching U.S. college students to critically study the historical formation of the Philippines and criticizing the Asian Journal article's definition of "success" (see my article "Hip hop over homework"), Filipina teachers make a geographical trek to the U.S. in order to teach fundamentals of survival and life skills. They are facilitators of "success", and I pray students and school districts value their contributions.

Dorothea teaches a science lab to her high schoolers.

At a time when many school districts around the nation are in crisis because of a dearth of math, science, and special education teachers, Filipina sojourners have taken up the calling to fill the gaps. Leaving their family and students behind in order to enter a version of America they do not know from TV or books, these women enter the battlefield of education in black and brown communities across the U.S.

The Learning gives an intimate portrait of the bravery, sacrifice, and love of these four teachers, who represent a small slice of the thousands of Filipino/a teachers imported to provide low-cost labor in neglected school districts. The documentary points out that the "tides have turned" on U.S. colonial programs in the Philippines--which inaugurated U.S.-style instruction to Filipino students beginning in the early 1900s--with Filipino teachers fluent in American English coming to the U.S. to teach American students.  In Baltimore alone, 10% of teachers (or 600 total) are recruited from the Philippines.

One Filipina student in the UC Berkeley music class asked me what I thought about Filipino Americans becoming conscious of the Philippines.  I think The Learning is a testament to the importance of critically analyzing the historical condition in the Philippines, where the "tides have turned" in a way, where First World nations are seeking Filipino/a workers--who are fluent in English and other valued skill sets--to compensate for First World labor voids. As Filipino Americans, having a critical look at the Philippines means understanding that "we are here" because "they were there."  

As Filipino Americans, the battlefield is not only in geographic districts where many of us attend crumbling schools.  The battlefield is also in our minds; of reclaiming our own histories and debunking the myths that continue to disparage our lives and bodies.  

---   

Mega Manila styles! Revaluing Filipino popular culture

Are you Cubao X hip?

Mega Manila

One of the most startling facts that became obvious during my recent trip to Metro Manila was the magnitude in size of the metropolis. Upon returning to the States, I looked up the population of the Metro compared to large West Coast cities in the United States. Here is the breakdown:

In 2008, Metro Manila was home to 11,553,427 registered residents. But in 2011, estimates reach up to 21,295,000 for the greater urban area of Manila. Not surprising, given the divergent ways of measuring population, including geographic limits and the underestimation of people "under the radar."

In comparison, in 2010, Los Angeles boasted 9,818,605 residents, nearly 2 million less than Metro Manila's lower estimate. The same year, the San Francisco Bay Area (including Oakland and San Jose) reached 7.5 million.

Spectrum Entertainment birthday party in Chula Vista, San Diego. From my film Legend.

Why does this matter?

Considering the notable amount of Filipino American popular culture emanating from LA and SF over the past 25+ years (almost a century if one considers the dance culture among Pinoy migrant workers during U.S. colonialism)--such as turntablism, R&B, freestyle, and dance--what about Pin@y popular culture originating from the Filipino "center"? Can Metro Manila and the Philippines be seen as a producer (not just a consumer) of global culture?

Crate diggers at the Vinyl Swap Meet in Cubao X. From SoulSonic TV.

Cubao X is just one example of the many pockets of popular culture dotting Metro Manila. Yes, hip hop is strong at Cubao X, but so is rock, punk, electronica, reggae, and gay culture, all of which merge together. Filled with bars, restaurants, hip shops, and performance space, it is a unique niche unknown to tourists, and it surely isn't a flashy shopping mall that describes much of public space in the Metro. Interestingly, similar descriptions can be said about other urban locales such as Baguio, Davao, and Cebu who flaunt their own creative communities.

Legitimizing Popular Music

For some reason Filipinos do not like to archive their own popular culture. Perhaps its a privileging of the ephemeral or the lack of material resources (I'm leaning towards the latter). Like Philippine cinema or Philippine basketball, popular music is at risk of evaporating into history.

In her essay "Pepot and the Archive: Cinephilia and the Archive Crisis of Philippine Cinema", Bliss Cua Lim writes about the bleak state of archiving early Philippine films. Sometimes found stacked and decaying in abandoned basketball courts, classic film reels have no home in the Philippines. Some films can only be bought elsewhere, such as France or Taiwan.

Similarly, in Pacific Rims, Rafe Bartholomew recounts digging up legendary pictures and newsclips of Philippine basketball heroes at a flea market. Basically, he was organizing a (sadly) not-yet existing archive of Philippine basketball as he wrote Pacific Rims in the mid 2000s. Philippine basketball's century-long history, like Philippine cinema, seemed to be rotting in the tropical sun.

But what of popular music? With only a single handful of writers dedicated to Philippine popular music (peep my pal Justin Breathes), is the genre doomed to deterioration within Filipinos' collective memory? Will it take an American Fulbright scholar like Bartholomew to archive its history a century in the future?

What if we revalue Filipino popular culture? Why do we need laws to compel Philippine radio stations to play original Filipino music?

What if we looked at the Philippines not as a nation of mimicry and/or devoid of culture, but as a source of clever style and originality? What if we saw the Philippines not as representing a dearth of culture, but as overflowing with it? How can we position Metro Manila as a global center of talent and not dismiss it as urban chaos en route to the beach resort?

