research paper about music in the philippines

The New Manila Sound: Music and Mass Culture, 1990s and Beyond

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This dissertation provides the first detailed account of the mass musical culture of the Philippines that originated in the 1990s and continues to be the most popular style of musical entertainment in the country — a scene I dub the New Manila Sound. Through a combination of archival research, musical analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork, my examination focuses on its two major pioneers: the musical television programme Eat Bulaga! (Lunchtime Surprise) and the pop-rock band Aegis. I document the scene’s rise and development as it attracted mostly consumers from the lower classes and influenced other programmes and musicians to adapt its content and aesthetics. The scene’s trademark kitsch qualities of parody, humour, and exaggeration served as forms of diversion to au- diences recovering from the turbulent dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986, when musical works primarily comprised of state-commissioned nationalist anthems, Western art music, and protest songs. In the second part of the study, I trace the New Manila Sound’s contemporary revival in popularity through the aid of digital technology, resulting in an expansion of the modes of content-creation, dissemination, and audience participation in the country’s entertainment industry. Eat Bulaga! and Aegis hold a significant place in Philippine culture: not only have they influenced the tastes and identities of their audience, their brand of entertainment has also trickled down to the musicality of everyday social contexts in the country. As the first study of contemporary Philippine musical traditions that combines historical documentation and the ethnographic study of performers and audiences, my research expands our understanding of the country’s popular music industry as an influential force that has bestowed on its mass audience assurances of cultural and social authority.

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The Philippine Popular Music Industry: Technologies of Music Production, Performance, and Consumption

José S. Buenconsejo, College of Music, University of the Philippines, Philippines

• Published: 18 August 2022
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The relationship between technology and music production (or its corollary consumption) is unquestionably one of a means and end of utility. This commonly understood assumption, however, needs to be addressed more adequately by considering the notion that music production and consumption are fundamentally active human processes within a nest of social material conditions, technology being an important component. These provide a context, social and cultural in the first instance, by which musical acts or performances are deemed significant through time. This chapter explores some of these conditions in the Philippine popular music industries, particularly by examining the entry of various music technologies that moved the priorities of the industries to certain ends, and that consequently rippled through in the busy-ness of musicians, as they flowed into and engaged with them. Musical idioms resulted from the flows. Because there is no comprehensive research on this topic to date, it is only expedient to offer a broad view to the problem from a cultural historical standpoint.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the Philippine popular music industry as part of the changing ecologies of experiencing sound, as these were afforded by the complex flow of musicians, finance, and technology. In the Philippines, this industry can be traced back deeply to a time when music and its performances were first commodified in the 1870s. This happened in the few cities of the archipelago that were opened to world trade, by which period music was consumed by groups, who naturally had money, and to whom the consumed performances were culturally significant locally.

The introduction of new forms of entertainment since the 1870s, afforded by the travels of musicians to and from the islands, was crucial in the shaping of modern musical practices in the country, and in East Asia at large ( Buenconsejo 2017b , 17–18; Yamomo 2018 , 32–33). These forms of entertainment were constitutive of the cultural development of port cities, and were, right from the start, entangled with local and foreign musical entrepreneurship, in which music—as a cultural object and as embodied labor resulting from producing it—entailed commodification, a hallmark of capitalism. As we shall see, this consequently produced a secular modern ethos and, with it, types of musical performativities.

Prior to this development, the Philippines was already well integrated in the world economy, having been Spain’s corridor (or Western Europe’s for that matter), via Mexico, for trade with China, and the rest of the Asian continent. Since the seventeenth century, Spain penetrated this maritime region, thanks to its powerful, though archaic (by today’s standards), merchant galleons (i.e., ships). It was not until Spain lost its colonies in South America in the early nineteenth century that economic reforms were made to open the islands as markets for other Euro-American businesses, thus gradually intensifying participation of this archipelago in the global trade. English, French, German, and, later on, American traders were among those who exploited the opportunity. When the Philippines declared independence from Spain in 1896, the revolution was cut short by another imperial ambition in the Asia Pacific region, namely when the Americans interfered with the country’s development, which eventually resulted in a much-debated policy in the United States as to whether to occupy the overseas territory or not. It happened though, after a bloody warfare with the Filipinos during the period 1899–1901; the imperialist league won, and so beginning 1902, the Philippines was annexed to US territory. American colonial presence from then on left deep transformations in Philippine culture, and this was briefly intercepted again during 1942 to 1945 by another country with imperial ambitions, Japan, which foresaw dreamed-of economic prosperity, yet that proved to be disastrous due to the empire’s aggressive military expansionism. It was only in 1946 that the Philippine Republic gained acceptance in the world community.

In the Philippines, cultural exchanges brought on by the move toward nineteenth century music capitalism were two-way. In Manila, the introduction of Italian operas (since 1860s), Spanish zarzuelas (since 1877), and Anglo-American vaudeville (circa 1898) grew out of a demand in the local market, as the port cities participated in larger exchanges in the region and beyond. This consequently led to market demands in local musical labor, such that, in tandem with the growth of other Asian port cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama, and Kobe, Filipino musicians had to be exported to those musical markets in the Asia Pacific region since the last half of the nineteenth century. Later, this extended, thanks to the Pacific Mail steamships, to Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even as far as Lima Peru, where band musician José Sabas Libornio left a legacy.

In the Philippines, the term “global popular” refers to music that spun from these movements in longue durée , particularly in the context of secularization, urban westernization, and modernization of the islands, as the power of the colonial state and religious corporations acceded to the emerging cultural tastes of economic elites. These were the ilustrados (Western-educated persons) who formed an incipient “civil society.” This social formation, as Philippine history has shown, has always been fragile, given the fact that the term “civil society” in the Philippines is constituted predominantly by the middle class, a weak numerical population due to the glaring gap between rich and poor in the country. But as the economy of the islands shifted from the previous early modern period of monopolistic mercantilism of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade to that of liberal economic global trade ( Irving 2010 ), some kind of a middle stratum did emerge from it, and it is from this status group that the global popular was initially pertinent.

The movement of non-Spanish merchants, including performing arts companies mentioned earlier, all of whom passed through the Mediterranean, as the Suez Canal was opened in the early 1870s, went hand in hand with the diffusion of technology, notably that of lithography that made commodified music prints possible (during the late 1870s to the 1930s) in the Philippines. Then, as the islands became an American colony after 1898, the technology of sound recording passed through the hands of American businessmen on their transpacific steamship travel as early as 1902s. 1 Through them, it moved to the Filipino musician-entrepreneur Cecil Lloyd, who established the first locally capitalized Philippine Recording System in 1948. In the 1950s, Manuel D. Villar, who is said to be the “Father of the Music Recording Industry” in the country, followed. The production of technologically aided Philippine music, that is, using new media (also known as digital technology) from the 1990s and its subsequent circulation via the internet’s World Wide Web in the current millennium, was both continuous and discontinuous from this earlier analog recording history.

Across this swathe of time, global popular Philippine music exchanges have always entailed conflicting ideological-practical tendencies. On the one hand, there has been a tendency to perfectly imitate non-Filipino performance styles, that is, erasing one’s identity in performance such as in the case of Filipino musicians, who do covers because their audiences expect them to do acts of minstrelsy ( Watkins 2009 ; Castro 2010 ). On the other hand, there has been a persistence to creatively appropriate the “foreign” to suit the taste of the local (i.e., national) audiences ( Santos 2005 ). The latter idioms are fundamentally hybrid in their cultural make up. They were so, in many ways, because these musics remained in the market as locally meaningful communicative performances. Culturally specific ideologies of taste and politics of identification, as well as tensions between cultural memory and the ever-changing market imperative to innovate and produce the new individuality all factor out in the emergence of this hybridity, which is the sign of the global popular in Philippine music-cultural history. 2

Lithographic Music Printing

Music printing started only in the 1870s in Manila. Oppel Litografia, a business service that began as early as 1858 and was owned by the expatriate German brothers Oppel, particularly pioneered it. This company did not immediately produce sheet music, but did so only when, beginning in the 1880s, its corollary object, the piano, became widely available to Western-educated Filipinos in the cities ( Buenconsejo 2017a ). The Franciscan religious organization was actually the first “consumer” to utilize music lithography in the country. By means of this technology, they ordered in print its vast functional church music in four volumes ( Manual Cantoral ), two of which came out in 1871. However, its use was largely ceremonial, 3 and was, in fact, aimed toward the conservation of a repertory that was, until then, used for quite some time ( Chua 2017 ). The more progressive development that occurred was the demand for sheet music aimed at the new and secular “public sphere,” part of which was domestic music making in the sala of affluent residences. This took time to evolve.

The publication of the literary-musical magazine La Lira in 1877, followed by La Revista del Liceo Artistico-Literario in 1879, supported the initial demand for a music market that was patronized by the emerging class of literati of mixed ethnic backgrounds: Spanish peninsular, Hispanics, mestizos and creollos, and educated Filipino indigenas or “natives.” In the issues of La Lira , short original music compositions in such genres as the march, paso doble , villancico , rigodon , polka , and waltz were printed along with religious music, such as masses and Te Deums by Spanish and Hispanic composers (e.g., Arche, Sainz, Carerras, Camps y Soler) ( Bañas 1969 , 131–132). A member of the Liceo named Eusebio Alins would advertise his original solo piano composition ‘La Flor de Manila’ in 1878, and so did Hispanic Ignacio Massaguer’s ‘Bella Filipina’ in 1879. In the same year, Massaguer also had a duet printed from his 1878 costumbrista zarzuela ‘Viaje del Mundo.’

