Philippines Travel and Music

Why the Philippines Are Asia’s Rock Engine

by Bruce Northam

Travel writer Bruce Northam walks, talks, and paddles his way through the Philippines’ musical history via capital city Manila and melting pot island Palawan

Weaned on window-side serenades and bred on unruly karaoke bars, the Filipino culture is a distinctly musical one that dates back to the early 1500s. The native musicians of the Philippines—a cluster of more than 7,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean—have integrated assorted American and Spanish influences with the loud, clear voice of their country’s own musical past to create an infectious throb that’s catching on. From China to Indonesia, Singapore to Japan, if there’s an accomplished band on-stage in Asia, they’re more often than not of Filipino descent.

Arnel PinedaWord has reached America too. Journey recently recruited Arnel Pineda, a native son of the Philippines, to take over their lead singing position after viewing some YouTube clips of him belting uncanny covers of their hit songs.

Of his native land, Pineda says, “It’s a big sponge that’s open to world music. We grew up breathing music; it’s in our veins and in our hearts by age five. It’s infused with our passion.”

It’s been a long and noisy, if highly romantic, road to the Philippines’ unexpected prominence in the music world. Its Westernization dates back to when Spain’s rule of the Philippines gave way to American colonization in 1898. Then, during WWII, the United States brought with it a Hollywood introduction to the entertainment lifestyle, and among other things, launched the Filipino rock, jazz, and lounge band industry. Especially during the Vietnam War, base towns like Olongapo and Angeles became live Western music hubs. The U.S. military also left a vintage guitar legacy—hundreds of collector’s item guitars, many of them Gibsons, found permanent homes in the Philippines.

Cowboy Santos at Hobbit HouseBut the American soldiers certainly weren’t the first to introduce the Filipinos to the guitar. The 333-year Spanish colonial era that began in 1565 introduced guitars, choirs, and the art of serenading. Historically, Filipinos have a song for every occasion: rice planting, night fishing, birthdays, and courtship bids. The Filipino word for serenade, harana, parallels the Spanish romantic tradition. For generations, it was common for a man to show up with a guitar outside his beloved’s home and croon a love song. In fact, nearly every Filipino man born before 1960 has a vivid, wide-grinning recollection of serenading his eventual wife—or of being shot down in flames.

Though the Filipino culture is still hopelessly romantic, the music craze it’s become best known for today is karaoke and its cousin, videoke. As common as horn-honking in New York, jukebox-style karaoke and videoke machines, which incorporate TVs that flash song lyrics, boom from crowded street corners, dimly-lit bars, and Asia’s biggest malls. The Philippines gave rise to the modern musical phenomenon in the late ’80s. Invented by a Filipino man and then sold to a Japanese investor, karaoke has now proliferated all over the world.

Manila, the Philippines' Bustling Capital City

A heavily populated city of 14 million, Manila is a study of contrasts. Modern yet traditional, Asian in character but Western in disposition. Inside the capital city’s music joints—and there are hundreds of them—the guitar still takes center stage. This is a cultural center where musicians, not DJs, are still local celebrities.

Manila’s Malate nightlife district alone has dozens of sing-along bars with non-canned music ranging from sitar and bongo duos to American Idol-style contestants. In five bars lining one street, one might find a rock band, a musical comedy, a trio of women singing and dancing accompanied by a keyboardist, a jazz singer/pianist, and an acoustic guitar duo. Serving 50 cent bottles of cold beer, outdoor bargain cafes and traveler’s hangouts abound, and each spins tunes from their massive, classic rock and blues CD inventories.

But live rock bands remain the foundation of Manila’s entertainment scene. The Hobbit House, a downtown Manila institution, is gritty and fascinating—almost a Filipino version of New York’s CBGB, except that it’s entirely staffed by dwarves. Catering to an uptown and downtown Manila crowd mixed with U.S. Vets and visiting tourists, bands load in and out while the dwarves carry around trays of beer. One local band that plays there often is Blue Rats, a blues ensemble fronted by guitar prodigy Cowboy Santos, who plays a left-handed Tobacco Sunburst Les Paul. Though Santos has the easy confidence of a rock star, for now he’s just a local hero. “My guitar is ready to rock right out of the case,” he enthuses. “It just makes me feel like a badass.”