More Than Meets the Eye

For many Filipino Americans, we see the Philippines only through the globally-syndicated The Filipino Channel (TFC), a satellite/cable channel aimed at the Filipino diaspora (and is ironically not available for Filipinos in the Philippines). The depictions of cover bands, imitative starlets, and robotic dance moves on Filipino variety shows remains a predominant imaginary of Philippine popular culture for many Filipino Americans.

Unless they have a bit of capital to travel to the Philippines and interact with people outside their family, Fil Ams will rarely be exposed to the country's pockets of popular music. For those who visit the Metro, its non-centeredness, traffic, pollution, and congestion may be a turn off to excavating the gems beneath the mess.

Today's Metro Manila is not your Lola's Manila. It is a sprawling cosmopolitan global city that once represented urbane Asia. It remains a megalopolis of the world, home to a diversity of classes--not just a uniform, monolithic mass of poverty topped with a minuscule class of the rich.

People from an array of classes are creating vibrant culture. Much to the surprise of Fil Ams who may imagine a simple two-tiered social structure, the gray area in between "sosyal" (bourgeois) and slum is actually A LOT of people given the immensity of the greater urban area of Manila (and beyond). This diversity of classes makes for an interesting mix of style and creativity.

How can Fil Ams who are not exposed to hidden layers of the Philippine society connect with pockets of creativity not shown on TFC? Instead of bypassing a seemingly hollow Metro Manila for the picturesqueness of the beach, how can they be overwhelmed by the city's cultural abundance?


Special thanks: Nex Benas, Justin Gabriel, Mike Gonzales, and Carlos Celdran
---

Uh Puerto Rico...Woh!! Obama 'erupts' the colony

On Tuesday, the island had a visitor from the continent, and it ain't Frankie Cutlass.

Like the Puerto Rican dancers on America's Best Dance Crew, the islands erupted on the American mainstage once again with an official presidential visit from Barack Obama. In past articles, I've talked about the curious cultural position inhabited by members of U.S. island colonies: the Filipino/Puerto Rican brutha Bruno Mars, Puerto Ricans in Florida, Pacquiao vs. Cotto, Puerto Rican and Filipino representation on America's Best Dance Crew (here and here), and the newly confirmed Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Still, questions remain about how Puerto Rico continues to configure in the national imagination of the U.S. Instead of dancing, singing, or boxing, the President's visit makes the island visible for a "mainstream" audience through political pomp and election skrilla snatching (he raised $1 million at a fundraiser).

Mr. Obama's home state of Hawai'i stands as an example of another island colony, which is at once "different" because of its exotic appeal yet "domestic" because it's the 50th state (hey a nice round number means national completeness, right?). Hence the twisted irony of Obama's visit: he used to rep a Pacific island colony (turned state) and now reps hard for the "mainland" on a visit to the Caribbean island colony.

The 50 state nation is purportedly "complete" in God's eyes, at least according to the kind folks at American Family Association who are sponsoring a "prayer event" in August with Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry. According to rhetoric of this group, the shape of the nation is set by God.

But what exactly is the shape of the nation? And how do we determine its borders? The U.S.-dominated islands (the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, and others) prove the complexity of these questions. The islands trouble the nations legal, geographic, and cultural contiguity.

Enter Obama on a visit to the literal margins of America. How can the emergence of Puerto Rico in the U.S. imagination bring to light the sin of U.S. imperialism? Where does Puerto Rico, as a non-voting colony of the U.S., configure within the "ideal" of Americana?

As a territory under federal authority (especially military) but limited "voice" in federal governance, Puerto Rico's incongruity to an American ideal is a problem. And the people of Puerto Rico have much to be concerned about. Like the Philippines, Puerto Rico is experiencing a "brain drain" of skilled Puerto Ricans migrating to the continent. The island has more boricuas living on the continent (who interestingly can vote for president) than on the island itself. Much like the rest of the nation (only magnified), the island has been experiencing unprecedented unemployment and poverty. And like the rest of the nation, higher education is one of the first priorities on the fiscal chopping block, resulting in an uprising by students who are subsequently denied "voice". Freedom of speech in some instances has been banned in Puerto Rico, where student protesters who are increasingly unable to attend school because of rising fees are punished for exercising a fundamental American right. Liberty and justice...for some?

From the New York Times. Student protests meet roadblocks in Puerto Rican universities.

During his visit to the island, President Obama declared his support for the decision the colony makes regarding statehood (51st?) or independence: “When the people of Puerto Rico make a clear decision, my administration will stand by you…. We want Puerto Rico to have a shot at the dream that we all have.”

As an afterthought to the "main" U.S. agenda, Puerto Rico's future is becoming increasingly dismal. As members of a supposed critical "Hispanic" (continental) voting bloc, the President finds Puerto Ricans a valuable demographic. But how valuable is the President to Puerto Ricans?

As the author of the article "Obama's Puerto Rico Pit Stop" in The Nation writes, "The perception is that Puerto Rico is not a part of the 'national conversation,' but rather a colonial outpost in which identity politics, language and nationalism have residents mired in a perennial identity crisis."

Puerto Rico plays an important role in bringing knowledge to American imperial history (and future?). Where Obama's Hawai'i became "domesticated" and the Philippines became "independent", Puerto Rico--home to 4 million American subjects and whose migrated people constitute a coveted voting bloc on the continent--remains a major player in the quest for U.S. border-defining. Can residents of the "colonial outpost" challenge the notion of American imperial innocence? Or will America's island subjects remain the way they always have been? That is, invisible.

