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The best way to comprehend a culture and to harmonize with the locals is to devise a hobby-inspired crusade: birding, riding animal-powered vehicles, attending religious services, going festival hopping, tracking literary landmarks, learning a massage technique from the local healer, or watching musical-instrument makers at work. Invent a quest, and find out where the local guru hangs out. This strategy moves you past the bumbling tourists on deck to be fleeced by the bevy of con artists that plague many destinations. You’ll save money by discovering the heart of the region’s honest people, and veer toward an organic style of travel that, without trying, defines eco-tourism.
To bypass routine, I invent a new quest for every country I visit. For my third roam through the Philippines—Southeast Asia’s only Christian country—I vowed to answer the question: Why is the Philippines Asia’s rock-and-roll engine? From China to Indonesia, and from Singapore to Japan, if there’s a skilled band on stage, they’re likely Filipino. Tuning into an enduring soundtrack that reproduces every Western musical style, both on a remote island and in their thriving metropolis, forced me to challenge Emerson’s declaration that imitation cannot go beyond its model.
The melody mission led me to the east coast of jungle-fringed Palawan, a narrow, 250-mile-long island paradise (same size as Baja California) bisected by an imposing spine of limestone karst peaks and flanked by white-sand beaches. Situated in the southwest corner of the Philippines’ 7,017 islands, Puerto Princessa is Palawan’s main port, and where Bing, a charming mother of five, was being serenaded at 2 a.m.
The 333-year Spanish colonial era that began in 1565 introduced guitars, choirs, and the art of serenading. This pioneering Eurasian energy—a link to the Renaissance—set the stage for a hybrid music phenomenon. Historically, Filipinos have a song for every occasion, i.e., rice planting, night fishing, birthdays, and sung courtship bids. The Filipino word for serenade, harana, parallels the old-style Spanish romantic tradition: Guy shows up with guitar, solo or accompanied by melodic mates, outside his dreamgirl’s home and croons a love song. If she opens her window to listen, and hopefully sings a song in response, he’s en route to cuddling. If the window doesn’t budge, it’s off to voice lessons or to another house to pursue a new gal. Nearly every Filipino man I met born before 1960 had vivid, wide-grinning recollections of serenading their eventual wife—or being shot down in flames. A formal notice for this public display of affection was typical, but she didn’t always know it was coming.
Music cultivated its way into the Philippine heart long before the Spanish towed in stone cannonballs, religion, and government. Palawan’s indigenous lowland aboriginals, the Tagbanuas, expressed love feelings in singing poems inspired by the inexhaustible variety of sounds in nature. The Tagbanuas imitated the singing of insects and birds and created a “bird scale.” That birdlore vocabulary continues to bond men and women of the jungle.
I discovered that classic serenading still occurs in all of the remote, outlying provinces. In the late 80’s karaoke—invented by a Filipino man and then sold to a Japanese investor—proliferated all over the Philippines, changing the modern Filipinos’ style of serenading. Today, the urban Filipino swoon has moved yet again, this time inside Videoke (Karaoke with TV screens flashing the song’s lyrics) and sing-along joints; but the simple, unreserved passion still burns. Jukebox-style Videoke booms from crowded street corners to dimly lit bars to Asia’s biggest malls—as common as horn-honking in New York. Meanwhile, American-style “serenading” plays out as ornate gifts, horse-drawn carriage rides, or sports-stadium-scoreboard proposals. Whereas it seems American men sing to their women only to humor them, Filipinos sing to their women as if their lives and happiness depended on it.
Floating motionless in the midst of the cathedral, my outrigger-canoe oarsman, Danilo, turned off his headlamp, so I clicked off mine. In the pitch blackness, he admitted 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 wondered aloud. As the gloom of his dark confession sunk in, bats and swifts audibly swooped past. Paddling back toward the entrance, my adjusted eyes took pleasure in stalagmites, stalactites, and quivering patches of thousands of napping bats hanging from the walls and ceilings.
As we reemerged into daylight near the cave’s mouth—the humid domain of macaques and monitor lizards—boatman Danilo suggested in soft tones, referencing caves, or women, or both, “Sometimes it’s best to look back, but not turn back.” Resonating that apt metaphor for living, Danilo winked ahead at the waiting throng of new customers, all female. As he paddled back into his “office” with a fresh load of cavers, he peered back to shore and pledged that he’s “learning to play the guitar.” A classic Indo-Pacific pickup line is brewing.
The Philippine serenade—from liturgical to metal—is often about unrequited love, but there’s no denying the Filipinos’ love for music. An Asian country melding Spanish and American legacies can’t stop the beat. And although karaoke machines are displacing windowsill serenades, my love for the Philippines surged yet again as my plane touched down in Los Angeles and one of the two flight attendants who sat on the jump seat facing mine began singing to the other.
World music mirrors a universal love—and there’s no greater invitation to love than loving first. Turkey may have laid claim to the world’s “East Meets West” slogan, but it justly describes the Philippines.
For more about visiting the Philippine music scene, visit experiencephilippines.ph
Bruce Northam’s rambles continue on AmericanDetour.com
