1

EXAMINING THE ASIAN IMAGINARY IN PHILIPPINE CONTEMPORARY

MUSIC
Juro Kim Feliz

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on the constant negotiation between a critical conception of Asia

and an internalization of the ‘Filipino’ construct in postcolonial Philippine contemporary mu-

sic composition. With centre-periphery interactions governing the emergence of contempo-

rary music in the region after World War II, the notion of ‘Asia’ became a crucial point of

contention regarding its necessary distinction from the West. Envisioning an artistic and phi-

losophical approach towards new music creation, the compositional praxes of Jose Maceda,

Lucrecia Kasilag, Ramon Santos, and Jonas Baes highlight a need to examine traditional and

pre-colonial modes of musical expression. In effect, a pan-Asian paradigm and a developing

critique of Western modernism necessarily involved an intersectional approach between eth-

nomusicology, music composition, and decolonization. This study contemplates the signifi-

cance of this approach in today’s (post)-postmodernist aesthetic amidst increased globaliza-

tion, along with positionalities within fluid intersections of identity, politics and culture.

Keywords: composition, postcolonial, Asia

BIOGRAPHY

Juro Kim Feliz (b. 1987) is a composer based in Toronto, Canada. He finished com-

position studies at the University of the Philippines and McGill University with principal

mentors including Jonas Baes and Melissa Hui. Additional mentorship includes engagements

with Liza Lim, Dieter Mack, Chong Kee Yong, Bernd Asmus and Linda Catlin Smith at vari-

ous consultations. He received the Goethe South East Asian Young Composer Award (1st

place) in 2009, and his music has been performed in music festivals and workshops in the
 2

Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Israel, Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, the

United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

===

THE CREATION OF SPACES

With the rise of virtual connectivity in the age of globalization and open market eco-

nomic policies, increased mobility within the Southeast Asian region brought a new wave of

musical community-building in the 21st century. Access to cheap travel with the emergence

of low-cost budget airline industries allowed artists to effortlessly keep in touch with each

other. Apart from the activities of the Asian Composers League, initiatives transpired anew to

celebrate a genuine presence of contemporary music in the region. Among those include the

first edition of the Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival (2004), the founding of the

Thailand International Composition Festival (2005), the first workshop sessions of the Manila

Composers Lab (2009), and the first biennial Goethe Southeast Asian Young Composer

Award (2009) at Kuala Lumpur. With the assistance of German composer Dieter Mack and

the Goethe Institut, key figures including Michael Asmara, Chong Kee Yong, Jonas Baes,

Hoh Chung Shih and Anothai Nitibhon have been instrumental in organizing networks and

engagements. Alongside contemporary art music, noise music scenes continued flourishing as

deviations from former punk and even mainstream popular scenes. Assuming to create new

spaces, the emergence intended to bring communities in equal footing with contemporary

music scenes around the globe, while enabling Southeast Asia to explore alternatives from

the dominance of mainstream popular cultures.

The presence of alternatives is nothing new. While Asian composers like Isang Yun,

Chou Wen-Chung and Toru Takemitsu built their careers and influence in the West, the

Western avant-garde musical movement jumped shores towards Asia as well after World War

II. For the first time, Tokyo heard the music of Iannis Xenakis, Bruno Maderna and Luciano
 3

Berio during the 1961 East-West Summit.1 Manila audiences also had its first encounters

with Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis and John Cage during an international music conference

in 1966. Upon their return to Indonesia from studies in France, Slamet Abdul Sjukur and Ra-

hayu Supanggah join the list of pioneers who advocated unconventional ideas within their

local musical circles.2 And even without these introductions, Western music isn’t unfamiliar

in Asia. Japan’s modernization following the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868

deliberately integrated Western music in formulating the country’s music education curricu-

lum. In substantiating such measures to the Ministry of Education, Shuji Isawa invokes an

intriguing self-orientalizing view, positioning European music as superior while subscribing

to the idea of cultural evolution.3

Nevertheless, efforts remained persistent to uphold local musical cultures, resisting a

certain form of “cultural schizophrenia.”4 After all, the emergence of the “composer” as a

recognized individual is recent in many Asian communities upon the transculturation of

European creative spaces in the late 19th century. While Western influence deeply shaped the

democracies and geopolitical spaces of Southeast Asia after World War II, regionalism be-

came a conscious endeavour. As an example, the Asian Composers League was established

in 1973 to preserve Asia’s musical cultures while promoting musical creation. It mobilized

Asian composers in enacting a need to cultivate Asian identities. During the 1974 Kyoto con-

ference, Somtow Sucharitkul recognized barriers in dialogues regarding these positions, es-

pecially with Japanese composers. For him, the appropriation of Western models is restrictive

more than opening up new possibilities, unlike with Western composers adapting Asian mu-

sical elements regardless of aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities.5 Jose Maceda referred to this

difference not merely as matters of personal aesthetics but also as a reflection of the cultural

milieu and ways of life taking shape from current traditions. The 1979 Seoul conference
 4

asked similar questions, where manifestations of “cultural and technological imperialism”

were already becoming driving forces in the imaginations of Asian composers.6

WHO AND WHERE IS “ASIA?”

The purity of a monolithic “Asia” relies on essentialist discourse promoting pervasive

notions of an “East” versus a “West." Ignoring diverse perspectives on interactions within

outsider and insider views regarding localities, this favours more classified homogenous

views of people and societies. Countering this, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney wrote that the local is

“never a solid structure/culture selectively absorbing foreign elements through reinterpreta-

tion, only to produce itself.” Instead of being a mere static receiver, the local also responds on

outside forces through the actions of historical agents.7 In order to paint a bigger picture then,

Doreen Massey reminds us that the world exists in spatial dimensions where multiple time-

spaces within different societies progress simultaneously. For example, in historicizing mod-

ernity, she emphasized a rethinking “away from being the unfolding, internal story of Europe

alone. The aim has been precisely to decentre Europe…Not only should the European trajec-

tory be ‘decentred,’ [but] it could also be recognized as merely one of the histories being

made at that time.”8 Consequently, modern history is not solely the story of post-imperial

Europe reaching out to a peripheral “Other.”

