The Wily Filipino

ATL.

A lesson learned: Never, ever deliver a conference paper when you've only had four hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. I was supposed to deliver the paper below:

In this paper, I explore performance and improvisation among Filipino overseas musicians. In 2003, over 58,000 Filipinos were scattered worldwide in nightclubs and hotel lounges; however, the majority of people who migrate as Overseas Performing Artists (OPAs) travel to work in Japan. OPA is, in this instance, a euphemistic, bureaucratic category that denotes the sex trade, and comprises the crucial distinction between Filipinos working in Japan and those elsewhere working as more professional musicians.

Despite such differences, I argue that the practices of performance and improvisation, both as musical activities and as metaphors for everyday migrant life, link both kinds of OPAs. In my interviews, OPA returnees constantly spoke of a spontaneous and naturally Filipino ability to imitate. This imitative performance, however, did not allow for musical improvisation; they were limited to learning and mimicking particular idioms from a globally shared musical repertoire.

Such practices, I argue, parallel the relationship between state and individual. One can see performance and improvisation as strategies utilized to compete with restrictive migration policies, to evade state surveillance, or, more ordinarily, to resist drunken customers. As an economic strategy, migration also exemplifies a kind of adaptability, also directly related to improvisation or imitation.

My paper is also a critique of government policies that enable, if not facilitate, the exploitation of migrant labor. Simultaneously, through emphasis of migrant practices, I treat OPAs as rational and creative actors, incessantly performing and improvising, even if constrained by the regulations of the state and the demands of capital.

Et cetera, et cetera, until I realized that it had ballooned into an unmanageable 30 pages when it was still only really halfway done and I had to boil it down to about 7 pages for the presentation. So I painfully hacked off the entire "improvisation" section, threw out all the lovely ethnographic detail and whatnot, including a "thick description" of a performance of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head," and came up with 6 pages. All of this surgery done the night before I was to teach three classes and hop on a redeye from SF. Not good. (Thankfully a MARTA ride from the airport to Buckhead was only $1.75.)

So I gave my talk -- my fellow panelists' papers on Filipino Americans in post-war Filipino cinema, the Black-Eyed Peas' "The Apl Song" video, and Jessica Hagedorn's Dream Jungle (plus a big helping of Baudrillard) were far more interesting than mine -- and had to run off with Izzy to the Children's Museum of Atlanta, which was only really okay. (It was too late to get tickets to the aquarium.) Izzy really liked the Rube Goldberg-like contraption which, among other things, made it possible for you to drop wet balls onto unsuspecting people's noggins. Nothing like wet balls. (Okay -- the first person to tell me which John Irving novel that comes from wins... well, nothing.) I missed everything else on Saturday, since I spent most of the day zonked with Izzy, but that was fine.

None of the pictures you see here were posted with anyone's permission, but I'll be happy to take them offline.

The 40-plus folks who ended up congregating in front of the hotel were then organized and split by Rick, who we see conducting the orchestra here:

The heat lamps reminded him of the tropics -- or, in a reference to Allan's forthcoming book, American Tropics. (We heard the phrase "American tropics" used a lot throughout the conference, just like the phrase "basketball court" -- but youngsters may be reading this, so I won't explain it.)

About half of the crowd. Martin's in a silly mood:

Half went to a Hawaiian fusion food restaurant, which was the wise choice. "I didn't go all the way to Atlanta to eat Hawaiian food," said Theo, who ended up going with us to the jaw-droppingly expensive Brazilian restaurant where you could eat (as Theo said later), "the entire cast of The Lion King on skewers."

Meat:

I can't find my photo of Gladys' neater plate (she was sitting next to me).

I can't remember the exact context for this picture, but here it is, preserved for posterity:

Later, at the hotel lobby, the sated Filipinos, fueled by beer, vodka tonics and Brazilian cremes de menthe, regrouped -- Kiko, Lucy, Rick, Liz, Theo, Robyn, Linda floating in and out (her book just came out), and I can't remember who else right now -- where discussion ensued: somewhat lurid talk with Tony (his co-edited book just came out too), the Manila music scene, rather tame AAS gossip, and Rex Navarrete. (Someone explained their discomfort at his humor, saying that he was essentially making fun of the working-class generation of her immigrant parents. This is not an incorrect observation, and his more recent enthusiastic reception in Manila by the well-heeled suggests, I think, a decidedly classist tinge to all the laughter at the declassed middle class and lower-middle class Filipinos who followed the doctors and engineers to American shores.)

Anyhow, the next day we had our Filipino caucus, where we discussed our Plans to Take Over The World. But outside the meeting room, I figured we had a bit of a way to go:

Posted by the wily filipino at April 11, 2006 08:27 PM