The image of domesticity, and bourgeois gentility and polity, is best represented by Dolores Paterno’s piece ‘Sampaguita,’ who was then the doyenne of Manila’s high society. Both, Paterno’s ‘Sampaguita’ as well as Massaguer’s ‘La Bella Filipina’ were in Danza Filipina style. They had lilting dotted rhythm in the bass and melodic rhythm tresillos , a general style that came from Hispanic habanera music already circulating in the international circuit where Spanish culture dominated. It was, however, localized in the Philippines, and assumed a more “gentrified” or graceful gait and slower tempo. This localized “habanera” style would reach new heights of popularity in Julio Nakpil’s ‘Recuerdos de Capiz’ in the early 1890s, the year by which it had already undergone its sixth print run in Paris that was marketed back to Philippine salons ( Alzona 1964 , 79–83). Along with another popular international style in triple meter, the valse , danza music would eventually become associated with romantic love (e.g., serenading harana ), and thus a resource for later twentieth-century Philippine movie theme songs, such as Miguel Velarde’s ‘Buhat’ (Since Then) and ‘Dahil sa ‘Yo’ (Because of You), Nicanor Abelardo’s ‘Bituing Marikit’ (Beautiful Star), and Constancio de Guzman’s ‘Maaalala Mo Kaya’ (Will You Remember?), to name a few (Buenconsejo 2019b , 2020c ). This was indeed a vast popular music heritage that would be eclipsed when the rock music aesthetic came to the fore in the late 1960s.

Not all musical styles were in Danza Filipina style, however. Some music prints from the late nineteenth century incorporated existing local rhythms in triple meter, such as balitao , 4   kundiman , 5 and, to a certain extent, the Southern Tagalog cumintang in two opposing notational orientations, 6 one of which was simple documentary transcription, while the other creatively reworked them as arrangements. The folkloric documentation of popular music in the Philippines by the Hispanic bureaucrat Manuel Walls y Merino in 1892 was a good example of the former. 7 This manner of presentation ran alongside the historical impulse to document sounds heard in nature, as that presaged by the Spanish affluent traveler Gironella’s 1843 picture album, which included Jose Honorato Lozano’s drawings “letras y figuras” in watercolor, which depicted the landscape and ethnoscape of the Philippines. This manuscript contained notations of “old” and “new” cundiman . 8 Another one was by Jean Baptiste Mallat, who published a cumintang notation with the erroneous conflation of a guitar (in “fandango” style) and conservatory-style (learned harmonic) accompaniments ( Mallat 1846 ). 9

The most important nineteenth-century music print, however, was the monumental piano medley (potpourri) Recuerdos de Filipinas y sus Cantares by Diego C. Perez, which included a set of nineteen styles of local songs and dances then popular in the Philippines when it was still considered a province of Spain. Many of these folkloric “popular” styles did not survive the passage of time ( Buenconsejo 2017b ). Composed some time before 1887, Diego Perez’s piano medley was exhibited in the Philippine General Exposition in Madrid in 1887, again the following year during the 1888 World Exposition in Barcelona, and again during the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, when it won a formal award. The medley gained the attention of eminent John Philip Sousa (of the US Marines’ Band), who incorporated the whole medley into his anthology of world music and patriotic songs in 1890 ( National, Patriotic and Typical Airs of All Lands ). However, Sousa omitted Perez’s name, which suggests that Sousa perceived the work as “aboriginal” when, in fact, the opposite was true (e.g., there are passages in gavotte and polka, and so on). The piece was framed by the brillante piano style of the nineteenth century, and had many non-autochthonous musical passages between the sections.

Acoustic Sound Recording

The popularity of Diego Perez’s medley is seen in how it was emulated by José Atanacio Estella y Barredo in his suite of waltzes titled La Tagala some twenty years later. Perez’s music would even influence the 1960s movie composer Restie Umali, who utilized a few melodies from the medley into his ‘Pandangguhan’ piece. 10 While not as comprehensive as Perez’s, Estella’s attempt to folkloricize La Tagala is manifest in the mixing of local traditional popular rhythms such as balitao , cumintang , cundiman , and zapateado into what was then the unmarked genre of waltz. 11 An excerpt of Estella’s piece was acoustically recorded on June 29, 1912, in New York (or Candem, New Jersey?) by the Victor Military Band (Matrix B-121138). 12 The music, in its complete form, also appeared as sheet music in two print versions, the solo piano of which was published by Chofre lithography and another for four hands, an extant copy of which exists in the Library of Congress. Unlike the contemporary Julio Nakpil, who ventured into commodified sheet music, José Estella thus went further, going into commercial recordings. His active involvement in the industry can be seen in the number of instrumental music registered in the Victor Recording database. Scores for this music were presumably sent to the United States before 1912.

The first two Philippine popular music pieces ever recorded were Massaguer’s ‘La Bella Filipina’ (before 1905), and Paterno’s ‘La Sampaguita’ (1910). The former was renamed to ‘Belle of the Philippines,’ and it too omitted Massaguer’s name, the composer. It was set to ragtime music that was the dominant style at the time of recording. The latter, ‘La Sampaguita,’ was rendered by the famed Philippine Constabulary Band during a break in their American concert tour. 13 These two were commercial projects, unlike that of Frances Densmore (1906) , who recorded indigenous music by the Negritos in the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 for anthropological research.

The early commercial recordings were done on Edison blue amberol cylinders. An advertisement in Almanaque Manila galante para el año 1912 , page 207, showed that the hardware, called Fonografo Edison , for playing the cylinders was already available at 100 C. Alkan in Escolta.

The preservation of these recorded sounds debunks current knowledge that the first Philippine recorded music was in 1913, sung by the tandem Maria Carpena and Victorino Carreon, singing songs from Fulgencio Tolentino’s vernacular zarzuela Walang Sugat and Jose Estella’s ‘Ang Maya’ (The Sparrow) from his 1905 zarzuela Filipinas para los Filipinos . These recordings were believed to have been supervised by Major William Hart Anderson, who was not a musician, in a room in the newly finished Manila Hotel. 14 That might be true if Anderson, equipped with the portable Victrola machine, was “commissioned” to do the recording by the company. However, this was very unlikely because Victor Talking Company, based in Camden, New Jersey, was meticulous in the quality of their recordings. By 1913, Anderson was the supplier of the Erlanger and Galinger store, which was the main dealer and distributor of Victor Talking Company’s mechanical playback machines in the Philippines. 15 His competitor was another expatriate businessman named Isaac Beck, who was the conduit for the German trademark Odeon recordings. Nonetheless, Maria Carpena, who died in 1915, is listed in Richard Spottswood’s catalogue of “ethnic music” (see volume 4) with a given date of 1920s, but qualified with a question mark. 16 The plausible theory then is that, had there been an acoustical recording of Carpena’s voice in Manila prior to 1915, this must have been reissued in the 1920s by Victor due to its popularity.

Electric Sound Recording

The invention and availability of the condenser microphone in 1925, and the empowering of recording and playback gramophones with electricity stiffened the competition between the American Victor Company and the German Odeon Company. Between 1928 to 1930, both embarked on overseas trips to record more Philippine music that was in accordance to the taste and language of the local markets. Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilocano entertainers were contracted to do recordings made by recording engineers from the United States (for Victor Talking Company, Columbia Records, and Brunswick Records) and Germany (for Odeon) ( Keppy 2019 , 116–123). Thanks to the affordances of steamship liners, which physically transported masters or matrixes and engineers to and from the islands destined for the pressing plants in Philadelphia (for Victor) and India (for Odeon), and to the hospitality of Filipino music expert entrepreneurs, the releases were successfully distributed back to the islands. These recordings were also sold in Hawaii and California to Filipino immigrants, most of whom were plantation workers. Eventually, Victor also marketed their records in the Philippines as a tie-in with the publication of the Bureau of Education’s Progressive Music Series music textbooks ( Parker and Romualdez , reprinted 1948 ). Hence, the recordings became sonic materials for music appreciation, that is, for building cultural literacy of classical music, the music of the masters, even for learning correct pronunciation of the colonial language, American English. 17 These records were played in electricity-driven, aesthetically pleasing cabinets that had a radio receiver.

Like a river, the flow of American capital adapted to the changing course of industrial technological landscape, although the flow did not immediately meant profit. 18 Erlanger and Galinger, the dealer-distributor of Victor Company, established the radio station KZEG, while his competitor Isaac Beck, working for the German company Odeon, had KZIB. 19 Another foreign store owner, named Samuel Gaches, had a department store and radio KZRH, which business coupling would be unusual today. The diversification of the use of records can be thought of as a way to promote audio hardware, a prestige good, that they themselves sold physically in their main stores in Manila and in the provinces, notably Ilo-ilo and Cebu cities.