The projection of a metaphorical “East” comes into question. Edward Said argued that

Orientalism involves an observer’s viewpoint which reflects the desire for a distinct “Other”

to strengthen one’s self-perception, while relying on one’s limited imagination to impose a

perception of the object in question.9 Citing the history of American colonial imperialism, the

importation of indigenous peoples from the Philippines to America for showcasing exotic

“human zoos” at the St. Louis World Exhibition demonstrated an atrocious display of power

as a result of such “othering.”10 Similarly, the Europeans’ interactions with the gamelan

through the World Fairs of the late 19th century brought creative sparks among composers
 5

like Claude Debussy whose piano work Pagodes appropriates such a model. The imagination

of the “Eastern exotic” in this work comes into play: the title immediately assumes a correla-

tion between the gamelan and a Japanese pagoda purportedly coming from the “East,” even

with these objects belonging to distinct cultural spaces. Fetishized images of the Orient in the

form of Japanese icons are immediately attached to the non-Western tunings and stratified

musical elements of the Indonesian gamelan. As Said further related, the embodied superior-

ity exercised in such imaginations rendered these forms of “otherness” not only as “Oriental”

but can even be made “Oriental” as well.11

This imposition could then be observed even within Asia’s internal imagination of it-

self. Geopolitical borders presently situate Asia for economic and political convenience, but

simplistic representations of what “Asia” is in everyday life generate a politics of exclusion,

resulting from the participation of modern economic powerhouses in cultural flows. One can

observe three things upon the invention of the term “Far East” in the 12th century during Mat-

teo Ricci’s evangelical missions within the Chinese empire. First, the description of a “Far”

space simplifies a spatialization of “here” as the centre. 12 Second, conjuring an “Eastern”

space polarizes Western lands away from it, imagining an outsider “non-West.” Lastly, Ricci

knew that the Chinese term taixi (the Far West) refer to proximal Western lands. He conven-

iently used the schema to claim his origins from a similar “Far West” and justify their own

“otherness.”13 With this binary imagination permeating in today’s dominant representations

of Asian spaces, Fernando Zialcita’s critique on the concept of “Asia” tackled such problems

in the context of constructing the present-day Westernized Filipino identity:

“Simplistic notions of what Asia is and should be in relation to the West have suc-
ceeded in marginalizing, on the international scene, the achievements of lowland
Christian Filipinos...Often they assume that since the costume, the music, the archi-
tecture, and the literature of lowland Christian Filipinos have an obvious Hispanic
component, they cannot be Asian, for to be Asian means to be non-Western. There-
fore, they cannot be “authentic” either, for to be in Asia means thinking and behaving
like a true Asian..”14
 6

After all, Hispanic Philippines harbours a much earlier history of Westernization from

its neighbours. Travelogues and historical documents showed how lowland native kingdoms

quickly assimilated Spanish customs and practices at the onset of colonization in the late

1500s.15 Towns subjected to colonial rule eventually established their own bands or orches-

tras, catering to religious functions in 1750 onwards. With the changing social landscape of

the 1800s, members of the lowland Christian elite found themselves patronizing evening en-

tertainments with renditions of Western classical music and poetry reading.16 Imported West-

ern musical instruments like the piano and the harp became household staples in wealthy

families whose communities thrived with the education and influence of Catholic religious

orders. Not surprisingly, the emergence of local native composers like Marcelo Adonay

(1848-1928), Bonifacio Abdon (1876-1944), Francisco Buencamino (1883-1952), Francisco

Santiago (1889-1947) and Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934) produced a creative landscape in-

formed by Western styles. Adonay’s religious music bears influences from Gregorian chant

and the simplistic harmonies of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Abelardo, Santiago and oth-

ers resorted to secular forms like the kundiman (art song) and the zarzuela (operetta). All of

this transpired at the expense of the tampering community and indigenous life with Hispani-

zation and the ensuing American occupation at the turn of the 20th century.

Therefore, rendering “Asia” as a mere extension of the “Far East” idea ignores the

multiplicity within Asian modernities, resulting to dominant trends excluding peoples who do

not belong to profiled categorizations. In documenting noise music in Southeast Asia, Cedrik

Fermont and Dimitri della Faille noted the various layers of intersecting relationships within

Southeast Asian states in terms of political economies, languages, belief systems, and histo-

ries. The prevalence of hybridizations, various streams of European colonization, and the un-

even distribution of urban and rural populations within different countries led them to assert

that, “Southeast Asia should be considered as a series of attitudes, cultures or markers of

 7

identity that have a high level of volatility and circulation.” Even the existence of the Asso-

ciation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) does not suffice in creating finite borders

around the imagination of the region due to multiple manifestations of related identities out-

side its geographic territories.17 The “Far East” ideal merely created the dilemma of con-

structing an imagined hierarchy of Asian authenticity, mistakenly branding the Philippines as

not purely “Asian” because of long-standing Western enculturation. Robert Kaplan’s Asia’s

Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (2014) imposed an external

view of an “authentic Asia,” prompting Jorge Mojarro to write a critique on Kaplan’s claim

of the Philippines in a 2014 newspaper article:

