Keeping this flame alive are a few artists who have taken it upon themselves to build their sound upon a foundation of Filipino music older than the Western influences that color the Filipino mainstream today. Now internationally-known as "Philippine world music," it is just that: the musicians’ gift to the world–Filipino and Southeast Asian rhythms that tell of a proud, ancient heritage. They play, sing, and sometimes dance to the po-werful sounds and chants of the Cordilleras, the mountains of Davao, the woodlands and jungles of pre-Hispanic Philippines.
In a culture whose popular music today is composed of adapted versions of North American and European sounds, they are spreading an infectious rhythm that, while ancient, is entirely new to the next generation.
University of the Philippines Professor Pedro R. Abraham is one such artist.
"Edru" Abraham is mentor and founder of Kontemporar-yong Gamelang Pilipino, also known as Kontra-Gapi. The name itself is indicative of the nature of the group: the gamelan is a form of music in Southeast Asia that combines influences from Javanese, Chinese, Balinese, Malay and Middle Eastern traditions. The word "gamel" is Javanese for "hammer," an appropriate name for an orchestra whose bulk is made up of percussion instruments, generating music more dependent on beat and rhythm than the now widely-accepted harmony and melody of Western music.
As a contemporary gamelan ensemble, they propagate the sound and feel of Southeast Asian culture. Yet its acronym Kontra-Gapi is also a derivative of two Tagalog words: "kontra," against, and "gapi," or shackle. It is the aim of Kontra-Gapi to free the Filipino listener and musician from their limitation to Western sounds and influences, and to broaden their appreciation of the music of Asia and rural Philippines.
"The world knows all about Philippine musicians," Prof. Abraham says. "But compared to that not a lot of people have really heard of Philippine music."
The group, composed of students and faculty, uses instruments from all over the Philippines and its neighboring countries and cultures: the debakan, solibaw and Cordilleran drums, kuribaw or mouth harps, different gong and xylophone tribal instruments like the kulintang, gangsa, kulibet, esmi, and tonggali– only a few instruments among the hundreds in the Kontra-Gapi arsenal.
The music made by these instruments in unison is unfamiliar yet compelling, new yet primal to the ear of one used to the sounds of contemporary popular music. The human body, too, is used as an instrument in Kontra-Gapi, through claps, stomps, dances and chants that complete the gamelan experience.
The gamelan is not only music but performance. In the course of a performance the artists may play, sing, mime, dance and chant, and change instruments. Before every performance Edru explains the source, significance, and soul of each piece, making the audience active members of the experience, participating in a ritual of music, much like the rituals the songs came from.
Kontra-Gapi, begun in 1989, has toured cities in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Southeast Asia and done more than 800 shows both locally and overseas. They have been very well received abroad, playing festivals, concerts, diplomatic missions and private engagements that showcase the richness of traditional Philippine music. They have worked with performers Gary Granada, the Apo Hiking Society, Kuh Ledesma, and Gary Valenciano, and been involved in the performances of Ballet Philippines, Ballet Manila, the U.P. Filipiniana Dance Group, Powerdance, and the Solid Gold Dancers. They have also performed in Baguio, the Cordilleras, Zambales, Ilocos, Cagayan and Pampanga and Palawan, among other areas, giving the natives back the sounds that had inspired the group.
Ultimately, Edru hopes for a greater awareness of traditional Filipino music not only abroad but here in the Philippines, to put their kind of music back in the center of cultural life. He wishes to make traditional Philippine music not only a part of history, moldering in museums separated from the people by time and glass displays, but to be a vibrant, living force in our culture.
Joey Ayala is another familiar figure in the landscape of traditional Philippine music. Since 1982, he has combined the use of ethnic instruments with electric guitars, bass and drums. Equally facile with an electric guitar as with the T’Boli two-stinged hengalong, Joey has been a proponent of advocacy accompanied, among others, by the sounds of the Bagobo and T’Boli, the tribes of Davao where Joey was first immersed in the native culture.
He also declines to put his music, or the music of his contemporaries, into a genre. The man whose work has been called "neo-ethnic" and "alternative" says, "All these labels, these terms are a just matter of perspective. ‘World music’ is an international term for our music. Before trying to make categories and realities for music, especially traditional Philippine music, we have to appreciate the diversity, the richness of the music and the culture itself."
Joey has certainly embraced this diversity, with his range of sound going from one end of the traditional music spectrum (renditions of folk songs and lore) to the other (kundiman, rock and reggae accompanied by native instruments and rhythms).
In the course of his long career he has sung about politics, revolution, advocacy for the indigenous peoples of the Philippines, the environment, the country, family, and love. He has appeared in rallies, concerts, festivals, and on MTV. His humor, sometimes subtly tongue-in-cheek, sometimes poetic-silly, shines through his songs. It is a humor and reflectiveness reflected in our culture. In fact, most of the songs are Filipino not only in theme and sound but also in spirit: street-smart, introspective, and playful. And he has brought his gift of the Filipino sound to the US, to Canada, Japan, India, Paris and London, among others.
