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Date Posted: 22:20:35 10/22/04 Fri
Author: toni
Subject: Re: THE GREAT FILIPINO DREAM
In reply to: By Conrado de Quiros 's message, "THE GREAT FILIPINO DREAM" on 00:47:51 10/14/04 Thu

>There's The Rub : " Dreams "
>
>Oct 14, 2004
>By Conrado de Quiros
>Inquirer News Service
>
>Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the October
>14, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
>
>SOME years ago, I spoke to a group of Filipino
>children in Hong Kong. It was in a part of town not
>unlike Manila’s Malate district, where a crowd
>promenaded and music slipped through, or blasted away
>from, dingy bars. The kids, who were in their late
>teens and early 20s, played in one of the bars and had
>earned a reputation for being the best band there,
>drawing no small amount of following each time they
>played. Their place had a good-sized crowd that night.
>
>We got together during the break; a friend of mine who
>lived there had introduced me to them. They turned out
>to be children of Filipino musicians who had decided
>to settle in Hong Kong. The bar itself was owned by
>their parents. One thing the kids said at one point in
>our conversation, conducted at pretty high decibel
>levels with rock music playing in the background,
>struck me. They had been to Manila several times, they
>said, and had gone to the places where bands played.
>And they had been impressed by the musicianship.
>
>Each time they went there, they said, they felt like
>amateurs.
>
>They had been composing their own songs, they said,
>and longed for the day when they could play them
>there. To get some recognition in Manila, even if they
>didn't get to reach the top of the heap-that was
>accomplishment enough. That was their ambition in
>(musical) life.
>
>I remembered that conversation after being deluged
>with pictures of Jasmine Trias wherever I went this
>past week. I like the kid, but I don't know why she
>has been turned into the toast of local Tinseltown.
>She is charming and talented, but so is an army of
>full-blooded Filipino young men and women currently
>playing in dingy bars in Manila and the provinces.
>Particularly in performance, which is where the
>Filipino excels in (unfortunately, Filipino musicians
>have yet to excel in the composition part). Filipino
>popular music performers have gotten global attention
>and been deemed world-class. Not so their
>compositions. With the possible exception of "Anak,"
>Original Pilipino Music gets to be played only largely
>to Filipino audiences abroad.
>
>I don't know that we need another performer in our
>midst. But clearly Trias' appeal lies beyond her
>musical abilities. She has been mined for something
>else, and that is the Great Filipino Dream.
>
>That Great Filipino Dream used to be the exclusive
>franchise of Nora Aunor. She was the biggest thing
>there was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and
>continued to have a strong fan base for decades (I
>know that she had the longest running TV show,
>"Superstar.") To this day, she continues to have a
>fanatical following, though a much-diminished one. The
>essay that recently won First Prize in the recent
>Palanca Awards (I was one of the judges), Wilfredo
>Pascual Jr.'s "Devotion," dealt precisely with that
>phenomenon. One urban poor resident had literally
>devoted her life to collecting every bit of
>paraphernalia of her idol.
>
>Aunor, of course, captured the imagination of the
>masses for a couple of things. The first is that she
>came from a dirt-poor family, she herself spending her
>childhood running after trains to sell water to
>thirsty travelers. The second was that she had a great
>voice. Joseph Estrada's appeal lay in that he essayed
>movie characters that clawed out of poverty with pluck
>and fist. Aunor's appeal lay in that she was a real
>person who clawed out of poverty with pluck and voice.
>Those are the two things Filipinos pride themselves
>in, their ability to fight and their ability to sing.
>For millions of starving Filipinos, Aunor represented
>the, getting out of the rut through song. Many of her
>early movies dwelt on that theme.
>
>Trias may just have stolen the crown from her,
>representing as she does the 21st-century Filipino
>Dream. That Filipino Dream consists of several things.
>
>The first is living in America and preferably being an
>American citizen. That is what Trias does and is.
>Though she is as brown as Aunor and loves Filipino
>food as much as Aunor, she is an American citizen and
>speaks with an American accent. But nobody cares. The
>universal indifference to her nationality is patent in
>all the local write-ups, where no one describes her as
>American. For all her nationality and accent, she is
>deemed Filipino to the core.
>
>(That is true as well, incidentally, of Alex
>Pagulayan, the billiards standout. Filipinos cheer for
>him wherever he goes, notwithstanding that his papers
>say he is not a Filipino but a Canadian. For most
>Filipinos, his being Canadian means nothing: He
>remains Filipino by heart.)
>
>The second is making it big in America. That is an
>ambition that has eluded Filipinos, whether it be
>those living in America, who are citizenship-wise no
>longer Filipinos but Americans, or those living in the
>Philippines. This country has not lacked for artists
>and writers and professionals who have dreamt of
>making it big in the US, and failed. Some years ago,
>Lea Salonga achieved phenomenal success in that
>respect, shining in "Miss Saigon" and taking Disney by
>storm. She did become the toast of the town, too. But
>she didn't look as brown as Nora Aunor and wasn't as
>plebeian as Nora Aunor. She captured the middle class
>but not the “masa” [masses]. Trias has done both.
>
>The last is making it big in America, or anywhere else
>in the world, through the one thing Filipinos are good
>at, or believe with religious fervor they are good at,
>which is singing. More than fist, voice has become the
>ticket Filipinos believe will get them through the
>trials and tribulations of life. Trias got near to
>bagging the "American Idol" trophy through it, and for
>most Filipinos that is more than good enough. It is
>the stuff of which their dreams are made.
>
>Some, of course, will have other words for dreams. But
>let us leave that tomorrow, for when the sun breaks
>and reality creeps in.

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