The genres and repertories that the engineers recorded reflected a wide range of local popular music performed by performing artists from heterogenous educational backgrounds and training. They were selected by local music experts, acting as middlemen-consultants for the recording crews, who were already established in the existing music scenes. Many were involved in dance halls and nightclubs, as pianists in silent films, and as music directors of music theater, such as the vernacular zarzuela and bodabil (vaudeville). 20 Aside from José Estella, Juan de Sahagun Hernandez, and Manuel Velez, the latter from Cebu, were two of the many composers, who wrote music for zarzuelas, and then extended non-exclusive rights for the more memorable songs of this music to the printing presses and recording companies. Favorites were, of course, the solos of the main protagonists of the music play, such as the song ‘Ang Maya’ (The Sparrow) mentioned previously. This was a bucolic waltz with coloratura runs that did not fail to be the point of aural interest. This became the prototype of the Cebuano composed balitao (specifically called balitao romansada ) by Manuel Velez titled ‘Sa Kabukiran’ (From the Mountains), which was rendered by Velez’s wife Concepcion Cananea, a local zarzuela actor. Other idioms were the romantic duet, for example, ‘Choleng y Emilio,’ novelty songs, and folk songs (linked to the Progressive Music Series mentioned previously), such as the Tagalog ‘Magtanim ay di Biro’ (Planting Rice Is Never Fun) and the children’s song ‘Sitsiritsit.’

Busy Lives: Filipino Musicians on the Move

It was natural for a single musician in the 1920s in the urban Philippines to juggle multitasking. Nicanor Abelardo, who got reprimanded by the administration of the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music, was a proverbial case ( Beltran 2015 ). Abelardo taught music theory and composition during the day, had to work as a gig musician in Santa Ana Cabaret throughout the night until early morning, and did composition activities in between. Yet, despite his “busy-ness” and economic productivity, Abelardo wrote some of his most lofty kundiman (‘Nasaan ka Irog’ (Where Are You, My Love?) and ‘Mutya ng Pasig’ (Muse of Pasig)) in the 1920s. In this decade, which, according to the Hispanista writer Alfredo Roa was the second Golden Age of Music in the country ( 1927a , b , c ), 21 the genre, once a popular folk music in the nineteenth century, became an academic art song composition with complex harmonic progressions. The same thing happened in the hands of Francisco Santiago, Bonifacio Abdon, and Francisco Buencamino Sr. ( Santos 2005 ). This change in taste tells us that the audiences, who had the gramophone and its records at home, or who were desiring to possess them in installments (an alluring marketing strategy), already had the ears to appreciate the recorded sounds of familiar music that were experienced earlier in the many musical theaters, from elite operas to the more accessible comedia , stage plays with incidental music, and zarzuelas. A facsimile of an advertisement published on July 19, 1929, in the newspaper Bag-ong Kusong ( Nueva Fuerza ) in Cebu attracted consumers to buy the new records either by cash-on-delivery (COD) or through installments via the postal system.

Similar to the experience of musicians who went abroad, musicians who stayed behind eked out an existence inside the city’s venues for music. As mentioned earlier, these had various types of entertaining presentations since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, first zarzuela, then silent film, and then vaudeville. They also collaborated with Victor recording engineers, bringing with them the glamorous star singers, who sang for their stage works, such as Maria Carpena, Honorata “Atang” de la Rama, Isang Tapales, José Santiago Mossessgeld, Jovita Fuentes, Enya Gonzales, and Nati (a.k.a. Tinay) Arellano, and so on. 22 Just as Enrico Caruso was for the Victor Company a decade earlier, many of these singers were classically trained, a distinction that the recording companies prized for they brought in a lot of profit in the business.

In short, the range of musical idioms in the repertory of recorded Philippine popular music by the 1920s expanded—from traditional local popular genres ( cundiman , balitao , and Danza Filipina ), unmarked international styles, such as valse and tango , to the recent fashionable American dance rhythms, such as ragtime, foxtrot, cakewalk, one-step, two-step, and so on. The variety of idioms was a democratizing of sorts, which also prefigured that the distinction between elite academic musicians mixing with non-formally trained ones was downplayed, for they were all in the business of making music commodities that they could sell to people. A palpable sign of modern social transformation wrought by commerce in the Philippines, this “democratizing” effect is best epitomized by a musician who came from a “traditionally landed” (i.e., rich) family in Cebu, but who became the entertainment icon of 1920s vaudeville in Manila, Borromeo Lou. 23

His musical biography can be likened to another diasporic transnational musician named Federico Elizalde, also coming from a rich clan, who contributed immensely to the Philippine popular music scenes, especially in the realm of jazz that he excelled in quite well. 24 Elizalde studied composition in Madrid Conservatory of Music under Manuel de Falla, went on gigs as music director in posh clubs in London, and concertized in Europe before settling down in Manila, where he established a radio orchestra that broadcast music over his brother Manolo’s KZRH station (the callsign) of the Manila Broadcasting Company. This started operation in 1946, that is, after WWII. Before this, KZRH was established in 1939 by Samuel Gaches of H. E. Heacock in Escolta. It rivalled KZRM (Radio Manila) that was originally part of the Radio Corporation of the Philippines in 1927 (once a subsidiary of the American RCA), and which transferred ownership to Erlanger and Galinger in 1932. KZRM was later bought by J. Amado Araneta in 1938 (who was ahead of the Elizaldes in this realm of local investment) ( Enriquez 2008 , 34–47, 160–164; Cayabyab 2018 , 2019 ). 25 Though KZRH was not the only radio orchestra in the Philippines before and after WWII, it, together with KZRM, helped develop the learned styles of instrumental arranging that became the benchmark for the ensuing local studio recordings. Meanwhile, storeowner Isaac Beck, the distributor of Columbia and Odeon records, had KZIB beginning 1925.

Restie Umali, classically trained songwriter and film scorer of the 1960s, would absorb the kind of studio style popular music arrangement in Elizalde’s workshop, and from hearing popular music orchestras, such as that of Serafin Payawal and Tirso Cruz in elite venues. Aside from Umali, there was Leopoldo Silos, another notable arranger of the 1960s, who did lush lyrical music arrangements for both film and records. They, along with the arrangers for live orchestras, would influence the succeeding generation of arrangers, such as Domeng Amarillo, Dominic Salustiano, and Domeng Valdez.

All these developments would indicate that the practice of elite art music making that came after the modern symphonic concert listening was introduced by the Viennese-trained Alexander Lippay in Manila in 1925 ( Beltran 2015 ), and of popular music that attended to the rise of commercial recording was not compartmentalized into tightly bounded sectors. It was, in fact, an “open” domain for musicians from various economic and subcultural backgrounds to participate in. For truly, the divide between art and popular music making at this time was porous. It was not until the 1960s when it became less so. The same huge pool of musicians traversed the heterogenous venues. Its practice of listening, though, was decidedly middle class in import. This was because not many from the less developed rural areas were able to purchase a piano, sheet music, gramophone, and records. 26 In the realm of music production, musicians from rich families played along with the less fortunate ones, as long as they had the necessary skills to join in.

The history of the inclusion of the Filipino poor in music making has been well documented, and there is strong material evidence that points to the value of reading music as a form of cultural capital, or a desired skill for an individual to earn public merit. This was a modern cultural development. It was the acquisition of this skill that enabled Filipino musicians to engage in cosmopolitan music making in Philippine cities, and well as in the nearby port cities like Malacca, Penang, Shanghai, and Batavia (Sooi Beng 1996 , 2013 ). The export of male Filipino musicians to Shanghai, disembarking in that city from Hong Kong aboard the Pacific Mail Steam Liner, is documented as early as the late 1870s ( Bickers 2001 ). By the 1880s, and with economic prosperity in the Spanish province of the Philippines due to surpluses in agricultural exports ( Legarda 2012 ), a huge demand for musicians, who were needed in public entertainments, ensued ( Tan 2017 ). By mid-1885, musicians formed guilds to regulate their ranks with corresponding evening rates in performance. An intelligent secular priest named José Zamora wrote a fundamentals of music theory manual in Tagalog, so the poor could read and thus advance themselves in life by joining the music workforce as instrumentalists. Some of these ordinary “Manila men” learned music through the akademya (community-based music schools sponsored by band owners, who volunteered to mentor anyone interested to learn music in a formal academy), where sight singing and playing was taught ( Caliwara 2014 ). This modern music culture, characterized by social mobility ( Buenconsejo 2017a ), differentiates it neatly from other modern developments in the world, in which elite classical music making parted ways from the popular. 27 In the late nineteenth century, the rise in social status of Simplicio Solis from Bulacan to a notable public figure as a music teacher in Ateneo Municipal de Manila was a famous case. He fathered Bernardo Solis, who wrote music for vernacular zarzuela, and who reached fame as far as Broadway, passing through California, in the early twentieth century. In the 1930s, he recorded a number of pieces for the Victor Company.

Noted jazz musician and, later, classical symphony bass player Angel Peña was another. He started out as a guitarist in a club in the suburb. But through self-study and “on-the-job” training in the orchestra of Federico Elizalde ( Quirino 2008 ), he extended his palette of competencies to classical music and jazz arrangements. A different pathway marked another jazz pianist, who ended up stunning jazz aficionados in the United States, calling him “The Wildman in Jazz.” This was Bobby Enriquez, who was a self-taught musician from a provincial town in the Southern Philippines, later playing in a famous bar in Malate, a place along Roxas Boulevard (formerly Dewey Avenue) in Manila. From there, he went to Taiwan before reaching the United States where he performed with jazz legends.

A comparison between Peña and Enriquez is telling. Peña is known for jazz arrangements that are fully written out, similar to Duke Ellington’s. He even arranged a piece for a Big Band ‘Bagbagtolambing’ that incorporated indigenous rhythms and tunes, and which sounds like “symphonic jazz.” In the field of jazz, this was a seminal contribution to a self-conscious attempt to mark one’s appropriation of the imported jazz idiom with cultural difference.

