The Philippines Experiment, Track Four

If you know who I am or have been reading this blog, you are probably aware that I spent two and half years of my life living in the Philippines. Now I'm back, and I'm going to attempt to chronicle the entire experience as best as my vague recollection allows.

Shout Out Out Out Out - Your Shitty Record Won't Mix Itself

I love being a mechanical engineer. It’s challenging work, a profitable career, and a reputable profession. If I were to do this until I retire, I wouldn’t be unhappy. Still, as good an occupation as it is, I would never consider it a “dream job”. Let’s say I was able to travel back in time, and I would have the capability of having a conversation with my eight-year-old self, I think it would go a little something like this:

Now-Me: “What if I was to tell you that in the future, you will be very lucky to have a chance to design piping layouts for a living? Is that something you’d be interested in?
Eight-Year-Old-Me: “Are these piping layouts anything like the ones in World 7 of Super Mario Bros. 3?”
Now-Me: “A little bit. But instead of those venus fly trap thingies, they will be filled with either oil, water, or steam!”
Eight-Year-Old-Me: “Forget it, dude! Eat my shorts!”




Having known my eight-year-old me since I was eight, I’m aware that he was never a proponent of pragmatism. If he had his way, I would’ve been either a starter for the Chicago Bulls, a ninja turtle, or a musician. Now I’ve come to the conclusion early on that I’m never going to share a locker room with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, nor fight foot soldiers side by side with Leonardo and Michaelangelo. However, before I left for the Philippines, there still flickered a vaguely nebulous aspiration that at some point, I would have a vocation in music, whether as a performer or a professional commentator.

I feel like I’ve been preparing for this since birth. At age three, I was forced to sing Starship’s “We Built This City” in front of a city rally because my parents wanted to show me off. At age nine, I started religiously listening to Casey Kasem’s Casey’s Countdown on the radio, hoping that no one ever knocked off Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road” (lasted 13 weeks!). At age eleven, I wrote in my sixth grade yearbook that my goal in life is to become a rock star. At age 20, I wrote my first music review—Talkie Walkie by Air—while waiting for my ride home from the U of A. At age 21, I attempted to semi-regularly legitimize and justify my taste in music in this blog, and I was doing so whether there was an audience or not. I’ve been in battle of the bands, talent shows, and singing competitions all my life. Also, thanks to the Internet, I’ve opened my mind as wide as it could go to cram a pathetically encyclopedic amount of music in there. At age 27, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, I’ve already got in my “ten thousand hours of practice”.

I do, however, have to be completely honest with myself and finally acknowledge that I don’t possess the uncanny ear for melody, or the lyrical depth, or the emotional resonance needed to become a full-fledged recording artist. I tried to compose songs back in the day, none of which are good enough to expect anyone to actually purchase them. It’s true that you are your own worst critic, but I have enough self-awareness to know that an album of mine would never make my own (t5!) year-end list, and that would depress me. So I’ll just admit that my relationship with music will forever be defined by listening, analyzing and disseminating rather than creating one from scratch.

The most glaring question still is “why there and why not here in Canada?” To be frank, it’s the lack of competition that attracted me. If I aim to become a critic here, I would have to contend with Pitchfork and the countless popular tastemakers all over. Not to be a fatalist, but citizens nowadays already subscribe to a trustworthy legion of opinions that it’s certainly difficult to offer a perspective that hasn’t been presented yet. On the other hand, the Philippines is a country that predominantly lives under a rock. The shortage of broadband internet is a huge part of it; according to a survey, only five percent of Philippine households have fast internet connection, which is a huge discrepancy compared to Canada’s 76 percent. Filipinos essentially rely on radio stations, noontime variety shows, and Bluetooth file sharing via cell phones (*) for new music. My goal was to educate, to help expand people’s music libraries, and to share my wisdom of songs beyond the realm of mainstream choices.