“...[Kaplan] fails to acknowledge the otherness of…the entire Filipino culture: ‘This
is a borrowed culture without the residue of civilization richness that is apparent at
the archaeological sites in places like Vietnam and Indonesia...’ (p. 119)
“The claim proves the close-mindedness that should be the least feature of a keen ob-
server…What Kaplan misses and can’t stand is the fact that, in his mind and in the
mind[s] of many people, the Philippines is not so oriental as the western imagination
wishes it to be: There are no pagodas, no spiritual Buddhism, no philosophical les-
sons from Confucius. The Philippines is not exotic enough for him.”18

Moreover, one further identifies Kaplan’s exercise of neocolonialism in naming his

Philippine chapter “America’s Colonial Burden,” bringing the colonial past even into the pre-

sent reading of the country’s disposition within the geopolitical arena. Mojarro extracted

highlights from Kaplan’s chapter, emphasizing that the Philippines’ unwavering reliance on

the US Army is “what he really wanted to make clear in his poorly researched chapter – as

the scarce bibliography shows in the endnotes.” David Feith’s book review also confirmed

this conclusion: “Nervousness is more acute in some capitals (Taipei, Manila and Hanoi) than

others (Kuala Lumpur), but Mr. Kaplan hears consistently that only help from Washington

can prevent Chinese domination.”19 Hinting on the need for its past colonial master, a prob-

lematic imposition of dominant narratives favours an exercise of interventionist foreign pol-

icy that pits one against another, instead of heeding Ohnuki-Tierney in observing various lay-

ers of resistance and responses from the locale in question.

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WEIGHING CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES WITHIN THE LOCAL

The perception of lacking roots from an authentic “Far East” has shaped colonial

identities in the Philippines even within the context of musicking. During the American oc-

cupation in the 1900s, composers in Manila and proximal communities were already respond-

ing to such pressures. Their music seeks validation of distinct Filipino identities and repre-

sented a reaction against foreign influence, but their extreme, internalized reliance on the

Western musical language created a problem. Antonio Molina explained that the problem is

“not to extricate himself [the composer] from the prevailing European influence, but, how to

absorb all of them and yet maintain his own identity...[The composers] began to feel the need

for the eradication of the influence of Italian operatic arias, the Spanish popularized zarzue-

las, and the fast asserting, disturbing American syncopations.”20 As an example, Antonino

Buenaventura ventured into capturing the “Filipino” spirit in his Debussy-inspired program-

matic musical languages, with titles such as Rhapsodietta on a Manobo Theme for piano and

orchestra (1937), Mindanao Sketches for orchestra (1947), and By the Hillside for orchestra

(1941). These works suggest an influx of inspiration from his ventures into rural provinces

with Francisca Reyes and Ramon Tolentino under the President’s Advisory Committee on

Dances and Songs.21 Ramon Tapales engaged with similar ideas in Sonata Filipina (1922)

and Philippine Suite for symphony orchestra (1937),22 along with ballet music that has al-

ready been obscure and lost.23

While one can infer a successful indigenization of Western modern culture in Japan,24

its absorption in Philippine culture is uneven and inconsistent throughout the landscape. One

observes striking differences within cultural spaces, ranging from cosmopolitan urbanism in

big metropolises, to a juxtaposition of preserved and syncretized belief systems and modes of

living in both the lowlands and highlands. Archipelagic territories create this uneven rendi-

tion, reflecting the disparate, unequal propagation of colonial powers within the islands dur-
 9

ing the course of colonization. As Miguel Lopez de Legazpi established the first Spanish set-

tlements at Cebu and Panay islands in 1565, he was only able to conquer the far-away king-

dom of Maynilad six years later after much difficulties and skirmishes with the forces of Ra-

jah Soliman.25 The year 1574 saw the founding of the city of Vigan after the invasion of the

Ilocos and Cagayan regions,26 while the resistance in the Cordillera highlands and in Muslim

Mindanao strongly prevailed until the end of Spanish rule and the advent of American occu-

pation. Formerly Maynilad, the colonial city of Manila was already taking advantage of

commercial trade routes with neighbouring kingdoms due to its strategic location; it was then

logical for the Spaniards to develop it as a centre of commerce, as a gateway for Spanish do-

minion, and as the principal seat of colonial government.

While Hispanization progressed through the evangelical missions of the Catholic

Church in neighbouring localities, the colonial government vigorously transformed Manila

into an imperial city, optimized to mirror and represent an urban European presence devoid

of primitive living. Its central position ushered in three things: (1) the increased exposure to

European cultures, gravitating towards Manila, (2) the emergence of trained Filipino com-

posers from the proximities of imperial Manila,27 and (3) the loss of access to pre-colonial

roots within the region, affecting the locals’ conception of identities. With the formation of

the underground Katipunan movement in the Tagalog provinces, it is not surprising then that

Manila’s imperialistic position in the islands birthed out a Filipino revolutionary movemet

that wasn’t only Tagalog-centric but also Christian-centric. Given the exclusivist tendencies

imbued within disparate localities, the Katipunan’s imagination of a liberated nation falls

short within the Katagalugan framework28 and effectively excluded the non-Tagalogs as a

result. The unfolding histories after the movement created repercussions with the non-

Tagalog peoples that are still felt even to the present day.
 10

The gravitation towards urban Manila also enabled Tagalog composers of pre-World

War II to imagine rural spaces outside urban life through the appropriation of folk song mate-

rial. Works like Ramon Tapales’ Philippine Suite, Nicanor Abelardo’s Panoramas for mixed

quintet (1931), and Francisco Buencamino’s Mayon Fantasia for piano (1948) reiterated

what Ramon Santos called as a peripheral view of the folk song’s significance in musicking,

only allowing their existence as thematic materials. Rendering the idea of a folk song not

only as static but as an objectified cultural product, this demonstrated a “lack of a much

deeper perception of native musics in relation to their specific cultural and social environ-

ments as well as their functional and linguistic contexts.”29 While the diatonic melodies, tri-

adic harmonies, and phrase structure of vernacular lowland folk songs reflect the transforma-

tion towards the indigenization of Western sensibilities, the histories of Muslim Mindanao

and highland communities throughout the archipelago also revealed the survival of indige-

nous spaces and contexts apart from hybridization. The process of representing and symboliz-

ing nationhood lingered on through the glorification of vernacular folk song, consequently

enacting another form of “othering” towards subaltern, indigenous cultures among the pe-

ripheries of the nation-state. In distancing from “othered” indigenous communities, the na-

tional imaginary remained narrowly exclusive until the first ethnomusicological research ini-

tiatives in the country.

