The Wily Filipino

Love Ko 'To!

Image taken from -- oh, you all know where it's from.

So there's this project I've been working on for some time (and to be roundtabled here next month -- oops, they have my affiliation wrong!) that deals with the question of Pinoys and music and how Pinoy performers explain why and how they do what they do. A big excerpt from my writings might explain this better:

In my interviews, Overseas Performing Artist returnees constantly spoke of a spontaneous and naturally Filipino ability to imitate. As a skeptical cultural anthropologist, I initially wanted to dismiss this out of hand. There was, of course, no such thing as a natural ability to imitate, much more a naturally Filipino one.

But the discourse that supported this supposedly inherent mimetic ability could be consistently drawn from over a century's worth of history. What was one to do, for instance, with Dean Worcester's assertion in 1900 that "the Filipino ...is endowed with great talent for imitation.... ...in a short time [the Filipino] learns how to play any sort of an instrument, but the bands...are poor because of their lack of knowledge of principles, and many of them play by ear without understanding a single note?"

Or of the New York Times reporter who wrote in the twenties, "Where music is concerned, the Filipinos are known as the Italians of the East. Add their own barbaric musical strain -- a blend of Oriental and Spanish 'ear culture' -- and you get an idea of their adeptness with the torturous instruments of jazz?" Or of essayist Pico Iyer, and anthropologist Arjun Appadurai after him, who, after watching a Filipino band play the music of John Denver, would pronounce Filipinos as "[creating] a nation of make-believe Americans?"

Or the countless Filipinos who would assert the seeming truism, "Magaling manggaya ang mga Pilipino [Filipinos are great at imitation]?" Or Danny, a keyboardist who had played in Tokyo and Pasadena, who told me, matter-of-factly, "Filipinos can imitate any sound?" Or RJ, a guitarist I interviewed in the summer of 2007, who said, "Ang Pilipino, sila lang ang tanging may dila na katulad nang loro [Filipinos are the only people with tongues like parrots]?"

A "natural ability to sing" and a "natural ability to imitate" are two different things, of course, but you get the general idea: to sing well is seen as natural for and by Filipinos. (Not me, of course, as my friends can attest. But give me a karaoke mic in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other and I can do the collected oeuvre of Thom Yorke fairly well.)

So I am quite tickled by the idea that 3 out of the 14 finalists for the Voice of McDonald's II competition -- which I found out about via the New York Times -- are Filipino. (The third, if you even had to guess, is the Canadian guy.)

And I just love the fact that Mary Yu -- who does those cute hand gestures (and more) on "Son of a Preacher Man" -- is a choir member and "worship/song leader in our church." Holy Dusty Springfield! That's sure some church -- sign me up!

Meanwhile, speaking of other Filipinos, my friend Carolyn (who isn't Pinay but knows how to spot 'em) sent me this hilarious YouTube video of a Southwest Airlines commercial. That guy's gotta be Pinoy. What's even funnier is that I could totally see a Filipino guy doing this in real life, if I actually went to clubs.

Posted by the wily filipino at February 9, 2008 01:52 AM