(*) I can probably do a 2000-word entry on this subject alone, but I guess I’ll just condense it into a profuse italicized sidebar. The music taste of the Filipino people is frustratingly limited. Songs classified as “R&B” are best sellers. Basically, this includes any rap or Top 40 hit with a sugary hook and the stylistic components of hip-hop. These are also popular among kids who wear hip-hop jerseys and flash gang signs. It’s funny because the same kids believe that there’s a strong correlation between the music you bump to and the clothes you rock, so because they preach ruthless thug living with what they wear and how they act, I assumed that the tender sounds of Ne-Yo and the vibrant beats of the Black Eyed Peas would irk them. Apparently not. They also believe that 2pac is the big bang theory that birthed hip-hop as we know now (even though very few has actually heard the All Eyez On Me double album in its entirety), so if you expect a discussion about the Boogie Down Productions or Erik B. & Rakim in the Philippines, it’s not going to happen. The majority favor “love songs”, not only the ones belonging to Chris Brown or Beyoncé but also the ones sung by groups like Air Supply and written by songwriters like David Pomeranz (who was so successful in our country that he decided to live there permanently). People who like rock are pretty interesting in that each generation becomes embedded to the rock of their own era; it’s just sad that the rock of our generation includes bands like Nickelback and Creed. “Techno” is big, but they’re only familiar with the small sample played by the local DJ's. There are some reggae fans that go all out Rastafarian, but ask them anything outside of Bob Marley and they’re stumped. Indie and hipster picks are unrecognized in Olongapo, but there are very dedicated fans of the genre in Metro Manila.

My first endeavor to achieve music superstardom was trying to get a job as a radio DJ. I feel like I’m more than qualified for it—I can talk endlessly about music, I know enough pop culture and current events to last a two-hour show, I can be personable to callers, I can conjure interesting interview questions for guests to answer. The intention was to share my aural treasure finds on air, force-feed the citizens with obscure bands and artists. I was excited to find out that the local radio station was looking for DJ’s, so I handed in my résumé and dropped by to try out. There wasn’t an interview, and I wasn’t asked any questions whatsoever; instead, they recorded me reciting a newspaper article on a cheap computer microphone. After that, no callbacks. Apparently, I don’t have the voice for radio.

I also tried to assemble an acoustic cover band to have a weekly gig at music bars. I was such a permanent feature in these bars that I ended up becoming acquainted with members of some of the cover bands in Olongapo. They sometimes requested for me to get on stage so that they can have a break from their tedious weekly set list, and I would bask in the spotlight with a guitar or a piano and feature songs like Sufjan Stevens’ “To Be Alone With You” and Matthew Good Band’s “Apparitions”. I liked performing so much that I wanted to do it on the regular. I was discouraged, however, by my band friends because from their experience, nothing shrinks your passion for music more than being in a band as a job. You have to endure lousy pay, terrible hours, drunken audiences, and tyrannical bar owners every single night. It’s not worth it, so I’m told.

As might be expected, I tried hard to become a music writer (a sports writer too, but that tale is for a different day). My thought was that since the lack of Internet would make it challenging to reach an audience, the best way to promote these lesser-known bands and artists to the Philippine masses is through newspapers and magazines. So I sent my résumé along with sample articles to every major newspaper and magazine, but I painfully didn’t get any calls. Without any feedback, I can only speculate what the reasons why no one gave me an opportunity—maybe it’s because I don’t have a degree in Journalism or Mass Communication, maybe it’s because I’m only a blogger and nothing more “serious”, maybe because the newspapers I applied in didn’t have any openings, maybe my writing was just not good enough. Obviously it was disappointing, but it’ll take more than a few setbacks to discourage me from writing. Employers would probably benefit to know that my passion means that I would write for free, I’ve been doing so for all these years.

Tryst - Let's Touch Fives! EP

One plan that somewhat came to fruition was me becoming a mash-up artist. Girl Talk was an enormous inspiration, not only because I enjoy listening to all of his mash-up tracks, but also because he (Gregg Gillis is his everyday name) successfully concurred his biomedical engineering day job with his dreams as a musician. I was also especially in-this-to-win-this because if everything fell into place, this avenue could give me the most pay and the most fame (my cousin told me that her prestigious university paid a DJ ten grand pesos for a gig, and he wasn’t even that good). Also, if I reach prominence as a mash-up artist, everything else should come easier. Under the name "Tryst" (because I make love happen), I created mixes, even compiling a couple of “albums” that gained me some notoriety among friends and acquaintances, and I was fortunate enough to provide sound for some parties. If I had to do it all over again though, I wouldn’t try to get gigs in local clubs by giving my sample mixes to the DJ’s currently employed there. I don’t know how it was everywhere else in the Philippines, but in Olongapo, there’s a brotherhood between the local DJ’s that is so tight that it’s difficult to infiltrate if you’re an outsider. Also, since they were being paid by the gig, another DJ hired means taking a salary away from one of them.

Even though doing the music thing wasn’t technically a success, I'm very pleased that I did pull all the stops to attain whatever. And I haven’t given up exactly—I still pounce on every freelance writing opportunity I come across in all the job finder websites, I still make tracks every time I hear two songs that would blend well together, and I still practice singing in the shower just in case the possibility to start an acoustic cover band arise from somewhere. I think the eight-year-old-me would be very proud of my efforts.