The divergent performances they were known to specialize in thus demonstrated the indeterminacy of their futures. They flowed in time, reaching various destinations of performative work. And, as the broadcast mass media—film, radio, and TV—came, they also entered these, like the chemical messenger dopamine that brought happiness to the music-saturated features and programs.

Broadcast Media Technology

As the few pre-1941 Philippine radio stations were owned and managed by private American entrepreneurs (such as Gaches, Beck, and Anderson of Erlanger and Galinger), outside of government subsidy from its inception until the occupation of the Japanese Imperial Army in the years 1942–1945, their transmitting operation was taken from the add-on fees that consumers paid as a license when they bought the radio sets, some models of which had a turntable for playing records. As it turned out, however, there was an under-collection of fees in the 1930s. This deficit imperiled the radio as a commercial channel right from the start, and thus advertising of products became the means to compensate for the loss. Companies were enticed to sponsor a program (“buying block time” or “spot” advertisement, as it is called by the industry) in exchange for the promotion it got on the air, and it worked. For example, broadcasts of live music by an orchestra, featuring popular singers, such as Pricilla Aristorenas, dubbed the “Kolynos” girl, over KZRM’s Listerine Hour, were highly anticipated by long distance listeners all over the country. Before the Japanese occupation, talents from the provinces, such as Manuel Velez’s daughter Lilian Velez, and Tomas Villaflor of Cebu traveled all the way to Manila and were featured in KZRM’s musical programs. The popularity of the programs led to the establishment of a local station with the same emphasis on music in Cebu Island. This had the ever-popular Ben Zubiri host a weekly live broadcast of singing contests, where singers’ appearances received the threat of the “ringing bell” when they went off key or lost tempo (akin to the approving buzzes in today’s talent reality TV). These contestants were also judged by how they can redound the host’s defaulting performatives—banter and ridicule—with wit and humor. The most famous singing contest on radio DZBB was Tawag ng Tanghalan (originally known as “Purico Amateur Hour,” Purico being the radio show sponsor and manufacturer of cooking oil) in 1954. It then moved to ABS-CBN Television Channel 2 in the 1960s (later acquired by local businessman Lopez), and saw Nora Aunor and Diomedes Maturan, among others, emerge as winners. Nora Aunor eventually became a fine actor portraying the “suffering and martyred woman” performative in Philippine films ( Flores 2000 ), but her “clean, easy sounding” recordings with Alpha Recording Company in the 1970s would be unsurpassed in popularity in terms of sales.

Local Capital as Technology

As previously shown, investing in radio broadcast transmission was a precarious business from 1925 to the mid-1930s for private foreign investors. Yet the turnover of production to local capitalists, such as J. Amado Araneta buying KZRM (from Erlanger and Galinger) in 1938, and Manolo Elizalde in KZRH (from Heacock) in 1946, would need further research as to why the management of their local capitalization sustained after WWII bloomed in the 1950s until the emergence of TV. The case of Elizalde’s Manila Broadcasting Company is especially interesting because this company accelerated its business operations immediately after 1946, that is, through its expansion into DZMB in 1947, and then DZPI in 1949. 28 Was this because it had alluring music by Federico Elizalde, a well-trained musician, and so would have more following, as if music were like the voice of modern enchantment? Can this relate to the attraction to the “familiar” voice of Nati (or Tinay) Arellano over KZIB in the mid-1920s, or Priscilla Aristorenas on KZRM in the 1930s? 29

By this time (1939–1946), local radio singers had already gained large listening audiences. The next step in the production of this popular culture was for these radio stars to project their voices using their own capital in the recording industry. Such was indeed the case with the famous radio personality Cecil Lloyd, called the “Mystery Singer,” of the stations DZIB and DZRB. He would eventually, after WWII in 1948, establish the first local recording company in the Philippines, named Philippine Music Recording System. This existed only until the mid-1950s, however, producing under the label Bataan Records. It is not yet ascertained what particular music gadgets this company had (presumably they still exist somewhere in a junkyard in Manila), though one can conjure that they already used magnetic tapes for sound mastering, which master was then mass produced into the now available vinyl LPs (33 rpm) and singles (45 rpm). Its administrative office was in Raon Quiapo, which was the main market where recording management executives met record producers, who, in turn, negotiated with songwriters, arrangers, singers, and, most importantly, the nombrador (the recruiter), the lead musician who liaised with the required instrumentalists. Manuel Villar’s Mabuhay Recording Company (MARECO) was founded in 1950. This company also ventured into radio broadcasting in DZBM in 1963, thus proving the economic fit and ties between radio and music recording companies. James D. Dy had his Dyna Music in 1957. MARECO’s own pressing plant would play an important role in the massive diffusion of recorded local Philippine musics, that were and continue to be appreciated by Filipinos.

As structured globally, these companies were licensed to replicate foreign vinyl releases, a good example of which that became a craze in the Philippines in the 1950s was Puerto Rico’s Rafael Hernandez’s 1946 song ‘El Cumbanchero.’ This was in the repertory of Tito Puente and Xavier Cugat, the latter of whom did a concert in Manila in the 1950s. This was so appreciated by ordinary Filipinos during that time that “bands” called cumbancheros sprouted in remote areas in the Philippines, using instruments made of gasoline tin cans (later on, for rock bands in the 1980s, this was called combo lata ). The song ‘Macarena’ would do the same in the 1990s.

The 1950s recording companies actually had a diverse music production, signing up local artists, who sang in the global language English, and in Philippine languages, such as Tagalog, Ilocano, Bikolano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, even Spanish. The proportion of Philippine English songs with those in Philippine languages is not yet ascertained, but there is an indication, based on a recent phone call I made with the older staff of the radio station, that this was more common. Existing postings in YouTube of past original Philippine English songs would show that they were produced by now forgotten many record labels, sung by Pilita Corrales (who had Spanish songs as well), Carmen Soriano, Tessie Lagman, Victor Wood, El Masculino (a pseudonym), and Eddie Peregrina, and released as 45 rpm singles as late as the early 1970s. Almost all were in ballad style; some manifested crass production methods for mass consumption, that can be gleaned by the arrangements and renditions that were not well done (as opposed to those done by arrangers commissioned by the majors). In addition, many songwriters were not credited on the record labels. To be sure, these records were meant for the coin-operated jukeboxes that were a common object in sari-sari stores (neighborhood stores), that often had a space for drinking and eating snacks. The karaoke machine would supplant this material object beginning in the 1980s.

The plurality of languages used in songs means that there was a diversity of consumers within the Philippine market. By this time, a gradual compartmentalization in the categorization of music arrived. In contrast to the late nineteenth century, when the word folk and popular were interchangeable, the stylistic category “folk” appeared beginning the 1960s, and this was contrasted with the style of mainstream ballads (Buenconsejo 2020b , 2020c ). For the “folk,” MARECO produced many albums for the rondalla (an ensemble of traditional stringed instruments), which material came from the anthology of folk dances earlier documented in notation by Francisca Aquino in the 1930s. These records were used in Physical Education folk dance classes, as well as in village celebratory events whenever a live instrumental ensemble comparsa was not available. 30 MARECO also had band music playing marches, jota , and so on, and its social use in fiestas and other political gatherings was obvious. The rondalla arrangements were done by Juan Silos Jr., who was a descendant of the mid-nineteenth-century Spanish regimental band leader Leonardo Silos. Another relative, active after Juan, was named (also) Leonardo Silos, whose style of smooth, sentimental romantic song is reminiscent of the kundiman that was recorded by names such as Sylvia la Torre, Ruben Tagalog, Ric Manrique, Mabuhay Singers, and so on. It is interesting to note that the kundiman pieces ‘Mutya ng Pasig’ and ‘Bayan Ko’ (My Country) were composed decades earlier, that is, from the 1920s. Thus, the impulse to record them again in the 1950s had a preservation value, that is, the music carried the ideology of “outliving time,” embodying a people’s ethnic identity and their heritage.

Yet, the recording of the kundiman repertory of the past did not become “museumized” Philippine music compositions in that decade. This was because listening to the old music was not an end in itself. For example, film became the channel by which this repertoire of romantic ballads could be further exploited ( Buenconsejo 2020c ). A musical extravaganza, Bituing Marikit , was produced in the late 1930s. The handbill showed a set of favorite popular music was integrated into this production like a revue or a variety.

For films that were in the romance genre, kundimanin songs (integrating both kundiman and danza filipina styles) became the staple. Santiago’s kundiman ‘Pakiusap’ (Plea) from 1920, for example, became the serenading song in a poignant scene in the 1949 film of the same title. So would Nicanor Abelardo’s cumintang (actually kundiman in form) in ‘Mutya ng Pasig’ (Muse of Pasig), that was made into a movie by his cousin in 1950 ( Buenconsejo 2019b ). Moreover, the recycled romanticization of the previously composed local repertory was influenced by the often-exaggerated sentimentality of 1950s soap operas, that started to saturate the radio airwaves. These employed melodrama techniques of mixing words of pathos with mood-inducing “canned” music. From this “formulaic” procedure, music scoring became a maligned practice in the local film industry; after all, it did not sound right from a dramaturgical point of view to have a theme song composed first before the narrative, which was the most important element in a classic feature film. This formulaic-ness continued and moved on to recent TV teleseryes, in which the enticement to the program is enhanced by the romantic memory that a ballad song conjures. The associations that the kundiman genre had accrued during the 1950s afforded the utilization of the genre to deepen the mood effect of the films. A good example was ‘Maala-ala Mo Kaya’ (Could You Remember) by Constancio de Guzman, which became the theme song of the movie with the same title. It is interesting to note that the narrative of this specific film is about the commodification of song. It is thus a reflexive commentary to the material conditions, that the music entertainment industry was undergoing in the mid-1950s.