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY IN COMPOSING SPACES

As musical scholarship departed from “comparative musicology” in the 1950s, the

paradigm shift towards ethnographic fieldwork adapted the anthropologist’s methodology in

viewing their subjects while maintaining one’s distance. Before realizing the problems of re-

flexivity later on, it was believed that one’s occupied space should never intertwine perma-

nently with the culture, possibly contaminating it. Philippine ethnomusicology reflects a dif-

ferent case, in this regard. Since Lucrecia Kasilag and Jose Maceda started ethnomusicologi-
 11

cal research in the 1950s, possibilities emerged not only in empirically imagining a complete

Filipino identity, but also in identifying future directions of music making within Asia. This

instigated the shift from merely looking at Western models for expressing identities, towards

looking inward to understand the notion of “home.” That includes the propagation of a col-

lective “we” through the ownership of cultural spaces within a critical lens. It is necessarily

an extension of an ideological state project, reinforcing Philippine nationhood and legitimate

sovereignty through knowing one’s own culture. Ethnomusicology becomes political as much

as it is scholarly in nature.

This thrust of research also sparked the idea of imagining a holistic Asian modernity.

In unearthing Philippine indigenous musical traditions, Jose Maceda’s search for commonal-

ities in Asian musical cultures served as a fresh platform towards developing new modes of

creation. Composition became the creative outlet for such a big vision, with Maceda compos-

ing music within cultural references and solidifying aesthetic, philosophical and social theo-

ries along his research. His reflections on village-oriented contemporary Asia led him to con-

ceptualize massive sound murals like Pagsamba (1966), Cassettes 100 (1971), Udlot-udlot

(1975) and Ading (1978), involving hundreds of musicians, traditional instruments, and an

appropriated use of technology serving a maximized use of manpower. The use of indigenous

instruments and the control within shaping the spatial experiences of the audience invokes a

sense of ritual and community that is very familiar in Asian societies. Compared to Western

programmatic music, this holistic thinking veered away from objectifying sensual impres-

sions and, instead, translates performatives and phenomenological processes into a modernist

musical discourse.

Similarly, Lucrecia Kasilag’s imagination of modernity rendered an eclectic approach

in juxtaposing Asian elements as an expression of identity and heightened affinity with the

locale. Arwin Tan noted that her artistic vision, once intertwined with the field research and
 12

choreographed dances of the Bayanihan Dance Company, progressed from portraying repre-

sentations of indigeneity towards exemplifying a strong nationalist sentiment through one’s

knowledge of cultural roots. Moreover, her philosophy recognizes the synthesis of a polarized

“East” and “West,” and the link between “past” and “present” to serve the common man,

while also subscribing to “a rejection of the past”30 in pursuing new forms of expression. As

Doreen Yu described in a 1989 magazine article, Kasilag’s work also favours the use of

rhythm, ushering efficiency in collaborations with choreographers and dancers. 31

In this case, ethnomusicology then enabled the composition not only of sound as “ma-

terial objects,” but also of sound as “consciousness” and “space.” Kasilag’s attempts in com-

bining multiple scales, tuning temperaments, colours and rhythm with works like Dularawan

(1969), Legend of Sarimanok (1963), and the choral-dance work Fil-asiana (1965) offers the

expansion of spectral, temporal, timbral and even interdisciplinary spaces within the posi-

tionality of Philippine nationhood among a much larger Asian heritage. 32 Maceda’s construc-

tion of meanings happen not only in organizing timbres, but also in creating modes of per-

formance relying on spatializing village interactions like divisions of labour and collective

action within the progression of time. Their approaches also enabled a construction of mod-

ernism through gaining access to a pre-colonial history, akin to Xenakis’ music bearing onto-

logical grounds on ancient Greek thought. Ramon Santos posed such a question: “What is the

meaning of being avant-garde? In the Philippines it means becoming primitive, covering non-

Western sounds.”33 Musical invention occurs with reusing existing systems of thought rather

than developing new ones, evoking a redemptive mission from losing what colonization and

recent globalization have set aside. This thinking runs along Greg Bankoff and Kathleen

Weekley’s observation of the Filipinism ideology, a nationalistic stance allowing one to

glance back in time and render the “true Filipino spirit” as a departure point towards relevant

measures for future national development.34

 13

Furthermore, composing within this paradigm produced spaces for developing cri-

tiques on the imposition of Western modernity within Southeast Asia. Sucharitkul observed

this non-conformity with mainstream Western musical thought with Santos’ conception of

Philippine avant-gardism in music, providing insight into the inevitable non-emergence of

Filipino composers within the European music scene. Contrasting this, Jonas Baes saw Phil-

ippine present-day modernity as illusory, “contained in spaces that lure one away from the

reality of material destitution.”35 He brought attention to the strange phenomenon of slum ar-

eas co-existing with huge modern shopping malls beside them, allowing people inhabiting

these areas to experience an “illusion” of first-world economies in action. Therefore, the exis-

tence not only of mainstream music industries but also of modernist music within such social

conditions demonstrates the same illusion. Baes’ formulation of an ethnomusicological and

compositional praxis within the peripheral zones of modernity offers potential empowerment

for subaltern voices to interact with such a monolith.