---

Visions of the Creole Bastard: Film and the postcolonial body

Davis, played by Jose Saenz, is determined to dunk in The Flip Side (2001).

On Saturday the 27th Annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival presented the 10-year anniversary screening of the pioneering narrative film The Flip Side. An official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, the LAAPFF screening marked a historic moment in Filipino American film and raised questions about the future of the genre. At ten years old, is The Flip Side a film that a younger generation can relate to? What cultural changes have occurred between the Fil Am generation of the late 90s and early 2000s, and the generation coming-to-age around 2010?

In 2001, a troupe of California-based Filipino American artists and advocates stormed the Sundance venue in Utah with the intent to make clamor for The Flip Side and DJ Qbert's Wave Twisters that premiered at the same time. These Fil Am pilgrims were surprised to be greeted by a small community of Utah Fil Am residents who showed a tremendous amount of love for the artists.

At the time, the Fil Ams' experience in Utah reflected a bigger phenomenon of Filipino (mis/under)representation in the larger public imaginary. Many times during Sundance meetings and press events, according to The Flip Side director Rod Pulido, he and other Filipinos were the only people of color around. Also to note, the film was interestingly programmed into the Native Forum portion of the festival, which is perhaps reflective of Utah's demographic imaginary and Filipinos' strange ethnic placement in the United States. "The Native Forum director felt that Filipinos' issues were similar to those of Native Americans, such as dealing with assimilation," Pulido mentioned during the Q&A portion of the LAAPFF event.

Filipinos similar to Native Americans? Hold up. This is getting confusing. I think this cross-racial resonance speaks to the indeterminacy that best describes Filipino people whose culture is mixed, creolized, and transformed by what Filipina art critic Sarita See calls a "wild heterogeneity."

But the film speaks for itself when it comes to Filipino American anxiety (from outside and from within) over their complex membership in the U.S.'s (and the world's) racial and cultural landscape. Likely to resonate with Fil Ams of all ages, as a satirical drama, The Flip Side engages questions about racial and cultural authenticity. Characters in the movie perform a series of "Fil Am caricatures" (some more painfully disturbing than others): the bahag-wearing Darius who awkwardly preaches facile Philippine nationalism, the brother Davis who speaks as if he were African American, the sister Marievic who hopelessly wishes she looked more white, the bagoong craving father, the gossiping mother, and the lotto addicted lolo.

The film opens with Darius returning home in suburban California (the film was shot in Cerritos) after his first year at college where he joined the Filipino student group Kababayan. Emboldened by his knew knowledge of Filipinoness, Darius deals with his dysfunctional family members while preaching the gospel of (his version of) Filipino culture. Darius's curmudgeon lolo stays cramped in an upstairs room, where Darius visits bearing food in hopes of connecting with the old man who for Darius becomes a proxy for an "authentic" Filipinoness. Giving away his hip hop records to Davis, Darius exchanges his default hip hop identity--an identity that Rod Pulido said he most identified with--for minstrel-like Filipino indigeneity.

Darius, played by Verwin Gatpandan, drags in indigeneity with his bahag.

A testament to the identity-formation process many college-educated Fil Ams go through, The Flip Side is both a hyperbolic critique of Filipino American culture and also a comedic meditation on the otherwise complicated circulation of racial and cultural referents dealt to Filipino Americans. For the Fil Am males in the movie, the ethnic journey is a journey to recuperate a Filipino masculinity, with Darius's bahag representing a phallic symbol of his Filipinoness and Davis's desire for the supposed African "extra bone" in his foot together with an obsession with gaining height representing his own longing for a black manhood. In addition, the heroicizing of lolo with his Battle of Bataan medals stand in for an aspirant Filipino (militant) masculinity gone flaccid, of which the two generations--Darius and lolo--resolve by tricking their quirky family members and starting a journey of their own.

Marievic is proud to be "Hawaiian."

The seeking for a more stable sense of self for Darius's siblings ultimately meet tragic disfigurement: Davis breaks a bone in his foot after trying to dunk on his modified basketball rim and Marievic's nose becomes infected after a botched cosmetic operation to "fix" her Filipina nose. But the sad idea of "fixing" a Filipino identity is perhaps the most heartbreaking lesson offered by The Flip Side, performed poignantly by Ronalee Par who as Marievic trashes her vanity mirror arrangement after her boyfriend dumps her. Her boyfriend, who is drawn to Marievic when they first meet, tries to guess her ethnic background of which Marievic agrees is "Hawaiian". "In Hawai'i I was born, that's why I'm Hawaiian," she tells him. Hawaiian, therefore, according to Marievic, is a more legible and intelligible (and exotic) ethnicity compared to the disarticulated and ambiguous Filipino. Ultimately, Marievic's desire to "fix" her "flawed" identity meets with failure and loss.

The message, then, that The Flip Side promotes is that a Filipino and Filipino American culture does not need "fixing" like that exemplified by Davis and Marievic's penchant for bodily modification. Maybe the film is telling us we should embrace our ambiguity and "wild heterogeity" and find agency in being able to play with borders. Or maybe the film is suggesting that young Filipino Americans should seek knowledge about their history, especially our history of resistance as shown by Darius's teaching Davis about Philippine "heroes."

