Yesterday's Roundup: Of Music and Mining

Gans and I attended a professorial lecture by Dr. Jonas Baes of the UP College of Music yesterday. Normally, I don't get to drop by similar events due to our respective schedules at Kalikasan, but this one was different. It was about the life and music of Jonas' elder brother, Dr. Aloysius "Ochie" Baes.

Ochie died last December. We knew him mostly as a scientist (AGHAM founding member!), an environmentalist, and a former member of the Bastes Commission on the Rapu-rapu mine spill. In his youth, Ochie was a former Chairperson of the UP Los Banos Student Council and a political detainee during Martial Law. It was only after he died that we learned that Ochie was also a musician, who helped compose many activist songs of the 1970's. Some of the recollections during Ochie's wake and tribute are documented in this article in Bulatlat.

The activity was held in one of the rooms at the College. The airconditioned space was bare, filled with monoblock chairs and a tarpaulin backdrop where sepia images of Ochie during his student days were projected onscreen. Indigenous musical instruments lay gathering dust inside large glass cabinets, like artifacts in a museum. One can hear the muffled sounds of instruments--stringed, percussion, and whatelse--echoing in the halls outside.

In this room, Jonas presented his lecture entitled "Generationloss: The Political Life of a Cassette Recorder and the Political Songs of Aloysius Baes Through the Early Years of Martial Law in the Philippines " (which hopefully shall be made available online and translated into Tagalog later on). In this paper, Jonas starts off by narrating the history of an object which many now dismiss as an artifact in this era of iPods and MP3 players, and but which was then considered as the cutting-edge in music technology in the rural Philippines of the 1970s: a cassette recorder. Jonas goes on to narrate the history of this recorder and the function of music in the Baes household and, eventually, in the political activities of his brothers in UP Los Banos and, later on, in the dictatorship's prisons. From these recollections, he proceeds to a lot of themes: the economics of cultural technology, the sociology of aesthetics, the politicization of the machine and its capacity for reproduction, the functions of memory and remembering.

Sure, there were welcome interruptions in this two-hour talk (In between segments of Jonas' lecture, Prof. Lester Demetillo rendered his version of Ochie's "top hits" Huwad na Kalayaan, Mutya, and Diwang Walang Takot. By the way, Jonas was lecturing while wearing only socks (his shoes were neatly set aside on the floor). I still can't figure out why.) But the main point of Jonas' lecture on Ochie's life was clear: about how music and its distribution could consciously be wielded as a form of potent political action, how it has the capacity to not just entertain and represent, but to resist and liberate.

It was a good and successful activity, that talk and the lively discussion that followed. Although an ample audience had filled up the room, I wish more people, especially activists involved in music production, could have been there to attend.

Ironically, for someone who just listened to a lecture which partly expounded on the power of technology as a means of memory, I forgot to take pictures and record the beautiful renditions of Ochie's songs.
-------
The Manila Times today published an article I wrote for their Special Report on mining in the Philippines. The story is an update on the Marcopper mine tragedy in Marinduque: what has happened (or not happened) so far in the pursuit for environmental justice for the affected communities. Also featured in three installments since Sunday was a piece on Defend Patrimony and how community groups have drafted a people's mining plan. Part two came out yesterday and part three today.

On the lighter side, Phil. Entertainment Portal featured our Sinekalikasan environmental film project yesterday in its indie section. The third screening's scheduled later at mag:net's Cinekatipunan, I hope everybody drops by to support the works by our CWTS students and Lomel/Miles/EJ. We will also be sponsoring a forum on climate change at UP later.
------
Here's the lyrics of one of Ochie's songs. It was produced in prison during the early years of Martial Law. Rediscovering it thirty-two years later (I first heard the song at Ochie's wake), it struck me how the state of things that the song speaks of hasn't changed, no matter how much we sadly wish they did.

Stockade 4, Camp Crame, June 12, 1975

HUWAD NA KALAYAAN

May kalayaan ba kung bayan
Ay dumaraing sa hirap?