At the same time, this modernity also invokes the imagination of a collective commu-

nity. While Maceda’s praxis relied on a search for a universal thinking in Asia, a polity re-

quires the acknowledgement of its own diversity. Benedict Anderson’s redefinition of nation-

alism tackled the projection of an “imagined community,” translating towards the conception

and production of nationhood and state sovereignty. While not pertaining to a political entity

per se, Maceda’s ethnomusicology of “Asia” also emanates this inclusive belonging in a di-

verse community that shares distinct cultural roots. Similarly, the notion of “we” that Jose

Rizal conjures in the first chapter of Noli Me Tangere alludes to an insider-recognition of cer-

tain local schemas that readers were already expected to know.36 One expects the practice of

“ethnomusicology at home” to potentially operate on that same breed of familiarity. In exam-

ining bamboo and gong cultures within the Philippines, an awareness of commonalities with
 14

northern and southern neighbours creates a heightened consciousness of interconnected di-

versity through scholarly study.

THE PROBLEM WITHIN THE PRODUCTION OF “ASIA”

While “ethnomusicology at home” embodied new directions for shaping postcolonial

thought, earlier pursuits in this field of inquiry have been problematic. For a long while, eth-

nomusicology rendered cultural spaces as “ahistorical,” frozen in time. Massey argued that

attempts of representing a notion of “space” results to a process of deadening: while represen-

tation produces fixation, it reveals the un-representability of history as matters of conceptual-

izing transforming geographies and not just temporality.37 Likewise, previous intercultural

studies have analyzed musical cultures to the effect that they are supposed to stay ancient and

stop evolving. Bruno Nettl acknowledged a shift in such thinking, saying that while it is pos-

sible to perceive world music as increasingly homogenous at the present, modern musical ex-

periences have become heterogenous through access to technology.38 Therefore, producing

and experiencing cultures can no longer be monolithic and static in nature, but otherwise

fluid, fragmented, interspersed with each other, and continuously evolving.

While Maceda attempted to historicize his ethnomusicological practice through com-

position, Jonas Baes’ work went further from a simplified process of representation towards

political advocacy that exposes the social and material conditions among peoples.39 Baes’

praxis of fieldwork and composition, through pieces like Banwa (1997), Patangis-Buwaya

(2003), InAYTA (2010) and Gandhing-Ni-Napi (2011), animated this dead space with the re-

telling of struggles and alienation of marginalized peoples, whereas such moral obligations

are expected from scholars, given their intermediary positions. Even Maceda himself criti-

cized this apathy in ethnomusicology’s production of knowledge, reflecting a global political

economy that merely concerns itself with its institutions, markets and their sustainability. 40

Baes’ deviance then attempted to deal with this time-space dilemma upon which ethnomusi-
 15

cology and the expanding nationalist ideology remained aloof. Initially starting with bean pod

rattles, portable nail wind chimes become notable icons in recent renditions of his work,

shaping the experience and deconstruction of performance space while imparting symbols of

natural landscapes reminiscent of rainforests and the narratives of struggle and displacement

with their former inhabitants.

Another observation shows that the study of musical cultures also enabled a form of

cultural ownership from proponents of Filipino nationalism, whether emerging from grass-

roots or institutional initiatives. Taking the concept of the bamboo instrument into account,

Baes stated that “it is a question of who appropriates bamboo instruments to become objects

of culture, and subsequently, for whom this object [is] being appropriated.”41 Pairing the

Filipinism ideology with a stance on musical hybridity, artists like Bob Aves, Grace Nono,

and Joey Ayala have sought since the 1990s to promote a Philippine “world beat” sound in

folk and jazz music. However, the locus of production is very much linked with “outsider”

views and spaces where Filipino composers had imposed in an internal imagination of in-

digenous cultures. While some artists originated from indigenous localities and promoted in-

digenous involvement in their work, the practice proved to serve self-sustaining industries

more than the marginal spaces themselves.42 After all, “world music” markets rely on profit-

ability through tokenized exoticism, ignoring the ramifications of their perpetuation within

cultural spaces. Fermont and della Faille even asserted that the genre participated in reinforc-

ing the limited number of poles in cultural production, effectively strengthening the legiti-

macy of the hegemonic nature in Western popular cultures.43 Furthermore, the reduction of

indigeneity into the “celebritification” of culture bearers also poses a problem, as with the

case of Whang-od Oggay and her indigenous tattoo making practice. 44 The artists’ work, the

exoticized object, the mode of production, and the nationalist ideology are all glorified, while
 16

the socio-economic empowerment of peoples owning these objectified, peripheral spaces re-

main neglected or forgotten.