The rise of rock ’n’ roll, with Bill Haley and the Comets, and Elvis Presley in the mid-1950s, and its dissemination as Anglo-American music (industrial) product would inspire responses in the local scene. It inspired the mimicry of rock ’n’ roll, as in the “stage show” songs of Bobby Gonzales (a.k.a. Pablo Roberto Gonzales), who did ‘Diyan ka na’ (I Leave You) and ‘Hahabol-habol’ (Chasing) with Clod Delfino and his band. The energetic sound was mainly made of electric guitars, an electric bass, a drum set, and, if available, blaring wind instruments. This was new, compared to the sounds of the earlier jazz ensembles. The new sound became a staple in jukeboxes and radio stations. The trumpetist band leader Anastacio Mamaril, who was famous for his Latin dances (chacha, mambo, and so on) in a club in Roxas Boulevard, even ventured into this newer style. In 1963, a film titled Dance o Rama had a sequence that showed the then-fashionable American dance “the twist” on the dance floor. Electromaniacs, Anatascio Mamaril, Fred Panopio (who was most known for his “novelty song” ‘Kawawang Cowboy’), and many other singers, whose names await further research, were producing singles meant for the said hardware, and for social dancing ( bailes ) events all over the country.

For dancing held in remote barrios, the singles were amplified over PA megaphones tied into coconut tree trunks. Many of the dance events in town centers and barrios were fundraising affairs, by which organizers generated small income for the community. The income came from men who would pay individual admission for the event, and for each time they would dance with their chosen ladies, who were admitted for free. Some women even did this as a job, and so were frowned upon as “taxi dancers” by conservative sectors in the communities.

Back in the cities, by the mid-1960s, the fashionable and glamorous American culture standing side by side with local comedy skits was visibly screened in a number of variety shows on TV and broadcast all over the country. The program Nineteeners on Channel 9, for instance, had a band (combo) competition, in which electric guitars driven by amplifiers were in keeping with the steadying fashion surrounding rock music in that era. In 1963, an entrepreneur named RJ Jacinto established a radio station called DZRJ that aired local bands. A year after, the phenomenal Beatles from Liverpool played a concert in Manila, which was mobbed by fans.

Nationalization of the Music Industry in the 1970s

The rise of rock bands in the 1960s led all the way to a self-consciousness in national identity by the 1970s. These bands (specifically called “house bands”) were heard live in the thriving entertainment district south of Manila by the Manila Bay (Roxas Boulevard) and other sections of Manila, Cebu, and in Olongapo, an American naval base until the early 1990s, where clubbing for the American GIs became an important source of income for Filipino musicians, and also for prostitutes. Some musicians continued to travel to the Asian Pacific region as usual, and expanded their repertories to include the rock sound, becoming known as traveling “show bands.” Others were contracted by Vicor Recording Company (established in 1965), 31 which gradually grew to surpass MARECO in terms of revenue, and by JEM Recording Company, a small but significant independent company in the following decade, because it produced an all-Filipino repertoire and innovative recordings, such as Eddie Munji’s and Ryan Cayabyab’s jazz fusions in the late 1970s.

Nationalization emerged as part of a context when the Broadcast Media Council was established. This policy-making institution mainly regulated radio and TV operations in 1975. For radio, it ruled the playing of one Filipino song within one hour. This was later increased to three and four, as the industry churned out more musical products. Secondly, the impulse of nationalization was preceded by the foundation of the FILSCAP (Filipino Association of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Inc.) in 1965. As elsewhere, this organization was meant to protect the rights of composers, lyricists, and music publishers (the recording companies); it obliquely instilled an awareness of individual music creativity within a rapidly modernizing society. And finally, nationalization is seen articulated in the emergence of the Philippine Association of Recording Industry in 1972, which represented local national identity in the vast ocean of global music enterprises. It had José Mari Gonzales as its first president, who—a mestizo matinee idol—founded the electric guitar group Electromaniacs, and owner of Cinema One Studio, a high-end recording studio, which served the quality music industry at that time.

In 1971, Vicor released (under its label Sunshine Records), albeit unsuccessfully, the rock music of the Juan de la Cruz Band (which was formed in 1968). Like all the other groups in the 1970s to the 1980s, who can be aggregately described as exponents of what came to be known as OPM or Original Pilipino Music, the Juan de la Cruz Band was abreast with global trends. The group performed in a rock festival (patterned after the New York’s Woodstock) in Antipolo in 1969, and premiered Rice-Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar in the Philippines. In 1973, rockers Joey Pepe Smith and Mike Hanopol would later join Wally Gonzales to record the song ‘Himig Natin’ (Our Hymn), which embodied the ethos of this self-consciousness of modern Filipino identity ( Cayabyab 2019 ).

Meanwhile, in the period around 1970–1971, and on the island of Bohol, Yoyoy Villame, a bus driver of the defunct Meneses-Butalid liner in the island’s capital Tagbilaran, had a knack for entertaining fellow workers in the company. With the bus company’s support, they formed a comparsa (small ensemble of stringed instruments, particularly the tremolo instrument bandurria) called MB Liner. They recorded Cebuano-Boholano folk songs, humorous new songs based on the same folk song style, and set rhyming texts in Cebuano to imported dance tunes. This contribution to culture was a surprise, for up until then, there was not yet an independent initiative to develop the market from the point of view of grassroots auditory culture. These local records spread across the soundscape like fire, flooding the amplified sounds coming from jukeboxes and bayle events. Their albums, containing the satirical song ‘Magellan’ (transl.) and ‘Vietcong Palagdas’ (transl.; means ‘Mindless Vietcong’) (later rerecorded as ‘Butsekik’) became instant hits; 32 their novelty in the regional market became the springboard for recruiting Villame, who would eventually be typecast as a “primitive” actor-comedian ( Buenconsejo 2020b ).

The unprecedented success of Villame’s albums awakened Vicor to the huge potential in producing records for the regional market. Sometime in 1972, Vicor recruited another Cebuano-speaking singer named Max Surban, then a balladeer in one of the clubs in Roxas Boulevard, to record newly composed narrative songs for the regional Cebuano market, that would specifically appeal to the masses. Because the styles of these two songwriters were so different from the dominant Anglo-American mainstream “middle of the road” style, or of the sentimental ballad style from the 1950s and 1960s, they were marketed as “novelty songs.” 33 Villame performed nonsensical rhyming songs, while Max Surban did narrative songs that had a quite particular type of local humor called “ kantalita .” This was “biting” and “sarcastic,” even if it was socially awakening. The popularity of both subtypes of “novelty” songs would lead to the durable collaboration of Villame and Surban in countless raved regional live performances in Visayas and Mindanao, and even in translocal spaces, that is, in diasporic Filipino communities around the world. Their recording projects appealed to a wide swathe of the population, and thus, thanks to technology, literally amplified local folk music traditions of a region, that is, quantitatively multiplying their possibilities, and moving them across the boundaries of time and space.

Back in Manila in 1973 or 1974, Orly Ilacad (part-owner of Vicor, and artist and repertoire head of the company, being a musician himself in the 1960s’ band RamRods) contracted the band The Hotdogs, made up of brothers Dennis and Rene Garcia (who were part of RedFox band, which played in Honolulu). They recorded songs that would be later be branded as the new “Manila Sound.” This band, together with another one called Cinderella, clicked with young people, especially students in affluent, exclusive colleges and schools in Manila ( Royeca 2014 ). Details on the success of its marketing, similar to that of the “novelty” of the regional songwriters mentioned previously, await further research. “Manila Sound” is a type of “soft rock” or “marshmallow music,” and it is characterized by catchy melodies, with a distinct use of Taglish text (mix of Tagalog and English used by students in the city). Its “hip” image, different from the other sound products, for example, the regional sounds, that the Vicor company itself had produced and marketed, created a trend for the new, that rippled through the years, as this new was distinguished from the hackneyed past and the “ bakya ” (low class). The discourse of “high class” taste and its reverse in music thus surfaced in this decade, and this, in another context, namely the commercialization of film in the 1970s, as opposed to the studio-made productions of the 1950s, was echoed in film criticism.

The profitability of commerce in the music industry in the 1970s is reflected in a number of music-related businesses, such as the upgrading of recording technology in Cinema Audio Inc. As mentioned previously, this was originally just the home studio of José Mari Gonzales, where his Electromaniacs recorded in the 1960s, but which, by the 1970s, was the most frequented place to record with its 16-track recording console. 34 The busy-ness can also be seen in the emergence of the Jingle Clan pop music magazine (as the cult of pop increased), the regulation of broadcast (KBP), and, toward the end of the decade, the Metro Manila Pop Music Festival, a songwriting competition that boosted the industry and pushed for excellence of Original Pilipino Music (OPM). This songwriting competition ran from 1978 to 1985. It was superseded and revived by the Philippine Popular Music Festival (or Philpop) during the period 2012–2018.

