Music and the Marcoses
The library director and National Library ushers all wore ceremonial red like Imee Marcos and Irene Araneta at the 07-07-07 launching of the seven books on the Marcos years. Alas, the scripted air of that scene extended to the books themselves.Where the direst need of the Filipino historical hour remains the telling of more, not less truth on the present and the under-examined the past it’s built on, the first book I read - “The Musical Arts in the New Society” - yielded cardboard cutout figures from a movie house lobby.
The first dead giveaway to a combined apologia and hagiography in this book is the inclusion of the still emotionally loaded phrase “New Society” in its title, locating it right in the stream of “Tadhana,” “Notes on a New Society” and “Towards a Democratic Revolution” – the three main propaganda tomes that sought to justify the declaration of Martial Law 25 years ago.
As though nothing at all had happened to interrogate and contradict the “newness” of that society Ferdinand Marcos created by fiat and backed by armed force, this book now asks us to accept the failed intention of a “New Society” as a valid historical description of the era.
I find this a pity, another wasted opportunity to readjust the nation’s historical spectacles on one-dimensional demonization of the period, throwing several healthy babies out with the bathwater. Now is the time to remember: one of those babies was a foresighted energy program cutting down Philippine dependence on imported oil. Geronimo Velasco was slowly inching to a dramatic 55% from the high 90s of the mid ‘70s, with a lot of help from geothermal energy and our own Pinoy engineers and scientists. We all know the direct contrast of what happened to energy after that.
Another baby thrown out on its ear by the succeeding dispensation was Imelda Marcos’s fruitful patronage of the arts, sped by music. With its fruits all around us today, still gaining honors from the world at large as they send out new shoots on home ground, it seems history itself has been ripening a new moment for truth-telling. With twenty-one more years of experience in the opposite, never has the nation been better prepared for the adult exercise of revaluing the achievements alongside the terror of the Marcos Years.
In the book’s closed defense of the mix of good and evil that was the reign of Malakas and Maganda , an earnest student of history is however left rummaging for missing nuggets of fact and snippets of insight for a more complete, more nuanced and more truthful understanding of the past that led to this present.
With all due respect to Antonio C. Hila, author of “Musical Arts in the New Society,” associate professor of history at De la Salle University and Inquirer music critic, a serious failing of his book is not so much its over-reliance on “textual” sources to recount the period – ghostwritten speeches by the Marcoses, Executive Orders, Presidential Decrees and “praise releases” passed off as appraisal of the cultural initiatives and milestones of the period.
The culprit is a book schema that stops short of a crucial reality check. This was the real challenge - to bring the Marcos era right alongside the present in a comparative view. The inclusion of facts and insights from a more complete spectrum of artists and other culture bearers, including those that resisted the regime - the world over, one might add - would have given the book far greater value.
With the passing of time and the emergence of fresh perspectives born of experience, a fuller, more fearless account could now help the nation arrive at a more balanced appraisal, a plumb to its depths, a measure of how it’s outgrown - or failed to outgrow - the Marcos template of “revolution” that mirrored Joma Sison and his generation’s own. This is a large part of what Philippine military intellectuals have yet to outgrow.
The record stands. There were countless abuses of power and unspeakable violations of human rights under the Marcos regime. Paradoxically, to deny Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’s instincts for excellence while all that was going on is to do Filipino history itself a disservice. That would be like denying the brilliance and cunning of Joma Sison, the delightful originality of Joel Rocamora, or the human kindness of Satur Ocampo.
“He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” was the vulgar shorthand for Washington’s support of Marcos to his regime‘s last two minutes. Our own Pinoy lead question might well be, “Yes, he was a tyrant, but what have we learned from the way his leadership attracted as many of the best Filipino minds as it alienated and turned into implacable enemies, or simply tortured and shot dead?”
Meanwhile Imelda Marcos’s musical gifts and unfeigned sensibilities for the arts were fueling a new cultural bureaucracy, identifying and nourishing many outstanding musical talents that teach and flourish today, the way she built several cultural institutions at the peak of her husband’s political power.
That these institutions survived and went on serving the nation long after she left the center of national life is a reality no ideological wand - or even her own silly senior moments - can whisk away. Prime among these were a Cultural Center of the Philippines attended by sniping both at its birth and the regime’s demise, and its 30-year old coeval, the Philippine High School for the Arts whose growing roster of accomplished young Filipino artists can speak for themselves.
Then there are the National Artist Awards created in 1973, giving state recognition to the Filipino artist for the first time in the republic’s history. The controversies that have recently visited these awards redound to a left-handed compliment to their creation. In agitating to reexamine and update them today, the Filipino artistic community has in effect “owned” the National Artist Awards beyond their origins in Martial Law – a sign of new life.
Professor Hila’s recitation of musical careers that enjoyed Imelda Marcos’s pro-active patronage is led off by the name Cecile Licad, followed by Rowena Arrieta , Jovianney Emmanuel Cruz, Andion Fernandez, Rene Dalandan, Raul Sunico, Julian Quirit, Jaime, Ramon and Alfonso Bolipata; Lucrecia Kasilag, Francisco Feliciano, Jose Maceda, Antonio Molina, Lucio San Pedro, Levi Celerio, Andrea O. Veneracion, the Philippine Madrigal Singers…
The list goes on, telling the story of institution-building alongside the recognition and valuing of genuine talent. Not only did the NAMCYA (National Musical Competitions for Young Artists), the YAFP (Young Artists Foundation of the Philippines) and the CCP discover, nourish and showcase performing and creative talents that would otherwise not have reached their present niches as teachers and templates.
As Professor Hila reminds us, all of that came with programs to build and sustain popular taste for more elevated music in programs like Concert at the Park, Puerta Real Evenings and Paco Park Presents. That they languished and slowly died out with the withdrawal of state support under succeeding political regimes invited the inevitable – fresh onslaughts of crude commercial music in beer gardens ruled by plakado and karaoke. (At the boulevard Baywalk, it comes with streetlamps in High El Cheapo, courtesy of ex-Mayor Lito Atienza.)
And so the value in Professor Hila’s book lies in the music and the musicians themselves, with Madame Marcos speaking their language like a native, beyond the speeches and between the lines. Burdening this story with a defense of Martial Law all over again, instead of allowing it to roam free in the far wider field of a musical race’s past, present and possible future, is a double pity, Ms. Imee.