Moreover, reducing cultural spaces into homogenous entities suited for representation

could be tantamount to exercising historical revisionism or myth creation to validate a state’s

claim of legitimate sovereignty.45 For instance, the University of the Philippines-based Kon-

tra-GaPi ensemble assembles an eclectic mix of gongs, bamboo instruments, and drums

while inventing the representation of a “Philippine” gamelan. Claims bearing the gamelan as

“a Southeast Asian quintessential orchestra…shared by many cultures” endorsed the inven-

tion of a Kontemporaryong Gamelan Pilipino (contemporary Filipino gamelan) without ei-

ther establishing concrete correlations between the gamelan of Indonesia and Malaysia with

the plethora of distinct Philippine musical traditions, or contextualizing the formation of the

ensemble from actual gamelan history and performance practice.46 Labeled as “ethnic,” the

resulting music subscribes to the “world beat” genre, reinforcing the notion of exotic other-

ness in its emulation of nativism with electrifying musical showcases. As John Hutnyk re-

minded us that non-Western music inherently manifests an expression of politics and resis-

tance,47 homogenizing cultural spaces poses the danger of masking and, even possibly ex-

cluding, different topographies of resistance in favour of a singular demonstration of political

power. Even Reynaldo Ileto criticized the total disregard of difference, disorder, and uncer-

tainty within history-making when dominant teleological histories, in their propagation of

grand narratives, reproduce such concealment.48 One sees the phenomenon of cultural owner-

ship and hegemony still remaining a culprit that challenges the nationalist project towards

substantiating an inclusive practice in music creation.

Considering numerous political agenda within the propagation of regional conscious-

ness, Maceda’s imagination of Asia wasn’t popular and shared within various creative spaces.

On a positive note, the imagination of appropriating Western models switched towards redis-
 17

covering ancestral kinship among Southeast Asian peoples through cultural projects and ex-

changes49 amidst the deteriorating Philippine economy and political stability during and after

the Marcos regime. Nonetheless, the Cold War paralyzed relations between Indochinese na-

tions for a time, while Japan continued its adoption of Western modernity towards becoming

a global economic powerhouse. With an increased rigour in Indonesian gamelan scholarship

and the nature of Javanese syncretism,50 Indonesia’s attention focused towards interactions

with its traditions and mimicry of various foreign music scenes, especially in noise music.

Ethnic Chinese composers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and even in Malaysia re-

mained reliant on Chinese roots for aesthetic grounding in their creative work and identity

building. With the rise of the information age at the turn of the 21st century, the rampant in-

fluence of American popular music, dominant Asian trends, and the expanding world of

computers and technology captured the favour of artistic communities in place of envisioning

a central theory on Asian musicking. Thus, while the official establishment of the University

of the Philippines Center for Ethnomusicology celebrates Maceda’s vision and achievements,

a long-lasting influence in his compositional praxis remains elusive in the international scene.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN CREATING “ASIA”

Important questions then remain. Is Maceda’s vision still relevant in the geopolitical

imagination of the 21st century? Is a unified concept of “Asia” still desirable and necessary?

Should compositional praxis bear social obligations as Jonas Baes endorses?

A unified musicological project constructing a culture area within Asia undermines

the complex topography of the whole geopolitical landscape, resorting back to essentialist

discourse for the sake of those who will benefit from it. While postcolonial aspirations moti-

vate the creation of monolithic identities for the sake of visibility, dominant forces still pos-

sess the power to shape these grand narratives. Whether within state boundaries or regional

communities, the exercise of political power affects cultural network flows, seeping through
 18

the dissemination of knowledge, the production of art, and the vibrancy of the spaces these

create. A stable form of nationhood becomes one desirable, immediate goal for independent

sovereign states emerging from former colonization, and that describes the struggle for Phil-

ippine nationhood. In this regard, one acknowledges that the modernities of Japan, China and

South Korea, and their First-world relationships with Western powers differ significantly

from the modernity of the Philippines and its need for decolonization and strategic develop-

ment. Along with supportive arguments from Mervyn McLean (2006), this complication jus-

tifies Mantle Hood’s dismissive attitude to comparative methodologies in musicological

scholarship without establishing solid understanding within individual spaces.51

While Maceda’s search for a common thread in Asian musics instigated the extension

of music away from being mere objects within static space, invoking intersectionalities be-

tween musical cultures will require a reconciliation of various geopolitical relationships and

uneven terrains of social landscapes upon where music histories are hinged. Strong tensions

from differing notions of class, ethnicity, collective nationhood, and even gender abound in

imagining a homogenous “Asian” community. These are evident in the ASEAN’s incapacity

to address dire regional concerns, such as territorial claims in the South China Sea, the ongo-

ing displacement of the Rohingya peoples within Myanmar and beyond, China’s vehement

resistance from claims of legitimate state sovereignty in Hong Kong and Taiwan, or the Phil-

ippines’ endorsement of human rights violations in its national drug war campaign. Similarly,

even the deteriorating confidence from a stable European Union indicates the danger of main-

taining a homogenized imaginary while ignoring the disruptions and discontinuities that dif-

fering economies allow within spaces. Addressing scattered hegemonies will need a convinc-

ing equalization of notions of community and interconnectivity, and thus, the desire for a uni-

fied concept of “Asia” will remain in the realm of the metaphysical and the aesthetic until this

happens.
 19

Moreover, postmodernist thought renders identity as fluid and even fragmented. The

need for shaping consciousness of identities resonates not only with Filipino and Asian com-

posers, but with artists all over the world. The prevalence of liminality and Homi Bhabha’s

“third spaces” among scattered Asian diasporic communities complicate matters further,

where projections of selves as “citizens” aren’t rendered stable and fixed. While the politics

of exclusion emerge within defining affinities, Aoileann Ní Mhurchú argued that in the pre-

sent age of global migration, citizenship has never been “a fully bounded and coherent cate-

gory which opposes itself to ‘non-citizenship.’”52 As Sarah Salih advised that an all-

encompassing understanding of otherness requires a liberation from existing notions of selves

towards revealing their instability through constant repetition, Ní Mhurchú reminds us that

the political subjectivity exercised within granting citizenship renders the process as ambigu-

ous, “[challenging] the absolute spatial and linear temporal understanding of moving from

outside the state as migrant, towards the inside of the state.”53 Thus, the discussion on rigid

and fixed borders within Asia quickly becomes problematic and subjective when one consid-

ers different forms of mobility and transformation of places in today’s world order. Even

Baes, during one of the discussions at the 2015 ACL conference in Manila, suggested that

one could even call the whole world as “Asia” if one imagines it to be so.