It was through the said competitions that the industry’s self-consciously made “Filipino” music was felt. Later reflections on the period 1975–1985 cast these years as the “Golden Age of OPM.” 35 There was busy-ness in recruiting singers and matching them to new songs. Classically trained composers Willy Cruz and Ryan Cayabyab produced prolific outputs. But formal training did not preclude the participation of the “natural genius” George Canseco, who was non-formally schooled in music. Legend has it that Canseco spontaneously thought of a musical idea (that a pianist-colleague would then execute on the piano beside him) over a drinking session. This was also a period of close collaboration between producers, songwriters, lyricists, and arrangers in tandem with the tight, complex, and intense performance of already-skilled session musicians, many of whom were also involved in live performance gigs, singers, back-up singers, and fine-eared recording engineers in the studio. Freddie Aguilar’s ‘Anak’ song, for example, is structurally made up of simple melodic cells in repetition, like a folk chant, a lullaby, but part of its appeal or what made it the best-selling song that has come out of this industry in time was its catchy arrangement by Domeng Amarillo, one of the three imaginative arrangers in Manila studios. The two others were Domeng Valdez and Dominic Salustiano, as mentioned already. Ryan Cayabyab’s entry was ‘Kay Ganda ng Ating Musika’ (How Beautiful Is Our Music), a spirited song with brilliant orchestration. This won in the first songwriting competition, and, later, garnered the grand prize in Seoul Korea. Since then, many other Filipino songs got top prizes in international song festivals until the mid-1980s. The studio with its 16-track gadget—a space for creating popular music—reached its zenith in the independently produced a capella album One , which Ryan Cayabyab arranged, sang, and recorded all by himself.

Cassette and CD: Technologies for Replication

In 1978, Orly Ilacad left Vicor Recording Company to establish his own company, OctoArts International. In that year, he pioneered the producing of karaoke songs on cassettes, which ushered in the new age of popular music—cassette culture—in the country. With this technology, the stereotype of the Philippines as a “singing country” came into being. The machine’s capability to allow one’s song performance to be amplified by a microphone together with the recorded minus-one sound became a favorite form of entertainment for oneself, or for others in gatherings. While its ubiquity in the soundscape meant noise in the neighborhoods (and many continue to be “tortured” by it, for not many are indeed gifted to sing in correct pitch and tempo), it is this same technology that has honed outstanding Filipino singers, who would later join in singing competitions on TV beginning in the late 1980s and continuing up to the present.

Because many portable cassette recorders in the 1980s had a feature to record sounds, it allowed for easy circulation of independently produced music. A notable pioneer of this, in 1983, was Joey Ayala from Davao City, who, exposed to the “exotic” recorded world musics on vinyl records, would create an album with minimal capital investment, recording in his school’s audio-visual room, and packaging his syncretic “world beat” music product via cassette duplication. His music would later be reissued on CD in 1991 by WEA (Warner Music Group) corporation. Another well-known group, Eraserheads (or e-heads), who started out as an indie band made up of college students at the University of the Philippines, produced their first album on cassette before being noticed by a major. The replicability of recorded sound via the cassette medium and then CD, meaning a smooth transition as vinyl faded out in the Philippine markets, also pushed the issue of recorded sound rights to the foreground. By the 1990s, the decline in records sales was hurt by piracy due the cassette and CD replicability ( Yson 1995 ).

Economic Diversification in the 1990s

Meanwhile, with Ilacad going into karaoke reproduction, Vic del Rosario, the other founder-owner of Vicor company, continued producing commercially recorded sounds, but eventually ventured into films, event organization, artist management, and so on, in effect diversifying his economic enterprise. Eventually, he named his company Viva Entertainment Multimedia Production ( Ferrer 2016 ). Such diversification was in tune with the changing trends in the entertainment business, as mediatization became more and more dominant since the 1990s.

By this decade, the majors—Vicor, OctoArts, and later Viva—started re-issuing their asset recordings into collections, which guaranteed steady revenues for the said companies. These collections banked on people’s memory of previous works, now risk-free from the expensive cost of production. These were “repackaged” so as to push the demand for recycling and repeated consumption. Creating demand also meant promoting artists, which is evident in Viva’s venture into event organization, as just mentioned, that is, to secure that the music will go well with the intended or desired visual representation. By the 2000s, it was no longer the majors, who went into concert organization. What used to be just television companies, such as ABS-CBN and GMA Network, now had recording company subsidiaries (Star Music and GMA Records) in order to maximize profits. In cooperation with radio stations, such as Wish 107.5 and 105.1 Crossover, they would join the entertainment bandwagon in order promote their artists-under-management. Big names in the music industry, such as Martin Nievera, Sharon Cuneta, Regine Velasquez, Lani Misalucha, and Sarah Geronimo have been, at various times, presented by these media conglomerates in mammoth venues, such as Araneta, ULTRA, Mall of Asia, and so on. 36 All these spell out a strategy for flexibly accumulating revenues, as piracy in music retailing slowly eroded the incentive to produce.

However, this did not mean that music production of original songs by the majors and newcomer media conglomerates was entirely stopped. Certainly, they continued on, but the changing economic landscape demanded that everything was not just produced in pure sound recording of original song compositions ( Leloy 2012 ). As the millennium completed its first decade, the dearth of industry-produced songs prompted the return of the songwriting contest, which ran from 2012 to 2018. The lack of newly composed songs can be gleaned from the recycling of recorded sounds into compilations, as already mentioned, but also in transforming them into new media presentations. For example, the 1990s recorded sounds of the mostly female rock band Aegis became the basis of a contemporary Filipino popular music theater Rak of All Ages in 2014. This was inspired by the repackaging of ABBA’s famous songs into the musical Mamma Mia , that is, a jukebox musical . Interestingly, the phenomenal rise of Aegis to popularity has to do with the reception of their voices. The growling, guttural, and empowering vocal noise that is a part of their performance sonically resembles the voices of widely appreciated female singers from the 1970s, for example, those by Sampaguita (a.k.a. Teresita Q. Alfonso) and Lolita Carbon. 37 This familiar sound was then complemented with a contemporary layer, which was that of TV singing, with its spectacular vocal punch called “ birit ” (flashy style).

Going back to 1987, with ABS-CBN returning to the scene, 38 the original singing competition Tawag ng Tanghalan would make a temporary, short-lived comeback. But it would return again in 2016 after the other TV stations got the franchises of glossy multinational TV reality shows, such as Voice of the Philippines (from the Netherlands) and Pilipinas Got Talent (from the United Kingdom), which had singing competition parts in them. The impact of TV culture at the turn of the millennium cannot be overestimated then. Since the 1990s, it had already created a deep grassroots Filipino media culture, in which seeing/vision has been an important aspect that was inherently wedded to the sound gesturing.

The stereotype that Filipino singers are good mimics can be theorized as the effect of the singer’s desire to render faithfully the memory of the original song performance, and to enact this memory with the karaoke machine (cf. Castro 2010 ). The effect is contrived because singing along with the machine, to a great extent, discourages idiosyncratic singing (as opposed to, for example, accompanying oneself on an acoustic instrument that invites improvisation). The mastery of replicating voices of other singers is gained through intense and frequent karaoke practice. A few reach a high level of dexterity such that they (Marcelito Pomoy, for example) can mimic voices of men and women akin to ventriloquism, this time musicalized.

The imperative of TV culture to be glossy and noisy in character relates to the goal of sustaining the spectatorship of its programs, which generate revenues from corporate sponsorship. Philippine TV, in particular, is famous for its variety shows, particularly during noontime, where there is plenty of fun through singing, gaming, and dancing. These shows are always made complete with invited guests, whose emerging popularity would boost both the guest’s and TV’s visibilities. The need to be more convincing in song performance cultivates quite peculiar performative song stances such as “ hugot ” (emotionally expressed) and “ birit ” (flamboyantly rendered), as just mentioned. These song performatives from the 1990s to the early 2000s are part of the same context, as the glitzy TV dancing where focus is on the gyrations of sensually dressed women (and men) as they move to the music, which is actually just visceral, repetitive dance music. The impact of these aural and visual sensations upon the viewers’ retinae are indicated by how much they can influence consumption. In the case of the singing politicians during election time, they can garner electoral votes, and even a win ( Balance 2010 ; Gabrillo 2017 ). These are now all part of contemporary media, which is a space for advertising (and economic gain), and, largely, for political control in a much broader sense.

New Media and Its Global Circulation

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the availability of digital technology continued to push the ground for independent do-it-yourself (DIY) recording projects already materialized by Joey Ayala and the Eraserheads in the 1980s. Grace Nono was one such artist in the late 1990s. Being an indie all the way to the early 2000s, she was able to express her agency in the ways she “curated” the themes of her Tao music recordings ( Caruncho 1996 ). Bob Aves, the arranger of her songs, owned a private recording studio, where arrangements could be made outside of the pressure of business time. Nono’s music was also self-marketed via her website, and is “alternative” to the productions by the majors. The rise of indie bands in a variety of styles in the 1990s paralleled this development. The indie rock groups got to play in clubs and self-organized concerts on school campuses, 39 with modest corporate sponsorship. These groups also became auditable through NU107 FM Radio (now defunct and transferred to Wish107.5) and in RJ Jacinto’s station; both stations aired indies’ music demo tapes and CDs recorded in home studios. NU107 had annual awards for their creativity in rock music. Other styles such heavy metal, punk, and so on would have their own audiences in “underground” venues. There, they would also sell their DIY records, T-shirts, and so on.