Kung kayamanan ay hawak ng dayuhan
At masa ay salat
Kung manggagawa ay dusta
At magsasaka ay inaapi
Huwad, sadyang huwad ang kalayaan
Kung ang bayan ay ganyan.

May kalayaan ba kung bayan
Ay may gapos sa kamay?
Kung ang katotohanan
At katarunga’y nilulupig
Laksang nagtatanggol
Ay pinarurusahan at inuusig
Huwad, sadyang huwad ang kalayaan
Kung ang bayan ay ganyan.

Gapos ay lagutin, kamao ay itaas
Tumindig ka?t kamtin ang kalayaan
Hirap ay lunasan, pang-aapi ay wakasan
Ang bayan ay ipaglaban

Ang bayan ay ipaglaban.

Creativity in Context and an Experiment

Here's something I wrote last week for an exhibit at the Intellectual Property (IP) Phils, a government office whose purpose for existence, correct me if I'm wrong, revolves around the processing of patents, copyrights, and trademarks. They set up a spacious gallery at the first floor of the IP building, called the Alab Art Space. Since its located at the lobby of the building, fronting the sidewalk, the gallery and some of its contents are visible to all incidental passers-by: government employees, bureaucrats, office clerks hurrying to work, pedestrians, commuters trapped in traffic.

But this is what I'm (slightly) excited about: I'm trying to post this entry straight from my gmail inbox. Normally I post by writing the entire text in gmail then logging in to blogger to attach image files to it, which can be tedious sometimes. This time, I'll try posting the entire thing straight from my email. Wanted to see if the images, colored texts, and lay-out in the forwarded message would come out the same in my vblAg. [Roll eyes]

A postscript five minutes after: I declare the experiment a partial failure. The texts, lay-out and colors came out okay, but the images weren't appended. I had to log in to blogger all the same and upload all those little thumbnails below.

---------------------

exhibition notes

Creativity in Context


"Left Over Project Series" Racquel de Loyola





"Creativity, it has been said, consists largely of re-arranging what we know
in order to find out what we do not know." --George Kneller

To celebrate creativity—its potentials, procedures, and processes—is to
celebrate and acknowledge the potency of our histories, traditions, and
struggles. To celebrate creativity is also to embrace the force of change,
in whatever manifestations and dimensions it may take, and see how this can
spur us onwards as individuals and as a whole.

A celebration of creativity necessarily considers context. For rarely does
creativity thrive in a conceptual vacuum; nor does always it occur
sporadically within self, without heed or reference to one's surrounding
history, society, and systems. Whether in affirmation or interrogation of
one's past, present, and plans for the future, creativity spurs the need for
change (in its various manifestations) and freedom from immobility,
stagnation, strangulation.

The wordplay of the exhibition's title, DIWAng, itself denotes the
liberating potential of the power to create.The Tagalog noun from which the
exhibition takes root diwa, when roughly translated, generally means thought
or a state of mind. Diwa—when attached to the correct linguistic
modifier--can also morph into the word magdiwang or pagdiriwang (to
celebrate/celebration). Yet the title (as a word, 'diwang' is almost never
used by itself, but always in reference to another) also hints at the
incompleteness of the act—both of thought and of celebration--unless further
defined in relation to its contexts.

"How The Carabao Learned English" Don Salubayba








DIWAng features the works of seventeen acclaimed Philippine visual artists,
spanning a broad range of generations, styles, artistic media and
standpoints. Yet more than merely testify to the diversity and range of
talent, the exhibition aims to gather a selection of works testifying to a
rich tradition of highly-contextualized and situated creativity on the part
of the Filipino artist.

Seen in this perspective, several of the works in DIWAng attest to the
potentials and needs for scientifically-driven creativity in the field of
agricultural productivity, such as the painting entitled Anihan (Harvest),
by Gene de Loyola, where fields go from green to gold in their bounty. Boy
Dominguez's works, entitled Karagdagan and Pitong Ritwal, may be seen in the
light of how inspiration and sources may be derived from the motifs,
traditions and knowledges of the country's national minorities, many of
whose ways of life are threatened by foreign and local incursions and
assaults.