Therefore, Anderson’s notion of “imagined community” could potentially provide

guidance through reconciling identities with a larger view on positionality. As human spaces

are neither produced apolitically, nor rendered in one-dimensional space, one’s obligation

then is not to rely on a singular mode of thinking, but rather to attempt producing multiple

layers of imagined political selves through engaging various facets of inclusivity and inter-

connectivity. This initially aligns with Anderson’s conception of the nation as a community,

embodying deep, horizontal comradeship in its invocation of colossal sacrifices even within

the limits of its imagining. While Anderson’s definition emphasizes the limited nature of na-
 20

tion-states and nationalism54 towards excluding “others,” an intersectional approach in one’s

self-invention encourages blurring hard-line boundaries within limited, finite spaces. Multiple

recognitions of difference in various dimensions continuously reconfigure positionalities,

avoiding a static rendition of a singular plane. Depending on one’s deep immersion within

various communities, the shift from visible markers of affinity towards a well-founded

imaginary enables multiple iterations of “Asia” and Asian identities, whether in the form of

preserving traditional musical spaces in East Asia, or recognizing the emergence of sound art

performance in Southeast Asia, or contributing to the hybridization of cultures in South Asia,

or even encouraging expressions of third-space identities in the diasporas of North America

and Europe. This is not unidirectional either; belonging entails the affirmation and validation

from others as much as one acknowledges them.

Additionally, the projection of a diverse, multicultural “Asia” in musical imaginations

should also acknowledge different positionalities on class, ethnicity, and gender where one’s

practice is interconnected and bound within another’s exercise of power. With entitlement

and privilege emerging at the top of multiple renditions of hierarchies, Baes’ endorsement of

upholding social obligations now translates towards awareness about one’s position within

exercising privilege. To begin with, using first-world technologies in praxis must take into

account the potential lack of access to resources or sites within poverty-stricken regions. Or,

the promotion of achieving gender equality and an unhindered performance of gender iden-

tity(-ies) should not confine itself within one’s individual practice, but extends towards en-

gaging communities in encouraging resistance from ongoing misogyny and patriarchy. Imag-

ining an “Asia” within this particular trajectory provides an avenue away from the perpetua-

tion of “othering” even within internal spaces, and overcomes the erasure of the world’s

multi-dimensionality.
 21

As a final note, re-evaluating a contemporary discourse on Asia necessitates founda-

tions not only to acknowledge and negotiate difference, but also to reformulate new trajecto-

ries of musicking while recognizing the significance of the past. The oscillation between past

and present, and between “self” and “others,” should fundamentally propel the search for a

unifying thread between various musical practices. While Maceda’s imaginary of Asia in his

praxis remains open-ended in achieving a total reconciliation of internal differences, extend-

ing Anderson’s notion of imagined community away from the confines of the limited nation-

state can potentially lead towards embodying anti-oppression and solidarity from one’s prac-

tice and, ultimately, create diverse modes of thinking, performance, artistic direction, and

sites of art production within the whole region.

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Endnotes:
1
Michael Tenzer, “Jose Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia,” Ethnomusicol-
ogy 47, No. 1 (2003): p. 100.
2
Ramon Pagayon Santos, Laón-laón: Perspectives in Transmission and Pedagogy of Musical Traditions in
Post-colonial Southeast Asia (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2012): pp. 132-133.
3
Bonnie Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013): p. 17-
18.
4
Somtow Sucharitkul, “Crises in Asian Music: The Manila Conference 1975,” Tempo, New Series 117 (1976):
p. 20.
5
Ibid., pp. 18-20.
 24

6
Harrison Ryker, New Music in the Orient, ed. Harrison Ryker, p. 13. It is worth mentioning that while Ryker
considered the 1979 Seoul conference as a time when issues are clearly discussed, he doesn’t seem to be
aware of past conferences addressing the same questions, notably the 1966 and especially the 1975 conference
in Manila like how Sucharitkul had strikingly observed in his commentary.
7
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “Against ‘Hybridity:’ Culture as Historical Process,” in Dismantling the East-West
Dichotomy: Essays in honour of Jan van Bremen, eds. Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong (London:
Routledge, 2006): p. 15.
8
Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005): pp. 62-63.
9
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979): pp. 43-44.
10
For a more detailed account, see Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park,
and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century (Houghton: New Harvest, 2014).
11
Said, Orientalism, pp. 5-6.
12
“A Menagerie of Monikers,” The Economist, January 7, 2010, accessed November 26, 2016,
http://www.economist.com/node/15213613.
13
Matteo Ricci, On Friendship: one hundred maxims for a Chinese prince, trans. Timothy Billings (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009): pp. 19, 71, 87.
14
Fernando Zialcita, “As Yet an Asian Flavor Does not Exist,” in Authentic Though not Exotic: Essays on Fili-
pino Identity (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2005): p. 241.
15
Corazon C. Dioquino, “Musicology in the Philippines,” Acta Musicologica 54 (1982): p. 127.
16
Corazon C. Dioquino, Ramon P. Santos, and Jose Maceda, “The Philippines,” in The Garland Handbook of
Southeast Asian Music, ed. Terry E. Miller and Sean Williams (New York: Routledge, 2008): pp. 418-419.
17
Cedrik Fermont and Dimitri della Faille, Not your world music: Noise in South East Asia. Art, politics, iden-
tity, gender and global capitalism (September 2016): pp. 5-8. Book, http://words.hushush.com. Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0),
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
18
Jorge Mojarro, “HUWAG LAITIN ANG PINAS | Spanish academic defends PH from American author’s
‘close-minded’ depiction,” InterAksyon, June 12, 2014, accessed November 26, 2016,
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/88950/huwag-laitin-ang-pinas--spanish-academic-defends-ph-from-
american-authors-close-minded-depiction.
19
David Feith, “Book Review: ‘Asia’s Cauldron’ by Robert D. Kaplan,” The Wall Street Journal, March 25,
2014, accessed November 26, 2016,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579451152484714452.
20
Ramon Santos, “The Philippines.” In Ryker, New Music in the Orient, p. 158.
21
Basilio Esteban Villaruz, Treading Through: 45 Years in Philippine Dance (Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press and Philippine Folklife Museum Foundation, 2006): p. 82.
22
Santos, Laón-laón, p. 136.
23
Villaruz, Treading Through, p. 248.
24
Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity, p. 4.
25
David R. M. Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010): pp. 22-23.
 25