Another important genre that bloomed in the 1990s as recorded music was hip-hop. While this style, in its original context, was a composite of related forms, including rapping, Djing, turntabling, breakdancing, and graffiti, by Caribbean immigrants and Black Americans for their street parties in the south Bronx of New York City in 1970s, the genre was received piecemeal in the 1980s in the Philippines. Early borrowings were Vincent Dafalong’s ‘Na Onseng Delight,’ a humorous parodic “novelty song” in the Tagalog language, which music was sourced from Sugar Hill Gang’s hit ‘Rapper’s Delight.’ Then came breakdancing, which was popularized through TV competitions in the same decade, and the art of turntabling and DJ mixing that were used in dance floors and parties. 40 Turntabling did not root as much as rapping because the former demands expensive technological hardware (turntable, mixer, amplifier, and so on) and software (vinyl records), which were not available to grassroots young Filipinos, most of whom belong to the working class. By 1992, hip-hop was seen on MTV (via MTV Asia headquartered in Singapore, with partnership of a Filipino media company), and, around this time, rapping would latch on to the Filipino youths, who saw in it the freedom to be different, and a medium for voicing social critiques of skewed middle-class values and opinion. FrancisM’s and AndrewE’s rap records were embodiments of these critiques. The rapid diffusion of the style (rapping) or its substyle (consciousness rap) owes largely to the broadcast media radio and TV, and, partly, to the returning Filipino American rappers, including turntablists, who introduced it to the local music scene. 41 FrancisM would eventually become a TV and film celebrity hosting the ever-popular noontime show Eat Bulaga ( Francisco 2010 ). He became the idol of young Filipinos, who imitated his critical stance on things. Turntabling became the provenance of DJs, who inhabited a different sound environment (dance venues), while breakdancing became a mere TV trend. Their separation from rapping was what remained of the hip-hop style in the Philippines.

When YouTube became available around 2008 (a delay in the acquisition of gadgets by the Filipino masses), a new type of rap called “rap song,” which was a DIY mashup, came about. This mix was made of sappy recorded sounds of karaoke ballads and a section of rapping, which was overlaid with a rhythm from a drum sequencer ( Buenconsejo 2020a ). These were created digitally on personal computers, and posted by YouTubers in great quantities, most of which bypassed song rights. But they got millions of views that catapulted some to ephemeral fame via TV appearance. The phenomenon of the dancing prisoners in Cebu was a part of the impulse to mediatize oneself ( Mangaoang 2019 ). Recent song mashups in the past few years, this time marked by the absence of technology (i.e., songs accompanied by an acoustic guitar with beats on boom box), followed the same trajectory. While all this was happening, it was not until 2010 when Mike Tyson and Anygma (a.k.a. Eric Yuson) would organize the battle rap series called Sunugan (Tyson) and FlipTop (Anygma). 42 These are sensational live events, that are carefully recorded using professional quality microphones, and uploaded to YouTube where they are consumed virtually by millions of viewers around the world.

At the turn of the current century and until now, indie music had increased its production, as digital music technologies of production and dissemination became available to a wider segment of the population. Some users collaborated with plastic and visual artists, and sound designers of theater and film to create the innovative, albeit narrow (in terms of audience) form called “sound art.” Some of them incorporate popular music. Most users, however, are music entrepreneurs, who privately own small-scale “bedroom studios” that they purposely set up to record independently, and whose recordings they share to a potentially infinite social network on the internet ( Schoop 2017 ). It is believed that Filipinos are among the world’s avid consumers of social media. These musics are streamed by interactive telecommunications technology, which has become the norm in distribution since 2013. The most current DIY music is uploaded through Spotify, iTunes, BandCamp, and SoundCloud.

With this technology, a return to the global integration of the recording industry started out in the early twentieth century occurred. However, there are stark differences. For one, the contemporary integration is almost instantaneous, given the existing technology of communication. For another, contemporary recordings, particularly of the indie variety, de-emphasize local identity, so that they become more homogenous to songs of the same type. In this regard, it is indeed noticeable to hear “alternative” indie singers enunciate the vernacular lyrics they make with a distinctively smooth Anglo-American diction (i.e., minus the local accent or glottal stop, which is a strong feature of spoken Philippine languages). A typical example would be Up Dharma Down, whose sound, heard across state borders, truly embodies a global indie rock act. Lastly, the integration of contemporary popular music in the Philippines with other media means attention to visuality, which has been an important part of consuming media in the age of media screens.

This cultural historical account of the Philippine popular music industry explored ways by which the utilization of music technologies across time induced different kinds of music listening, that were unique to the dynamics of Filipino experiences. Such listening could not have occurred, in the first instance, without the cross-border flow of people and capital into the islands, and of ideas that the communities had as regards to what was pleasurable in listening to music. Importantly, this was not dictated by the industry or producers, but emerged from grounded local cultural sensibilities over a long duration of time. From the earliest form of music commodification in print music (that had local themes indexing middle-class domestic affability and gentility) in the late nineteenth century to recorded sounds in the twentieth century, the development of the music market was crucial in the production of music, for, in accordance to capitalism’s logic, one would not have produced if there were no listeners-consumers after all. Foreign investors sold technological hardware (gramophone players) the moment this was ready for global dissemination, but this commerce had sustained because there was that software—the music—that came with it. This music was novel or “new” enough to entice consumers, yet they were also within the horizon of what was familiar. These were the songs from live musical performance that were already appreciated concomitantly in public entertainment venues, such as musical theater zarzuela, stage vaudeville, even opera productions to some extent, and music for social dancing.

The commerce behind this popular music circuit, and the kind of modernity it sounded, was what drove the constant movements of Filipino musicians, as they continued to search for opportunities within that music industry. Similar to the border crossings of reproductive sound machines and their agents from Victor, Columbia, and Odeon recording companies, Filipino musicians also crossed the borders centrifugally, and were hired as “contract workers” within Philippine cities and outside the country. This began in the 1870s and has continued until today, with musicians playing from luxury cruise ships to theaters in musicals as “casuals” or on non-permanent “outsourcing” contracts.

When the technology of live music broadcast on radio was available in the mid-1920s, thanks to the electrification that rendered, what was then marketed as, a “faithful reproduction” of sound, these musicians were there to transmit their bodily energies into music that advertisers indirectly exchanged for radio “block time.” From 1939 to 1946, local Filipino tycoons, such as J Amado Araneta and Manolo Elizalde, invested in commercial radio. Not long after, it would be a radio personality, that “mystery singer,” who would put up the first recording company in the country, though this was short-lived for reasons that needs further study.

Judging from the productive outputs of the big recording companies that came after, such as MARECO of the 1950s and later VICOR of the 1970s, the period from the 1950s all the way to the late 1980s was a wide and great moment of Philippine music recording industry. In this period, musicians were hired by liaison personnel (nombrador) for record producers. Together, they did everything that was saleable, from recycling the printed sheet music of the 1920s until the 1950s, some of which went into theme songs in films, mimicking foreign imports for jukeboxes, and for bailes in the barrios (that Max Surban had mocked for its pretentiousness, for indeed some seemed forced to be done among bamboo thickets in the woods), innovating on existing local music, such as the rise of romantic kundimanin songs, to supporting the music of glamour that TV was in the 1960s, which enduring contents came from the radio (e.g., the singing competitions), and so on. All these activities spell out the “busy-ness” of the musicians until the digital sound technology of the 1990s rendered them obsolete.

The 1990s saw the rise of independent music productions that continues until today, and the diversification of the majors, such as OctoArts and Viva Entertainment. These two recording companies, once wedded as Vicor, ventured out into other economic activities, such as event organization, recycling of previous recordings into recorded collections, as if to induce bourgeois nostalgia similar to the 1950s’ recycling of 1920s music, and the like. The pattern of contemporary broadcast media venturing into music production is seen in the recent attempt of TV companies in setting up their own recording outfits. This demonstrated the strategic flexible “accumulation” that the companies assumed for a more efficient production so as to achieve greater profitability, while maximizing resources in the production and distribution of products. Back in the late 1940s to 1960s, it was radio that “married” the recording companies, the records of which the radios normally “ate up” in exchange for advertisers’ monies. Later on, some radio contents transferred to TV programs, and thus freed the recording industry to bloom on its own accord.

As profitability in the music industry lessened due to independent music making in the 1990s, the recording companies stepped out of their zones to connect with film, promoting their own set of singing stars, and thus into concert event organization and artist management. Thus, they extended production from manufacturing sound to manufacturing images. At the beginning of the millennium, both the availability of sound reproduction gadgets and internet technology have democratized both the production and distribution of music.

In this chapter, it is clear that technology, in its simplest meaning, is techne or a utility or indeed a means to an end. The kinds of music produced, however, were an end to something beyond what the medium can convey. Technology also became, more importantly, a means to indicate cultural interconnections between human agencies making use of local expressive cultural resources and the larger global forces that technology was only a part. Technology, thus, became the medium toward the end of an end: a medium through which the creation of performances as imaginative realities came about. These were not only embodiments of musicians’ hard work, and their will to attain higher musical competencies that pleased the music industry. Nor were these simply of music consumers, who got possessed or “eaten” up by the images of their own imagination. These musics were largely in the realm of humanity and the worlds of feeling and play. They were constitutive of broader expressions of the constantly transforming local Filipino sensibilities through time, despite the use of common music instruments and technique that came from elsewhere: the global common heritage.