Whatever the case, I think the tortuous racial negotiations visualized in The Flip Side work as a critique of the way Filipinos are seen as weak. I think the film performs a subtle commentary on the conceit of "purer civilizations" positioned "above" the creolized* Filipina/o and her/his aborted/injured Philippine national identity molded by Spanish (three centuries), U.S. (all of the 20th century as a colony/neocolony), and even Japanese (for three years during WWII) colonization. Filipino American engagement with whiteness, blackness, and (according to Sundance programming) Native Americanness provides a window to this mixed history. This in-betweenness references a complex Filipino racial position in the world that differs from the classical U.S. immigrant narrative that only identifies racialization originating upon arrival in the U.S. In other words, unlike many other immigrant nations, a creolized Philippines offers a grammar of racialization prior to migration. Yes, The Flip Side is a commentary on immigrant assimilation, but its also more by virtue of its envisioned "wild heterogeneity"--its characters' creolized identities.

Ryan Greer as Ralsto in One Kine Day (2010).

Another movie that speaks to the creolization featured at this year's LAAPFF is the beautifully-shot One Kind Day, a film about the trials of young skater Ralsto who encounters a series of money problems--including tense encounters with a haole drug trafficker named Vegas Mike--after he finds out his teenage girlfriend is pregnant. Director Chuck Mistui described during the Q&A that his movie addresses the problem of teen pregnancy in Hawai'i, visualizing what he called the the grittier, non-touristy side of Hawai'i.

Under the auspices of Haolewood Productions (a gesture to white people, or haoles as they are called by locals), One Kine Day foregrounds the multiracial landscape of Hawai'i with its cast of whites, hapa haoles (part white Hawaiians), Asians, and Islanders. The film, however, is surprisingly absent of Filipino presence especially given the large concentration of Ilocanos in Hawai'i. Nonetheless, the process of creolization--the colonial transforming of racial order, culture, language, and so on--parallels that of the Philippines. Both were colonies of the United States, but Hawai'i attained U.S. statehood in 1959 whereas the Philippines (for multiple reasons) remained a U.S. neocolony (which means the U.S. arbitrated uneven economic control and military authority in the archipelago). One Kine Day, with its subtle references to Hawai'i's peripheral yet incorporated status such as the recurring imagery of the U.S. Post Office, bears witness to the cultural and racial "othering" that describes Hawai'i's exotic status compared to the other 49 states. Perhaps Hawai'i's "other" yet somehow "familiar" status is why Marievic privileges Hawaiian over Filipino.

Even though during the Q&A Mitsui did not really mention the racial critique offered by his film, the multiracial cast and the tensions that emerge among its members suggest an embedded racial discord. For example, race and class tensions emerges when racially-mixed (Japanese and white) Ralsto hitches a ride with his two "brown," pidgin-speaking neighbors who recycle bottles and cans as part of their work. Ralsto blurts out he would rather have a baby than collect trash with the two men, prompting one of the men to retort: "You think you better than us?!" This scene unpacks bigger racial issues in the Pacific state, where the racial order can be described as whites above Japanese, Japanese above other Asians, Filipinos as the lowest Asians, and Native Hawaiians and African Americans at the bottom of the caste.

One Kine Day illustrates this racial hierarchy. When the story revolves around pregnancy and the anxieties of reproduction, the racial narrative becomes even more compelling. Given that discourses around race and native genocide in Hawai'i often follow a complex logic of bloodlines that mark native membership, reproduction becomes a site of the future of Hawai'i. One Kine Day, with Ralsto and his pregnant white girlfriend Alea, therefore, depicts a mixture of anxieties and hopes about the reproduction of a white future in Hawai'i. The "browner" residents embody sexual excess, risky behavior, and "improper" language (pidgin as Hawaiian creole) while whiteness (through Alea) signifies life and hope. The movie, I think, if read unconventionally offers a tragic criticism of these representations rather than their blind replication (you have to see the ending).

In many ways I agree with Mitsui. His film depicts a Hawai'i not seen by tourists. His vision of Hawai'i (whether intentional or not) reminds us of the "impurity" of the state's history, language, and residents. Like The Flip Side, One Kine Day reverses the colonial gaze by allowing the colonized people to speak back--in the "wild heterogeneity" of their creole language. The "dysfunctions" of the characters are not one-to-one representations of a bastard people. Rather, we can envision the characters as resilient survivors of postcolonial violence--"flaws" and all--who through their performance (satiric and/or tragic) will travel forward and reproduce (in life and knowledge). Yet, their flourishing--the pleasure and beauty of their creole culture--will always embody a memory of colonial transgressions.

The Flip Side and One Kine Day provide creative evidence of the racial position of creolized people in the world. Perhaps this archive can give knowledge to possible cultural alliances with other creolized people around the world, such as those flourishing in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the continental United States. Maybe such collaborations can create more creative productions that help disrupt the myths of a "weak" postcolonial people who need "fixing." Maybe one day a congregation of this alliance can gather (together with the local community) and celebrate their achievements like the hopeful group of Filipino Americans did at Sundance just ten years ago.

*I realize I'm taking great liberties in my use of the word "creole." For now, it is the most proximate word I have to describe colonial cultural and racial mixture.
---
References:
Asian American Invisibility: You don't see us, but we see you!
Questioning Kapuso: Re-Thinking Fil Am Culture
You don't see us, but we see you: Filipinos under the veil

---

Colonial Funk! Bruno Mars in this universe!

