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THAT we
love to sing is proven already by the phenomenon of
salesclerks and ladies who may not have it in their mind
to thank you but are always ready to sing along with
whatever is playing in the department stores. People in
this nation sing. It is tempting to compare this
behavior to the African-American and their broad
heritage of blues and plantation songs. They sang them
to ease the pain and difficulty of cotton picking. They
sang them to express a protest that would not have been
allowed if this were shouted out. Moaned and infected
with a rhythm, the songs found their way to the daily
protest of a people.
Stretch
we may the parallelism, it is quite not charming to
compare “The Papaya Song” as an expression of protest
and liberation with pieces like “Joshua Fit the Battle
of Jericho” or Ma Rainey’s “Tombstone Blues.” And yet,
maybe theirs—salesclerks and department-store ladies—may
be a way of protesting the long day of standing and
waiting on customers.
We have
always been natural “Japayukis” in the sense of
possessing the mindset to leave the comfort of one’s
country and home and into an alien territory.
There is
really nothing wrong with the term Japayuki. Literally,
it simply means “people who go to
Japan.”
The suffix yuki means “direction” and, indeed, aren’t we
all, by influence or by admiration and by dream,
directed to move to a place or region where we can sing
or play some music and be paid wondrously for it? We
have been on Broadway and West End. We are in Hong Kong
Disneyland. We are in
Singapore
rendering cheaper, but not necessarily inferior,
versions of musicals and theme-park performances
originally designed for Caucasian bodies and vocal
chords. My friends tell me we are even in Africa, the
wellspring of pop-music rhythms, giving the savannahs a
taste of our own jazz.
But long
before the term Japayuki became tainted by an aura of
discrimination and an unwanted patina of simmering
obscenity, there were individuals who braved the
cultural distance between the Philippines and Japan.
Some succeeded, like Raymond Conde, Bimbo Danao and
Manolo Valdes. Some, like Dolphy and Panchito, came back
to the country and went on to become icons of comedy in
Philippine movies. Manolo is the reason why in Mitch
Valdes’s one-woman show, the “episode” on Japan is most
captivating. Manolo is Mitch’s father, a major key
informant sought by any one researching on the history
of Filipino entertainers in Japan and in some parts of
Asia.
The
success of Raymond Conde, Manolo Valdes and Bimbo Danao
are of the phenomenal kind. There is one photo of Danao
seated beside Ava Gardner, the Filipino singer looking
like a cross between Clark Gable and Gilbert Roland.
With a voice that is grand but not flamboyant, Danao
comes across in recordings as suave and cosmopolitan.
Much as I want to remember him as initiating the good
reputation of Filipino musicians, I get this feeling his
Japanese fans loved him because he was a more accessible
performer, able to fuse the Western musical mode with an
Asian ardor. Still, he was not the cheap performer. He
married Keiko Awaji, a major Japanese actress whose film
credits include a starring role in Akira Kurosawa’s
Stray Dog. You could compare this actress with our own
Charito Solis and Rita Gomez.
YouTube
is kinder to Conde. There is a YouTube entry showing him
performing with Eri Chiemi, a venerated Japanese jazz
singer. The YouTube appearance shows Conde singing and
singing no less the song called “Sampaguita.” At the
end, the Japanese musicians laud the lovely melody of
the song.
Conde,
Valdes and Danao are three missing pieces in our
pop-music history. They tell us where we were and why we
got there. It was not sheer musical genius that created
a space for us there. It was part-economics,
part-history and part-magic. We were always the Asian
who was not Asian; the singers who could disappear
behind Broadway songs; the musicians who could scat and
growl like any jazz demigod. Think of Katy de la Cruz,
who created her own jazz. Think of Annie Brazil, who was
wowing them in Shibuya in the early ’60s, sometimes
outperforming singers like Anita O’Day. It was a tough
market. Remember this was Tokyo with its own share of
singers like Peggy Hayama with impeccable English and
rhythm.
These
tough OFWs when the acronym had not yet been coined, and
when labor export was not yet the way to describe
Filipino diaspora, paved the way for Filipino musicians
to go out and show the other music hot spots like
Shanghai and Hong Kong and, of course, Tokyo.
They
dominated Roppongi and Akasaka. During those times, they
did not really represent the country but presented
themselves as the performers to reckon with.
Interestingly enough, when these excellent Filipino
musicians were the toast of
Tokyo and other places, the Japanese musicians were also
developing their own expertise in imitating the Western
mode, from Latin beat to ballads. Later, the Japanese
would shun gradually the Western template as they began
to rediscover their own music, linked now to what they
felt was more Japanese.
Except
for Marilyn de la Peña in the late ’80s and into the
’90s, we really do not have a name now as good musicians
in Japan. With the development, in fact, of of the
controversial Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership
Agreement, the image of the Filipino will be radically
altered from the hostess-san to the caregivers and
formal health workers. Among those who have been
studying this agreement, many are wary that our health
workers will once more be shortchanged in terms of
compensation and other benefits. For those who are
familiar with the general perception of the Japanese
that we are a nation of nightclub workers and
entertainers, they see the change as not drastic but
pleasant.
For the
moment, the music plays on. Our “Pandanggo sa Ilaw” is
danced by our women in braless tops. In some clubs, the
dances of the Mountain Province receive enhancement from
topless Filipinas. You cannot miss these places: there
is always our flag displayed, neon-lit. I have been
complaining about this and many others have been
complaining about the practice of putting the flag to
designate the presence of Filipina hostesses. I have not
seen any official response. It could be because with the
flags stuck on walls from Hokkaido to Honshu to Shikoku
and Kyushu, we get this feeling we are the only country
with numerous consulates. At least, that’s how they look
like to me. |