Joey Ayala sings to expose the Filipino soul. Filipino world music also has an impact overseas because of the exoticism involved when a Westerner listens to Eastern music. With local audiences, however, it is more primal. It is our theater, our legends we recognize in the sound. "We always look for that sound," he says. We seek, consciously or unconsciously, to encounter something that we recognize as truly ourselves.
What of the mainstream music today? "Well, obviously, they’re not playing for me," he says, laughing. He has nothing against mainstream or pop. His own influences, aside from indigenous tribal music, include the sounds of the 60s and 70s, like Asin and Gary Granada. According to him, the appreciation of Filipino music is a matter of evolving the consciousness of the audience. Music is a spectrum, and traditional music should be part of that spectrum.
To this end he has also recently focused on education, playing and providing materials for educational institutions to drum up interest in and exposure to music that is well and truly Filipino. He has seen the music evolve over the years. He has been witness to the coming of the second and third wave of musicians. Does he see a future in which traditional Filipino music breaks into the mainstream?
"It all depends on the quality of the new musicians," he says. With the musicians getting better and better at this, there should be a greater appreciation and a broadening of horizons.
"[The music] is not about bringing back the past. It’s about going forward, crossing structures and idioms and currents."
Among the new musicians that have embraced the sounds of the Orient is the band known as Pinikpikan. Named after a Cordilleran delicacy in which a chicken is beaten and flogged before thrown over an open fire, the band was born in the first Baguio Arts Festival, in an impromptu jam session at a cafe dap-ay, a tribal circular rock formation in which tribal councils and rituals are held.
Through the years the members have come and gone, but now the band’s sound and roster have solidified: with Sammy Asuncion (composer, guitar), Billy Bonnevie (percussion), Louie Palan (bass), Arnold Casinto (percussions, kulintang), Butch Aldana (flute, gabang), Jerry Baguio, Jesse Garovillo and Dante Bosch on djembe drums and percussions, Fritz Parth on the drum kit, Ito Martinez (kubing and bamboo harp) and Carolina Bello, who sings and chants accompanied by this eclectic ensemble. The musicians also rotate instruments and roles, bring their individual sounds together in innumerable ways.
This group has a flavor that places stress on the "world" in "Filipino world music." With an array of indigenous instruments from all over the world, not only from Asia and native Philippines but from Africa and Latin America, they have forged a sound that is truly and uniquely global: the drum kit, Cuban congos and African djembe drums and electric bass laying down a beat and rhythm for Badjao gabangs, bamboo flutes, electric guitar, the Southern kudling (a two-stringed lute), tungatong and kulintang with modern arrangements. The sound is exotic, even to the local ear, a heterogenous wall of sound.
In incorporating old traditions with new attitudes, they have remade the Filipino, Latin American and African music cultures, celebrating the diversity of sounds. They, too, wish to give back to the Filipino his heritage, not only performing overseas in music festivals (with Ballet Philippines at the first asean Arts Festival held among the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and, more recently, in the Singapore Festival), but also touring the provinces, a giving back of the sounds that they have borrowed, and the provincial response is strong.
"We play an old lullaby, a sarumbanggit, and then the people there love it, because it’s their own and they recognize it," says Billie.
For the more Westernized pop-oriented Manila audiences, they have also made headway: concerts and show apprearances are aplenty. "Popular and mainstream music today has been a chain around our necks. It’s all the same style, the same repertoire. We’re part of opening the door," he says. "It’s a window of opportunity to appreciate all these heritages."
Pinikpikan foresees a broader-minded audience down the line. As they and their contemporaries expose the Filipino ear to sounds not from the mass-marketed Western traditions, more and more people will realize that there is more music out there than boy bands and nursery-rhymes set to dance music.
According to Edru, "With an increasing nationalism you’ll find increasing interest. With increasing interest, you’ll find more exposure, with more and more people listening to it and becoming more fluent in the music, or at least conversant or appreciative of it."
Pinikpikan, Joey Ayala and Edru Abraham are only a few of the artists who wish to paint a picture of Philippine music as vibrant, alive, and evolving as the other, more popular forms of music today.
They reintroduce us to our roots, to our heritage, so that we may be able to carry our identity and birthright towards a new millennium.
Joey Ayala’s latest album, 16lovesongs, is available in music stores. He will performon June 18 at the Conspiracy Cafe in Visayas Ave., QC. Pinikpikan’s new album, Kaamulan, from Tao Records Philippines, is distributed by Tower Records.The group will perform at the Fete de la Musique in Eastwood City on June 19. Kontra-Gapi’s recordings are available upon request. Contact Prof. Abraham at (0918) 9167409. The group will hold auditions on June 28 at 6 pm for people who wish to embrace a more traditional, unadulterated form of Philippine music.