A more intimate live music venue is the Casablanca-like Penguin Cafe, an artsy Malate bar that’s a magnet for art students and musicians, actors from the Cultural Center of the Philippines and downtown’s avant garde. Assorted world music lovers have been mingling here since the early 1980s. Artwork covers the walls. The absence of an elevated stage, or cover bands, keeps it bohemian.

Palawan, the Philippines’ Charming Tropical Paradise

According to some records, music cultivated its way into the Philippines even before the Spanish towed in cannonballs, religion, and government. In Palawan, a narrow, 250-mile island paradise bisected by an imposing spine of limestone karst peaks and flanked by white-sand beaches, the indigenous lowland aboriginals—the Tagbanuas—expressed love by singing poems inspired by the inexhaustible variety of nature sounds. The Tagbanuas imitated the singing of insects and birds and created a “bird scale.”

Situated in the southwest corner of the Philippines, Puerto Princesa is Palawan’s main port. One of its 160,000 inhabitants is Bing, a charming mother of five, who relates being serenaded by her lover several years ago. She recalls coming to her window at 2 a.m. with talcum powder all over her face. There stood her now-husband singing, “My love, please listen to this sad love song which is coming from a loving heart/ Please be generous with your compassion to my pitiful heart that longs for your love.” Today, he serenades her still. But during more hospitable hours.

In Palawan’s west coast village of Sabang, near the site where survivors of Magellan’s expedition restocked supplies on their way back to Spain, a tour guide named Danilo rows tourists on three-mile trips through what is probably the world’s longest underground river. During one such trip, with only a hand-held lantern illuminating the subway tunnel-sized passageway, Danilo relates his own serenading tale. Floating motionless, he turns off his headlamp, and his passengers follow suit. Amidst the pitch blackness, Danilo admits that his serenading debut (“breeding season bellow”) was a failure. Seems the courting stakes are higher in a country where divorce is still nonexistent.

“She may not have even been home,” he wonders aloud, as bats and swifts audibly swoop past.

Reemerging into daylight near the cave’s mouth, past a patch of thousands of quivering bats, Danilo suggests in soft tones, referencing caves, or love, or both, “Sometimes it’s best to look back, but not turn back.”

Paddling on, Danilo winks ahead at a waiting throng of new customers, all female. As he paddles back into his ‘office’ with a fresh load of cavers, he can be heard pledging to his female customers that he’s “learning to play the guitar.” It’s a classic Indo-Pacific pickup line, and they laugh appreciatively.

Author's Bio

BRUCE NORTHAM has created travelogues in 100 countries on every continent. The author and travel columnist lectures on freestyle travel via the Lordly & Dame speaker's bureau at universities, corporate events and Governor's Conferences on Tourism.

He's the travel columnist for Canvas Magazine, a “Green” Long Island monthly, and The Improper Magazine, a New York Metro monthly providing the "view askew" for 185,000 readers from Manhattan to Montauk; bulk of readers reside in the Hamptons and Manhattan. The former writer-at-large for Blue Magazine, Northam has also contributed to Newsday, Perceptive Travel, National Geographic Traveler, New York Post, Details, Men's Edge, GoNomad.com, Gibson.com and The Meeting Professional. He's been anthologized in Travelers' Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

His third book, Globetrotter Dogma: 100 Canons for Escaping the Rat Race & Exploring the World, was cited by National Geographic Adventure as one of "Ten better choices: insightful travelogues that will inspire rather than dictate." (Geographic's list included The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo). He's also the author of The Frugal Globetrotter, and In Search of Adventure: A Wild Travel Anthology.

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