Bruno Mars as La Bomba 2.0 at MTV's Video Music Awards last week

B.o.B. cuts it up with Mars on "Nothing on You" video

The islands are erupting on the American continent again! And Bruno Mars is surfing forward on a wave of magma. This Pinoy/Puerto Rican brutha from Hawai'i is dominating the airwaves, his hooks on B.o.B.'s "Nothing on You", Travie McCoy's "Billionaire"(two songs that were BOMBING the airwaves in Manila over the summer), and his own hit "Just the Way You Are" are infecting the world's eardrums (two at a time...mostly).

As you know, here at Hip Hop Lives we are preoccupied with Puerto Rico (see here: perreo, cuchifritos, lumidee, freestyle, wild style). And, Bruno embodies all the trappings of an island peripheral subject who is taking center stage. As a Puerto Rican/Filipino who grew up in Hawai'i, his mestizaje symbolicalizes the "inside yet outside" positionality of the United States' colonies/island states (the "American Tropics" as Allan Isaac would have it).

And when those peripheries somehow become mainstream (as in the Justice Sotomayor debates or in Obama's Hawai'i birthplace controversies), the obscured history of American imperialism winks into the consciousness of popular discourse (if ever so gently). But the "forgetting" of American island-trysting wasn't always the case in U.S. history. During the early 20th century, the U.S. congress debated on making the Philippines a state, and of course, the debate on Puerto Rican statehood persists. We know Hawai'i succeeded in becoming the 50th state in 1959. The Insular Cases in the early 20th century, in which the U.S. Supreme Court tried to rationalize the legal status of its island colonial subjects, gesture to the difficulty in making sense of people who occupy an "inside yet outside" status (or, to put in the jargon of the court justices: "foreign in a domestic sense").

Now if Bruno Mars plays basketball, that would be some crazy shit, given the Filipinos' ravenous appetite for b-ball and 2004 Puerto Rican Olympic team's slaying of the "giant in the north." (wuddup Hawai'i! got game?)

Mars, aka Peter Hernandez, has really white teeth. I think I'mma catch a case of insular!

In addition to Bruno's symbolic indexing of U.S. island colonialism (to note: I wonder if his family is affiliated with the U.S. military?), his musical success as a mestizo comments on Asian American illegibility in U.S. popular music. Basically, it doesn't hurt to kind of look like Ritchie Valens and Lou Diamond Phillips in the industry game. And in a double-whammy, if a Filipino looks more East Asian, they must perform (however reluctantly or eagerly) as a Chinese or Japanese character (who are more identifiable).

Is the Filipino mestizo the gateway for Filipino legibility into mainstream popular cultural recognition? It's worked for Brooke Burke, Nicole Scherzinger, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Apl.de.ap, who each represent their Filipinoness in their own way. Once we get over this mestizo requirement then maybe someone can finally get the homegirl Happy Slip on SNL so the world can love her...just the way she are.


---

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Manila Ryce on Paper Cuts cover

Had a chance to catch up with Manila Ryce, the visual artist who designed the cover of Bambu's new EP, Paper Cuts. Manila gives us some insight on the inspiration of the cover and its meanings:

"The artwork for "...paper cuts..." utilizes the cover of a school textbook to visually explore the themes of cultural genocide and mental occupation present in the cd. To understand what the razor blade symbolizes it's important to understand what the book symbolizes. Independent thought is punished in our educational system throughout the development of a child. We are expected to obey, repeat, and follow orders. However, the owner of this textbook has actually cut into this manual of repression with a razor blade to reveal the free-thinkers and revolutionaries our educational system fails to mention. This tool, placed between Bambu's teeth, symbolizes the sharpened words of a rebel. Bambu is revealed as the true teacher in this scenario who has encouraged not just thoughts which challenge this symbol of the system, but a revolutionary action which has in fact destroyed it.

Bam works with people he trusts enough to give artistic freedom to. I pitched him a few ideas and thumbnails to choose from, but other than that initial framework there was never much oversight. I decided on having historical figures share the cover with his mug and he supported it. Bam respects the artists he works with as creative individuals and not just as a means to an end. Because of that mutual respect, this cover really was a labor of love.

As for the choice of figures, Bam and I belong to a Filipino youth organization called KmB (Pro-People Youth), which relates the struggle of the Philippines to that of FilAm youth. The stories of Gabriela, the Katipuneros, and Lapu-Lapu are often part of our educational workshops, so it seemed natural that they would also supply that connection for this album with Bam's largely Filipino base. Most of the other figures are people Bambu has mentioned previously in his songs, such as Malcolm, Ho Chi Minh, Che, Mao, Marx, and Zapata. Overall, I made a conscious decision to have a wide representation of people from varying cultures to emphasize that the struggle of the proletariat is the same around the globe, whether we're talking about Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, or even Watts. Even dating all the way back to Lapu-Lapu, the enemy remains the same. It's important to recognize that you are part of a strong tradition of resistance and that your struggle is shared globally."

Talk about critical pedagogy! That's why it's so important to buy the physical CD (used to be vinyl) because an MP3 can only say so much.

As for the actual music, its raw. Within 8 tracks, Bam smashes a thick recipe of themes ranging from the violence of gentrification to being old (he's not).

One verse stands out, from the first track "Paper Thin" (featuring the god Chace Infinite):

"Tell the story of our people that they failed to mention
in classroom setting these lessons that rarely stuck
but in detention the sessions with st. ides in my cup
in conversations about the hustle kept our kids engaged
not afraid of jail
we're supposed to have been passed away
and now we geeked that the president got skin like ours
so we stick up little stickers screaming 'hope' on cars
but police'll still barge into your spot fully armed
last week one of my homeboys got his head split apart
feels like the hood's still the same
while we scream about change
and the solution's build a franchise
move our people away?"