26
Ibid., p. 102.
27
Doreen Fernandez noted that, “except in the case of playwrights like Angel Magahum of Iloilo…the compos-
ers of sarswela music were, in the small towns, untrained or barely-trained church or folk musicians, and in
Manila, such accomplished song writers as Leon Ignacio, and also schooled musicians and composers like
Bonifacio Abdon, Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Buencamino.” See “Zarzuela to Sarswela: Indgenization
and Transformation,” Philippine Studies 41, No. 3 (1993): p. 333.
28
Manuel Artigas y Cuerva documented the Masonic rites of passage for the induction of a “Katipunero,” show-
ing that even the inclusivity of the imagined collective is still contained and imposed in the word “tagalog”
and not in any other referent. See Andres Bonifacio y el Katipunan (Manila: La Vanguardia, 1911): p. 15.
29
Santos, Laón-laón, p. 136.
30
Arwin Quiñones Tan, “Approaching a Postcolonial Filipino Identity in the Music of Lucrecia Roces Kasilag,”
Musika Jornal 10 (2014): pp. 125, 140.
31
Ibid., p. 140.
32
Santos, Laón-laón, pp. 136-137.
33
Interestingly, this general claim can only be substantiated with the works of Filipino composers whose aes-
thetic directions are “avant-garde” or non-conforming to conventional Romantic tonality. Other composers
and artists also utilize this essentialism to do the opposite: adhering to a populist market-driven mode of mu-
sic production. See Sucharitkul, Crises in Asian Music, p. 21.
34
Greg Bankoff and Kathleen Weekley, Post-colonial National Identity in the Philippines: Celebrating the Cen-
tennial of Independence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002): pp. 38-39.
35
Jonas Baes, “B A N W A: Asian Composes and the Spaces of Modernity,” in Confluences and Challenges in
Building the Asian Community in the Early 21st Century: The Work of the 2008-2009 API Fellows, The Nip-
pon Foundation Fellowships for Asian Public Intellectuals, accessed July 12, 2014. http://www.api-
fellowships.org/body/international_ws_proceedings/year8.pdf#page=206
36
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London,
New York: Verso, 1991): pp. 26-28.
37
Massey, For Space, pp. 26-28.
38
Bruno Nettl, Nettl’s Elephant: On the History of Ethnomusicology (Champaign: University of Illinois Press,
2010): p. 57.
39
Jonas Baes, “PATANGIS‐BUWAYA: Research and a Philosophy of Praxis for a New Music Composition in
Southeast Asia,” The Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers, accessed July 17, 2014.
http://www.smccomposers.com/jonas‐baes‐on‐patangis‐buwaya‐2003.html
40
Jose Maceda, “A Search for an Old and New Music in Southeast Asia,” Acta Musicologica 51 (1979): p. 161.
41
Jonas Baes, “Bamboo and Music Composition in the Philippines: Disquietudes on the Ascendancy of a ‘Cul-
tural Object,’” Humanities Diliman 5, No. 1-2 (2008)
42
Jonas Baes and Amapola Baes, “East-West Synthesis or Cultural Hegemony? Questions on the use of indige-
nous elements in Philippine popular music,” Perfect Beat 4, No. 1 (1988): pp. 47-55.
43
Fermont and della Faille, Not your world music, pp. 3-4.
44
A controversy ensued when Manila FAME, a trade show on culture, designs, crafts and brands held on Octo-
ber 2017, brought the centenarian indigenous artist to make 300 tattoos for attendees within a span of two
days. Answering allegations of exploiting Whang-od in this manner, the organizers and Whang-Od’s family
 26

denied them, saying that the labour was heavily compensated and done under the elderly woman’s will to ac-
commodate a huge number of requests. See Aika Rey, “Whang-od not ‘exploited,’ says Manila FAME organ-
izers,” Rappler, October 23, 2017, accessed June 25, 2018, https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/186119-
whang-od-exploited-manila-fame-dti-citem.
45
Bankoff and Weekly, Post-colonial National Identity in the Philipines, pp. 37-58.
46
Kontra-gapi, “What is Kontra-GaPi”, accessed 26 November 2016, http://kontragapi.wordpress.com/about.
While the kulintangan tradition of southern Mindanao bear similarities with the gamelan instruments, the mu-
sical languages within their performance practices bear very significant differences.
47
David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, Musicology: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routledge, 2005):
p. 63.
48
Bankoff and Weekley, Post-colonial National Identity in the Philippines, p. 84.
49
Santos, Laón-laón, p. 102.
50
Fermont and della Faille, Not your world music, p. 97.
51
Bruno Nettl, Nettl’s Elephant, pp. 80-85.
52
Aoileann Ní Mhurchú, Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press, 2014): p. 8.
53
Ibid., pp. 12, 21.
54
Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7.