In the exhibition, works such as that of Emmanuel Garibay take the viewer to
previously unexplored yet familiar worlds. For instance, the work Goddess by
Garibay, repositions a larger-than-life image of the female deity away from
her earthy paradise and sets her in what seems to be an industrial yet
ethereal setting, filled with geometric shapes and shadows. Masquerade of
Enlightenment, a hand-colored lithograph print by Benjie Torrado Cabrera,
lulls the viewer into an exquisite realm which is later on shattered by the
significations of the work's title.

Other works literally remind us of how present-day imagination can be
situated in historical realities and traditional iconography. For instance,
Brenda Fajardo fuses both religious references and historical symbols in the
Apocalypsis series. The series appropriates the image of the Four Horsemen
in the Biblical Book of Revelations, said to be allegories for Pestilence,
War, Famine, and Death, and recasts the four dreaded figures not as
harbingers of suffering and evil, but of hope and righteousness. For the
latter, Fajardo takes inspiration in both the historical archetypes of
Philippine revolutionaries and struggling women: the anti-colonial
Katipunero, the indigenous bagani warrior, the Filipina fighter. Noel Soler
Cuizon takes on deeply-personal issues of identity and situates these in
history and ethnicity in the work entitled Act of Contrition.

Other works in the exhibition focus on the creation of metaphors for nation.
For instance, the works Epilogo by Mark Justiniani and Sa Kagitingan, by
Karen Ocampo Flores present commentaries on the roles of historical figures
and hero/ines on contemporary conceptions of nationhood. Flores presents the
image of a mother giving birth, framed by the blood of fallen heroes and
stars who light the way. After a Lost Original, a collaborative painting by
Wire Tuazon and Tanke Reyes, appropriates the historical images of the
United States of Americas' Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1776,
and juxtaposes these with images associated or hinting at the subsequent
conquest of the Philippine islands: monkeys, a bulol figure, effigies from
the manunggul jar, a dog and apple. The work strongly indicts the logic of
colonialism, pointing at how one nation's liberation ironically ended up in
another's slavery.

"Superpower" Mideo M Cruz











DIWAng also exhibits a number of works that not only reflect the country's
histories of colonization, but also chart how the cultural systems and ways
of thinking brought about by these experiences have persisted up to now,
decades after the period of direct foreign rule. How The Carabao Learned
English by Don Salubayba is a witty yet nonetheless compelling critique of
the colonial imprint left on the collective mentality of a nation. The
carabao (water buffalo), a quintessential symbol for the ordinary Filipino,
and how it has its mind attached to that of its master. Mideo Cruz
constructs Superpower, a figure fashioned out of odds and ends that is also
clearly a reference to robots depicted in cartoons as "saviors of the
universe". Cruz delivers a jab not only at the economic influx of imported
items (such as the cheap plastic toys used as components of the piece), but
also the importation of mentalities and frameworks that the foreign machine
facilitates.

Some of the other artists featured in the exhibition have contributed works
that depict contemporary social realities in the Philippines, attempting to
infuse new ways of seeing and documenting realities and everyday problems.
Social Realist stalwart Antipas Delotavo, for instance, subtly captures the
sense of isolation, disenfranchisement and alienation felt by many in a
country with a population of over 75 million people in his works Dambana and
Tansong Tala. Fragile, a diptych by Yko Umadhay, is a fitting tribute to the
present-day phenomenon of massive labor migration, the Overseas Foreign
Worker (OFW) boom that speaks of a fragile economy underneath the heavy
influx of remittances.

"Prusisyon/Crucifixion" Rene de Guzman

Creativity enables one to confront anew the realities that one often
ignores—or wishes to ignore. The pervasive issue of record-breaking poverty
levels and the rising economic disparities between the elite and the
downtrodden is eloquently alluded to in the work Elegy for the
Disenfranchised, by Iggy Rodriguez. The steel structures signifying supposed
development and progress are portrayed by Rodriguez as a skeletal frame, a
signifier of death to the downtrodden and dispossesed. Meanwhile, the issue
of extrajudicial killings of civilians and activists is alluded to and
articulated in works such as Prusisyon/Crucifixion by Rene de Guzman and the
Left Over Project Series by Racquel de Loyola. De Guzman's dismembered clay
heads and De Loyola's soft sculptures hanging from the ceiling take on a
chilling signification when arranged in this particular manner, resonating
in their images the countless victims of extrajudicial killings, abductions,
and human rights violations of late.