Acknowledgement

Some data in this chapter were gathered as a consultant for the Ateneo de Manila University Salikha project titled “Ethnographies of Philippine Popular Music Cultures” under the management of Dr. Lara Mendoza (2019) .

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An earlier study was made by Pekka Gronow (1981) . See also Sooi Beng ( 1996 , 2013 ). Both authors mainly relied on materials archived in London, and therefore lack information regarding Victor Talking Company, which the online database Victor Recordings partially supplied for this article.

2 In a number of instances of Philippine music cultural hybridity, see Humanities Diliman: A Journal of the Humanities 7, no. 1 (2010) .

Or “sacrificial,” as Attali (1985) puts it.

In the Tagalog region, balitao is known as a dance in triple time (as documented by Walls y Merino in 1892 ). But in Central Visayas, it was, for some time until the 1980s, a traditional song duo between a man and woman via an improvised repartee accompanied by a guitar in Cebuano-speaking places. Balitao evolved into balitao romansada (i.e., composed balitao ), whose song lyrics were analyzed by Gutierrez in 1955 .

  Kundiman is a Tagalog love song genre, although it used to be a song-dance by a man and a woman with instrumental accompaniment and lighthearted lyrics in the nineteenth century. Elena Mirano Rivera (1997) compared this genre, as it was known in Batangas circa 1990s, with the more archaic awit , which is accompanied by a guitar in pinandanggo (fandango) plucked style. A formal analytic comparison between kundiman and danza habanera was made by Buenconsejo (2017b) .

The Spanish writer Wenceslao Retana has an ethnographic description of the cumintang , as practiced in the Batangas province during the last quarter of the nineteenth century ( 1888 ).

In historical usage, the term “popular” was interchangeable with the word “folk,” whose bifurcation only came sometime in the 1960s when “popular” became associated with commercially recorded sound and “folk” with orally transmitted music.

Gervacio Gironella was an affluent traveler from Madrid, who was in Manila sometime in 1843. One fruit of his travel was an album, Vistas De Las Yslas Filipinas , for which he commissioned Jose H. Lozano’s drawings.

This was later reprinted in John Bowring (1859) .

10 See the entry “Pangdangguhan” in the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Encyclopedia of Art , 2nd ed., ed. Nicanor Tiongson (Pasay City: Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2018) .

Many of these dance rhythms accompany extant “folk dances” today.

See online database “Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings Project History,” University of California Santa Barbara Library, https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/resources/detail/49 (accessed April 2, 2020).

The PC Band took this opportunity as they visited the United States mainly for the inauguration of President William Howard Taft in the White House ( Talusan 2017 , 171–178).

This is the account of Danny Yson, with no documentary evidence, on the website of Philippine Association of Recording Industry (PARI).

Anderson later bought Erlanger and Galinger in 1915 ( Enriquez 2008 , 44 45).

See “Philippines” in Volume 4 of Spottswood (1990) .

The policy to speak English correctly was one of the priorities of the American Colonial Administrators in the islands, and so they emphasized rote singing as a way to achieve this end ( Castro 2017 ).

See the report on radio business in American Chamber of Commerce, September 1931 issue.

  Enriquez (2008) .

To appreciate the biographies of these composers, see Helen Samson (1976) .

The phrase “Golden Age of Music” was coined by the journalist Alfredo Roa, who wrote three essays on it in August 1928. The first “Golden Age” occurred in 1880s when economic prosperity, due the country’s extraordinary surpluses in its agricultural exports of sugar cane, abaca, coffee, and so on, brought in more Euro-American imports of manufactured prestige goods, such as pianos and traveling European musicians to Philippine shores.

Renato Lucas’s preliminary discography ( 2004 ) is based on the collection of vinyl records that are in the collection of Nestor Vera Cruz, who passed away in 2019. It suffers from lacking research tools to date the materials. Fortunately, Keppy had access to catalogs in archives and thus his 2019 book supplies information that are lacking in Lucas’s article.

Peter Keppy deals extensively on the life of Borromeo Lou in his 2019 book.

Ritchie Quirino’s 2008 book is a valuable source on the complex, intertwining relationships of popular musicians before and after WWII.

For details, see Elizabeth Enriquez (2008) .

The same case seems to happen in British Malaya, as Sooi Beng Tan writes ( 1996 , 2013 ). However, a careful comparative study shall confirm this in the future.

Compared with issues in Europe in Matthew Gelbart (2007) .

The radio stations’ call names KZ were changed to DZ in 1947.

Enriquez asks this question pertaining to the notion of the alluring female voice from the radio ( 2008 , 43).

The instrumentation of the traditional comparsa is flexible.

The name “Vicor” is an acronym for Vic del Rosario and Orly Ilacad, CEOs of the company. The name also alludes to Victor Talking Company Records.

The song ‘Butsekik’ is a nonsensical contrafacta of Dee Dee Sharp’s 1962 gospel hit song ‘Baby Cakes.’

I have pointed out the irony of this in “Songs for the Masses: Max Surban’s Folk Urban Ballads” ( Buenconsejo 2019a ).

For a fuller discussion on this studio and the session musicians of the decade, see Cayabyab (2018) .

Tina Arceo-Dumlao has an excellent reportage on the lives of musicians, who made the repertory of OPM (2017) .

These concerts are not all in the popular music concert scene. There are also rave parties and other events sponsored by corporate subsidiaries, such as Coke Studio and Close-up toothpaste. Besides this, Manila has always been a global market for foreign arts, whose acts are organized independently by the media conglomerates. There is yet no existing critical study on this topic to my knowledge.

For the biographies of these female singers, see Eric Caruncho (1996) .

At the time of writing in September 2020, the ABS-CBN franchise to operate was canceled by the lawmakers, an act that many critics believed was caused by some kind of vendetta by President Duterte and his allies when this TV station did not air their political propaganda in the 2016 elections.

An annual much-awaited school fair that brings in many indie groups is the University of the Philippines Fair in February ( Dizon 2018 ).

Further research is needed into this area. It seems that Filipino American youngsters from the west coast of the United States have excelled in the form, including a number of whom had done concerts in the Philippines. For Filipino-American youth music, see Balance (2016) .

A good example of such returnee is, of course, the Apl.de.ap, a Filipino-American MC of Black Eye Peas. See Rachel Dewitt (2008) .

Battle rap league FlipTop is the most watched series of the same type in the world today ( Mendoza 2019 ).

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Musics in the Philippines: A Historical Review

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This paper uses historical method to present a review of the musics in Philippines. Especially, traditional music, religious music, political music and popular music were discussed to show the profound musicing tradition of the people and the challenges they are facing in the modern era.

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International Journal of Law Management and Humanities, Volume 4, Issue 4, Page 3114 - 3128

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HARANA: PHILIPPINE TRADITIONAL COURTING THROUGH MUSIC

Background of the Study Filipino culture has been known of its meaningful traditions that have, unfortunately, changed because of Western influences over time. With all the richness the Philippine tradition has, the best known culture of the Filipinos is its very own “harana” or serenade which dates back in the Spanish colonization. Harana is a vanished tradition of serenading prevalent in old Philippines. During the old times and in the rural areas of the Philippines, Filipino men would make harana (serenade) the women at night and sing songs of love and affection. This is basically a Spanish influence. The man is usually accompanied by his close friends who provide moral support for the guy, apart from singing with him (Francisco, 1974). While most Filipinos are still familiar with this custom, it is mostly that – only a passing familiarity exists. Filipinos can hardly be blamed because there truly was no in-depth study ever done of this once-important part of Philippine social fabric. Most of what people know came from stereotypical and romanticized versions depicted in old movies and paintings (Aguilar, 2012). Certainly, the research world did not pay much attention to this courtship ritual perhaps because they never considered it an art form and relegated it more as plebeian endeavor of the popular culture. Thus, herewith “harana” is the top most issue of this study.

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Singing researchers find cross-cultural patterns in music and language

by Max Planck Society

Are acoustic features of music and spoken language shared across cultures? Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen have contributed to a global study of music and speech, published in Science Advances .

An international team of researchers recorded themselves performing traditional music and speaking in their native language . In all 50+ languages, the rhythms of songs and instrumental melodies were slower than those of speech , while the pitches were higher and more stable.

Language and music may share evolutionary functions. Both speech and song have features such as rhythm and pitch. But are similarities and differences between speech and song shared across cultures?

To investigate this question, 75 researchers—speaking 55 languages—were recruited across Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific. Among them were experts in ethnomusicology, music psychology, linguistics, and evolutionary biology. The researchers were asked to sing, perform instrumentals, recite lyrics and verbally describe songs. The resulting audio samples were analyzed for features such as pitch, timbre and rhythm.

The study provides "strong evidence for cross-cultural regularities," according to senior author Patrick Savage of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, a psychologist and musicologist who sang "Scarborough Fair."

MPI's Limor Raviv, co-author on the study, recorded the Hebrew song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav." Fellow author Andrea Ravignani from the MPI recorded the Italian song "Bella Ciao," playing the saxophone. The collection also featured the Dutch songs "Hoor de wind waait" and "Dikkertje Dap."

Speculating on underlying reasons for the cross-cultural similarities, Savage suggests songs are more predictably regular than speech because they are used to facilitate synchronization and social bonding.

"Slow, regular, predictable melodies make it easier for us to sing together in large groups," he says. "We're trying to shed light on the cultural and biological evolution of two systems that make us human: music and language."

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by Max Planck Society

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