(thanks Bam)

Cop that EP if you haven't already. Learn more about the dope artwork of Manila Ryce and show your support for our talented cultural workers.


----

War-torn Philippines, the first Vietnam

This is a bit dated, but Nam and Geo spit the gift on this one from Nam's album Exhale. Check out Geo's verse at 1:22. His analysis of Filipinos sa U.S. and their displacement never forgets the moment of U.S. occupation (rather than reiterating a liberal immigrant tale). The reference to The Cry and Dedication Carlos Bulosan's unfinished novel on the leftist peasant movement in the Philippines, speaks to the radical vision of Filipino diasporic sensibilities and counters the American assimilationist narrative that many people read in Bulosan's more famous book America is in the Heart. It seems that Geo is mindful of genocide and violence as structuring the contours of a Filipino diaspora (and of course the beauty in struggle associated with this).

The ending reference to the Philippines as the "first Vietnam" raises important questions about why military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan are called the "second Vietnam" and not the "third Philippines." This is the violence of historical erasure. "Beats, Rhymes, and Rice" illuminates an otherwise veiled condition.

This song is more than rice. It is the meat in the meal of knowledge.

Nam feat. Geologic, "Beats, Rhymes, and Rice" (2008)

[Geo's first verse at 1:22]

The reason that they killed
Made the reason we arrived
Left the bodies on the field
We the children of survivors
Fam with severed ties
Our plans been set aside
The Cry and Dedication
Our hands will never die
I stand side by side
With the riders of all shades
Heart beats to tropical soil
And shallow graves
The pale called us slaves
And complained
Upon the moment we came
To take back what was stolen
Way back in the day
Until the present
The yellow, brown descendents
Of peasants who held weapons
To defend our essence
So check the work ethic
In the author who writes
One generation removed
From harvesting rice
I stay up nights
Composing my raps
And moms still call the place home
Though she knows
We can never go back
And so I make balikbayan
through song
War-torn Philippines
The first Vietnam

---

Deep Foundation responds to Adam Carolla's ignorance

The dudes Deep Foundation in NY/NJ respond to Adam Carolla's comments on Pacquiao and the Philippines. I think that Carolla's remarks are not anything new in the shock jock steez, but when you couple ignorance with the wholesale erasure/obscuring of Philippine history in the context of U.S. imperialism, jokes like Carolla's do a particular kind of damage that extends the already protracted imperial project in the Philippines. To make savage/slut a U.S. colony, I think, does more to make invisible that very moment of colonialism rather than reveal it. The veil becomes darker...

Anyways, DF provides a space for cultural resistance to such ignorance. What would be interesting is a more critical look at the Philippine state, rather than a blanketed heroization of the homeland. For the Philippine state is also repressive, especially when it comes to the Moro south, peasants, and indigenous people.

---

You don't see us, but we see you: Filipinos under the veil

Sakun (Casualty) (1997) by Antipas Delotavo. Reprinted in Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999

Here at Fil Am Funk aka Hip Hop Lives, we love the classroom. After working as a teaching assistant for a class entitled "Asian American Popular Culture" (here is their final project...lovely), I have had time to reflect on the meaning of the term "Asian American Popular Culture." I guess one of the most illuminating things coming out of the class is students' tendencies to separate "Asian" from "American."

For example, when we talked about hip hop, some students remarked on how "Asian culture" is so different from hip hop, that Asian American rappers act like a bridge between Asian culture and (African) American culture. In other words, this can be read as Asian and Black functioning as polar opposites.

This binary is somewhat troubling. First of all, it assumes a pure origin of what is considered "Asian." That is a huge blunder, especially when colonized countries in Southeast Asia are thoroughly mixed culturally in language, art, religion, etc. and claims to a pure "Asian" culture are laughable. In fact, any claim to a true "Asian" culture (if one should be made) is kind of chauvinistic.

Dwelling on this topic, it was kind of a coincidence that I stumbled upon a question asked on Hyphen Magazine's "InterrogAsian" question and answer section. One questioner asks:

"Are Filipinos the 'black' Asians?"

Now, the meanings of this question can be taken a number of ways. Is the questioner referring to skin color? Social class? Global labor position? Cultural expressions of Filipinos and blacks?

You can read the answer Hyphen chose to give (it's kind of funny), but the question itself--one I'm sure many of us have asked or have heard asked--reveals a broader curiosity that seems to afflict the minds of more than the InterrogAsian questioner. Back to the class, then, I wonder how the topic of Asian American rappers would be looked at differently if someone also asked the question "Are Filipinos the 'black' Asians?" especially given that a silent consensus agreed Asian culture and (African) American culture were so different?

I'm sure this topic is eternally debatable. After looking at some visual art by Filipinos and Filipino Americans these past few weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to witness the creativity with which artists address the topic of Filipino and Filipino American identity.