As a whole, the works in DIWAng are generally rooted in realities,
histories, and social truths—far by among the best sources of material for
the creative mind.

---

diwang
Celebrating Creativity
10th year Anniversary Exhibition of the IP Philippines
June 22 - August 10, 2007

participating artists:

• Antipas Delotavo
• Benjie Torrado Cabrera
• Boy Dominguez
• Brenda Fajardo
• Don Salubayba
• Emmanuel Garibay
• Gene de Loyola
• Iggy Rodriguez
• Karen Ocampo Flores
• Mark Justiniani
• Mideo M Cruz
• Noel Cuizon
• Racquel de Loyola
• Rene de Guzman
• Tanke Reyes
• Wire Tuazon
• Yko Umadhay
  

curator: Mideo M Cruz

---

Free Ka Bel NOW!

It's about time!

Yesterday the Supreme Court thumbed down the rebellion charges against the six progressive solons. In a strongly yet lucidly-worded 21-page decision, the SC finally affirmed what Atty. Romeo Capulong, Ka Bel, and the Batasan 5 have been saying all along, over and over again, for the past fifteen months: that the charges of rebellion by the Arroyo administration and the Department of Justice are flawed, baseless, malicious, utterly bereft of scrupulousness and impartiality.

Ka Bel, particularly, is vindicated in the decision, which only underscores the fact that the government had no legal basis or right to detain him. The SC also reprimands government prosecutors of their abuse of discretion and lack of impartiality in handling Ka Bel's case, particularly in the way that they proceeded with an inquest despite fully knowing that the Philippine police illegally arrested Ka Bel, without a warrant in the first place.

This reminds me of something that Atty. Joel Butuyan wrote and dissseminated in an e-groups, about the rights of would-be abductees in this time of enforced disappearances. Taking off from the case of Jonas Burgos, who was arrested by "policemen" in civilian clothing, he writes:

The rule is that policemen do not have an inherent authority to arrest by reason alone of their uniforms and guns. Their authority to arrest arises only when either of two exceptional circumstances are present: ONE, when the policemen have a warrant of arrest, and; TWO, when the policemen are personally in the presence of a person in the act of committing a crime.

Any policeman who takes any person into custody without either of the two exceptional circumstances is not making an arrest. He is in the act of committing a dastardly crime. He is the criminal.

The SC decision stopped short of saying that the state prosecutors from the CIDG and DOJ were coddling criminals all along. But what it makes clear is that some institutions of the state have been used for political exigency, to the extent that they would not hesitate to effect a "miscarriage of justice" (in Ka Bel's words) as a means to further their ends.

DOJ Secretary Raul Gonzales should really keep his mouth shut this time around. After he dissed representatives from the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) as mere foreigners meddling in the affairs of the Philippines for their recommendation that Ka Bel be released from detention, I don't think he will be able to comfortably assert that the all-Filipino SC shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of the DOJ or something to that effect, without making a global laughingstock of himself. Although he's come pretty close to getting there.

I'm so happy for Ka Bel's family, especially Ka Osang, who had to endure seeing her husband be detained twice over, and Janrei, who will be having his favorite lolo back. Still, I'm reserving my loudest hurrahs for the time when we all see Ka Bel actually released, when he finally gets out and goes back to Congress and the streets to continue with all the duties cut short by his detention. It's where he is happiest, and where he is most needed.

From Ka Bel I learned that victory should always be accepted with humility, dignity, and a resolve to continue with the struggle. Which is why, while recognizing the gravity of the crimes committed against him and asserting the call for justice and accountability from his captors, I'm happy to see that Ka Bel's again gearing up for the fight for workers' wage increases and other needs of the toiling masses.

Free Ka Bel NOW!