Martin Nievera (and other…uhm, World-Class Filipino talents)

I never imagined I’d ever be thanking Martin Nievera for anything other than leaving Pops Fernandez. But after all the controversy generated in the wake of his interpretation of “Lupang Hinirang” during the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, I guess that at the very least, I should credit him for giving me the perfectly-timed moment to take this article out of the drafts bin (where it’s been languishing for over two months now, no thanks to a bogus writing job offer-scam perpetrated by a compulsive liar masquerading as…as…ok, that’ll just have to wait for another post.)

This isn’t about the Nievera controversy, though; but it is related in so far as the question of propriety in matters of music is concerned. So, here goes:

Let’s see…

There’s Little Orphan Lea and the Miss Saigoneers…

Charice Dion-Pempengco-Houston…

There’s Journey’s star employee, Arnel Pineda…

Of course, Apl d’Ap, the Black-Eyed Pea-lipino..

Recently, there was Martha Joy (the Fil-Portuguese “Canadian Idol” finalist who’s been nicknamed the Barbara Streisand of…well…

And on the less glamorous end of the spectrum, we have our dedicated Filipino entertainers duking it out (and reportedly basking in the stage spotlight) in Hong Kong Disneyland…

The one thing they have in common? They’ve all been hailed / are still being hailed as “World-Class” Filipino talents. Of course, they’re not the only ones who’ve been tagged with the honorific; there have been several others before them, some retroactively labeled, even.

But just what does it mean to be a “World-Class” talent anyway?

If you enter “world class filipino” in your browser search, you’ll end up with a torrent of links that’ll take you to sites that showcase/discuss/catalogue World-Class Filipino singers, shoes, seamen, boat-builders, engineers, animators, resorts, scientists, health & wellness services, painters, rice technology, boxers, mangoes, dive sites, billiard players, chocolates, superhighways, workers, nurses, retailers, debaters, chefs, teachers, arts & crafts, airports, travel agencies, graduates, ministries, cuisine, athletes, home management workers, surfing, doctors, mining experts, martial artists, and mezzo sopranos! There’s even a “dot com” site (worldclassfilipino.com) which (ironically) could use the services of some “World-Class” Filipino editor for their homepage intro.

Of course, even after having gone through 15+ pages of search results, this list is still far from being complete. But as far as I could bear to click on, the most common results still pointed towards a variety of singers and music artists, which is just as well because that’s precisely the context I’m exploiting for this discussion.

Questions, then:

Does being “World-Class” mean having had opportunities to perform overseas, even if only for crowds composed primarily of Filipino expats? If this is an acceptable standard, doesn’t it devolve the claim to being “World-Class” into just a parochial phenomenon unique to the Filipino experience? If there weren’t any significant Pinoy communities abroad, would we still have a genuine international base for our brand of entertainment?

Does being “World-Class” mean being able to replicate standard entertainment fare for foreign audiences by doing note-for-note cover versions of pop/rock music standards in venues all over the world? If that were the case, does that not boil talent down to a question of technical proficiency – a condition that places the creative dimension only secondary to…well, one’s ability to ape foreign material?

In the same vein, does being “World-Class” mean having the ability to seamlessly blend into dominant Western standards of entertainment by becoming “globalized” local artists? The kind equipped with “international tastes and sensibilities” that serve to produce artistic output considered Filipino only because the creators are bona fide citizens of our coconut republic? If so, where’s being Filipino in all that?

To magnify the contentiousness of it all, there’s also the seemingly inordinate drive to validate the claim to having “World-Class” talents by staking heritage rights to even the most obscure descendants of every Tom, Dick and Henrietta de la Cruz-Jones out there whose bloodlines can be traced back to the most obscure local provincial ancestors. Apparently, it doesn’t seem to matter how alienated the talents might be from the social and cultural traditions of the country that proudly claims them as standard bearers: Should they have even as little as a hundredth part of Filipino blood running in their biologically cross-pollinated bodies, if they happen to be making international waves, chances are they’ll be appropriated (whether they like it or not) and consequently banner-headlined as part of the nation’s pool of “World-Class” talents.

If the category is patently subjective in application, then it’s significance should naturally be suspect and should not be readily subscribed to. If anything, the obsessive labeling betrays an underlying identity crisis, especially if it exposes itself (as it does) as another by-product of the deep-seated, centuries old slave mentality that continues to perpetrate and entrench cultural insecurities in our quaintly psychotic environment. “World-Class” itself smacks of elitism by inadvertently creating a divide that implicitly classifies all others as…uhm, let’s see…“Barangay Variety Show-Class” talents not up to par with internationally dictated standards of artistic excellence?

As if the insecurities this mindset fosters weren’t insidious enough, our entertainingly dysfunctional government and its “true, good, and beautiful” cultural watchdogs (predictably) continue to exploit the label in order to try and convince us that our 3rd World tropical island paradise tribulations are simply all in our heads; that we Filipinos can succeed if only we Filipinos can stop complaining about our problems and start thinking more positively. Although the intent to inspire appears noble, stark realities debunk the propaganda as just more of those sneaky attempts to divert attention from one of the real causes of national suffering, which is, ironically, “World-Class” Filipino corruption.

I am not out to belittle the achievements of those of us who’ve gained fame, fortune, and international recognition and I am most definitely not out to condemn those of us who’ve desperately turned to churning out staple fare in order to avoid government-sponsored death by starvation. But a lot still needs to be said and done about the kind of “artists” and cultural sensibilities we continue to breed in the local music scene. Instead of developing a sensitivity more attuned to the developmental requisites of a society caught in a crisis of identity (among so many others), why persist in measuring ourselves against cultural standards that undermine efforts to define ourselves as a people with a distinct and unique cultural footprint?

And even if the question of who we truly are is a perennial topic of debate that’s been seeking resolution since whenever, the lack of a definitive answer surely does not justify taking the easy way out by conveniently subscribing to some other culture’s definition of artistic worth?

That’s treason.

Picture credits:

Martin Nievera – http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Martin_Nievera

LEGO Datu’s – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62612393323