The picture above, Sakuna (Casualty), is one example of how artists portray Filipino identity and its struggle with making sense with U.S. cultural influence in the Philippines. The painting reminds me of The Roots song "Don't See Us" where Black Thought raps with an imagery reminiscent of noted African American scholar W.E.B. DuBois's "veil" metaphor:

"You Don't See Us, but we see you
You stuck on sleep, get on your P's and Q's
Cuz you will get crept, wit no discrept
You know the rep, we keep the flows in check"

The legendary Roots crew and DuBois (image on left) suggest the "double consciousness" of blacks in the United States: they live under a "veil" in which they see and know (white) American culture and people, but yet because of the mainstream marginalization of black life, people on the outside get an obscured view of black people. DuBois argues that blacks in the U.S. know at least two lives: "mainstream" American life and black life, thus the double consciousness under the veil.

Sakuna (Casualty) paints the same metaphor for Filipinos with a literal veil covering two Filipino boys and an American flag-themed hat obscuring the face of another. You don't see them, but they see you. For the artist, the 1899 moment is one not to be forgotten.

When we look to Asia, just how "other" is Asia from the white (and black) West?

In the field of Asian culture, where do Filipinos position themselves? (We gotta go beyond lumpia shanghai and pancit canton!)

For Filipinos and Filipino Americans making music and culture, even under the veil they keep the "flows in check," hittin you with fluency in all kinds of P's and Q's. If you slept, guaranteed, you will get crept.

-----

Wapak!

Congrats to Miguel Cotto for staying alive after a brutal beat down. All 12 rounds of Pac Man fist and lookin all pork face for pride?

Colonies are erupting in the living rooms of the Empire! "Wapak"!!

Colonial Funk! Pacquiao vs. Cotto: violent island intimacies

Pacquiao and Cotto painting on a jeepney, for HBO 24 7 show

"On the tube, I'm just watching Pacquiao box it up. How would I know HBO would get a shot of us? Sittin so close that we almost got snot on us."
-Jay Z, "Thank You"

"You know I get em with the rap's Manny Pac hooks!"
-Son of Ran, "For the Wax"

"My people pump your fists like you're Manny Pacquiao. Man-child with the wild-style, right to be hostile."
-Blue Scholars, "Solstice: Reintroduction"



The colonies is hostile this Saturday! Manny Pacquiao (representing the Philippines) and Miguel Cotto (Puerto Rico) will bout it out for WBO Welterweight supremacy. Moving up from 140 to 147 pounds, Pacquiao will once again be tested as he gains bulk, which is always a liability in terms of speed and power.

This blog has dedicated a lot of material to posing questions about Filipinos' relationships to other people of color. So, it is not surprising that the Pacquiao-Cotto fight is overheating the Hip Hop Lives thinking-engine.

As former/current colonies of Spain and the United States acquired by Western powers at the same time, the Philippines and Puerto Rico occupy historical discourses in almost identical colonial, cultural, and military relevance.

It's important to note that both colonies have a strong love affair with boxing. And--as hip hop heads know--Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. have had a strong love affair with hip hop culture (Pinoys on the West Coast, PRs on the East). Finally, as demonstrated by Cotto's father's 25 years in the U.S. Army and by Filipinos' migration through military service, both colonies have for over a century been firm ground for military boots.

But of course a few things disrupt the otherwise seemingly perfect accord:

-The Philippines is in the Pacific, and Puerto Rico is in the Caribbean, bringing in some geographical dissonance.

-Although both are mixed racially, the Philippines has a large "Asian" population especially pronounced with a noticeable Chinese middle class, and Puerto Rico is home to a dominant African diaspora. After all, Afrika Bambaataa considers Puerto Ricans as "black."

-Puerto Ricans speak a Spanish vernacular and were not forced American English by the U.S. colonial administration. Whereas Filipinos were not taught Spanish because of Spanish prejudice against indio inferiority, but were/are instructed and speak a variety of American English. However, in the HBO 24 7 episodes, both Pacquiao and Cotto speak American English (but Pac-Man gets the subtitles! Doh!)

Political cartoon from the early 1900s. Uncle Sam disciplining the bad Filipino, Hawaiian, Puerto Rican, and Cuban children

A few questions can be asked about the upcoming fight:

1. What does it mean to gaze upon two Filipino and Puerto Rican bodies in violent confrontation--especially with millions of dollars at stake?

2. How will the audience categorize Pacquiao and Cotto? Will Pacquiao be "Asian"? Will Cotto be "Hispanic"? Black? And what does that mean for Filipino and Puerto Rican audience members (actually, all audience members) as they assess the other's body type?

3. In the HBO 24 7 biographical specials, the music and scenery (complete with food!) give vivid depictions of where these men are from. What kind of narratives can be written about the islands Pacquiao and Cotto represent? Will the shared histories of Spanish and U.S. colonization of both colonies be articulated, or are both effectively painted as completely incongruent? (I mean, check "The Battle of East and West" narrative written on the Pacquiao-Hatton fight. I'm wondering the marketing strategy debates occurring with this current one. Rice and fish vs. rice and beans?)

4. What does it mean to have non-Americans, especially Pacquiao, figuring as a boxing icon for the U.S. boxing imagination? Will the Floyd Mayweather, who is from Michigan, rescue the all-American boxing iconography? (Remember, Oscar De La Hoya, from East LA, is called "Golden Boy" for a reason)

Like hip hop, this boxing thang unearths some interesting queries about ourselves as Filipinos and people of color! So before yall crack open the San Miguel and let loose, some crazy juice for your thinking-engine as we prepare for the big fight on Saturday!


----

YOU CAPTION! Pacquiao at Wild Card

The Pacquiao-Cotto fight is on Saturday, November 14 at 9:00pm on HBO PPV. Have you been watching the HBO 24/7 episodes detailing the training and drama between the two fighters? Always good stuff. But why does Pacquiao have subtitles, and Cotto doesn't? Both speak English.

You know I'mma be all up ons the Philippine-Puerto Rico colonial funk happening here.

For fun, here's a snapshot of Pacquiao training at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood. Yet another round of YOU CAPTION!

_______________?_________________

-----

America's Best "Periphery": Island dance crews redefine America

The banner has fallen for the Massive Monkees in the 4th season of America's Best Dance Crew. The crew has once again inspired a whole demographic of young Filipino Americans and b-boy/girls. Furthermore, they help gave Seattle a bigger, bolder, well-deserved rep in the hip hop game.

With an obvious domination of Fil Am champions on the show, every season so far has captured the imagination of Filipinos and definitely impacted their respective dance choreography. This year will be the only year to not feature a Filipino in the last round; Afroborike and We Are Heroes will battle it out in the finale.

We can't say there is a definite Filipino, Asian, or b-boy fatigue on ABDC because each crew definitely put in work to prove themselves, but we'll miss the MM's and want to congratulate them and their tremendous success on the show.

Critical questions:

Who would have thought fans of U.S. popular culture would usher in a group of mostly Puerto Rican dancers (one is Cuban) as perhaps America's best?

Who would have thought that four Filipino guys, a Cambodian fella, and a Black dude would represent the desire of a whole generation of young people in the U.S.?

This show is interesting in that it gives a visual representation of the varying meanings of "America's best..." I've written about it before, but the Puerto Rican and Filipino fetish this show has raises stimulating questions about the U.S.'s island colonies and their role in U.S. mainstream culture. The colonized strut, flip, and strike poses on stage, constantly challenging the "center" of America as they invigorate the imagination of a new, young MTV generation.

The islands are erupting on the American continent.

This MTV generation might find the Latin-flavor of Afroborike worthy of ABDC champ-status, but We Are Heroes will take it this season. If they don't, it's good to see some ladies (from either crew) finally crowned.

Season 5, Pinoys and Pinays get ready! We hope to see you on stage once more! (East Coast, Midwest, South stand up!!)

----

Heart for a Movement: R.I.P. Corazon Aquino

Corazon Aquino, January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009

References:
Inquirer.net: "Aquino restored press freedom"
BakitWhy.com: "Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino (1933-2009) Has Died"
Inquirer.net: "What a great gift we've lost"

While I was in the Philippines this July, I read in the newspapers that former Philippine president Corazon Aquino was in the hospital for colon cancer. That was a pretty big deal, a big enough deal to be side-by-side with news about current president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's breast implants (it's true!).

On Saturday early morning, Philippines-time, Cory Aquino passed away. In terms of Philippine and Filipino American history, Aquino's passing marks a significant period, especially since a whole generation of Filipinos and Fil Ams are now in their 20s, born after the historic People Power Revolution in 1986 in which Aquino, through the massive and peaceful protests of the Filipino people, became president of the Philippines after over a decade of U.S.-funded Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos.

A comment made by my homey Boogaleo resonated with me. Mentioning a very young generation who don't remember People Power or even Boyz II Men (facetious, but true), he raised questions about the identification this generation has with someone like Corazon Aquino. I think this deals with questions I ask in a prior post, "The Rhythm and the Rebels: Rap's Changing Political Engagement over the Generations." Basically, in the post, I ask questions about the political commitments of the hip hop generation of the 2000s, where in the 1980s the Vietnam War was still a lingering topic, and in the 1990s, the LA Riots was significant for a whole generation.

I ask here: Aquino still significant for those who are 23 and under? For those who keep up with Philippine history and understand the magnitude of particular events, we can answer a definitive "yes." But what about those who did not live through that time, and perhaps those whose parents did not live through the mid 1980s (yes, the 80s and 90s generation are now parents!)? Does Aquino form a narrative in their political consciousness?

Let me take stab at addressing those questions. This moment is probably most relevant cross-generationally because many of our parents and grandparents migrated to the U.S. because of the unrest occurring in the Philippines under the Marcos regime during the 1970s and 80s. Therefore, our very identities as Fil Ams--especially our migration patterns--is shaped by the happenings in the archipelago even before a time we can remember. Cory's death therefore marks the emergence of a new generation of political identification, but again, this assertion simply raises questions of "what?" and "who?" of this younger generation.

Globally, the "what" and "who" of today is not hard to find when we examine the recent rallies in Iran, where popular street protests, repressive state violence, and accusations of voter fraud are reflective of the Philippines circa 1983-1986. What can Iranians learn from People Power in the Philippines? One thing is for sure, that is the need to pursue a strategy which takes into consideration a structural (meaning economic and infrastructural) reworking where existing relations of power are modified so as to increase a more democratic and popular engagement with national decision-making and wealth allocation. Hella Marxist-sounding, I know, but what has changed post-People Power? Sure, many things, but also many things are the same.

At least step one in People Power was achieved, which delegitimized the ruling imperialist regime. Now for Iran, the step of overthrowing the ruling president is not yet achieved, and that is a model perhaps People Power can provide. But, given the very different relations with colonialism and electorally democratic-engagement, maybe not... In both cases, however, a productive broad civic culture of progressive democratice action is being cultivated, where people can get informed and become critical about the status quo, and organize themselves.

Cultural warriors. Working a labor of love. That's heart.

---