We little brown Americans
(A quick memoir on musical influences carried over by our elders from the American colonial period)
Members of my generation -- the so-called Generation X -- grew up on the kiddie show "Sesame Street." But we were also raised by our parents and taught by our teachers (at Bayambang Central School) who grew up listening to music from the American colonial period. In their mature age, our elders enjoyed listening to songs on vinyl records of the likes of Matt Monroe, Perry Como, and even the Englishman Tom Jones. We as captive audience mostly recoiled at those old-people sounds, but we picked up something from it, no doubt. But what this means is that before Sesame Street music fertilized our sense of self at grade-school age, we children got acquainted with earlier American sounds of which we had no inkling.
The earliest American era-music I can remember is the classical marching or parade music piece titled "Red River Valley" used in our kindergarten class under Mrs. Iglesias as accompaniment to a group performance during one important school event. A quick online search showed that the original version from the late 1800s is slow and appears to be a Western/cowboy tune.
The next ones would be the nursery songs introduced to us, which must have included "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in both kinder grade and Grade 1.
One song that stuck in my memory is a senseless one whose title sounded like "Skinny Marie" but turned out to be something else: "Skidamarink - I Love You." This one is nothing if not innocent fun! The unabashed coinage of new meaningless words reveals the fun-loving spirit of the invaders that our forebears welcomed due to the sudden reversal of their role: as our liberators in World War II.
Skidamarink a-dink, a-dink,
Skidamarink a-doo,
I love you. (2x)
I love you in the morning,
And in the afternoon;
I love you in the evening,
And underneath the moon.
Oh, skidamarink a-dink, a-dink,
Skidamarink a-doo,
I love you.
The more memorable ones would include a song taught to my Grade 3 or 4 class by a temporary replacement teacher, Mrs. Basa: "By the Silv'ry Moon." It goes this way (the actual title is "By the Light of the Silv'ry Moon"):
By the light of the silvery moon,
I want to spoon, to my honey I'll croon love's tune,
Honeymoon keep a-shining in June,
Your silvery beams will bring love dreams, we'll be cuddling soon,
By the silvery moon.
By the light, (By the light, By the light),
Of the silvery moon, (The silvery moon).
I want to spoon, (Want to spoon, Want to spoon)
To my honey I'll croon love's tune.
Honeymoon, (Honeymoon, Honeymoon),
Keep on shining in June. (Keep on shining in June)
Your silvery beams will bring love dreams,
We'll be cuddling soon,
By the silvery moon.
Your silvery beams will bring love dreams,
We'll be cuddling soon,
By the silvery moon. (The silvery moon).
The song is striking for its mellifluous, swingy, romantic sound.
In Grade 4, Mrs. Fanny Muñoz taught us "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," which sent us her pupils questioning what "afton" meant (it turned out to be a proper noun, the name of a river in, not America, but Scotland) as well as 'braes."
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays,
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
"Flow Gently...", apparently a lullaby and thus sweet- and tender-sounding, personifies nature and illustrates the white man's fondness for the great outdoors.
At home, I was surprised to find out that my own mother knew many of these songs by heart. She must have encountered them as a pupil like I did. She taught me extra songs she said she still remembered back from her childhood days, like "Bingo" and "Marella."
"Bingo"
A big black dog sat on the back porch
And Bingo was his name.
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
B-I-N-G-O
And Bingo was his name.
This little song indicates that Americans have long had a dog culture, and it took quite awhile before we picked up the habit. When did we start naming our dogs, with such names as Bingo, Whitey, Blackie, and Brownie? And when did we start naming our pets Bantay?
In Grade 5, Mrs. Paez taught us "Auld Lang Syne," which we had to sing for a United Nations Day presentation. Of course, we could hardly figure out what the Olde English words exactly meant, though we had a vague idea.
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
Should all acquaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne
The song apparently was meant to be sung in unison, in total unity, as in arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder. It is a global group hug song, inspired by nostalgia for the past. We were getting to know Americans even better.
It was our Music teacher Mrs. Agas -- my aunt Naty -- during the advanced grades who taught us additional classic American songs from her own era. One example is "The Caisson Song."
"The Caisson Song" ("The Army Goes Rolling Along"/"The Army Song") is a lively song because it is a military marching song.
Over hill, over dale,
We will hit the dusty trail,
And those Caissons go rolling along.
Up and down, in and out,
Counter march and left about,
And those Caissons go rolling along,
For it's high high he,
In the Field Artillery,
Shout out your "No" [numbers] loud and strong (1! 2! 3!),
For wher-e’er we go,
You will always know,
That those Caissons go rolling along.
The "Caisson Song" is a reminder that we were subjugated by a foreign military but the invasion felt benign because it was couched in fun tunes.
Another English song she taught us has this title: "When I Grow to Be a Lady." We presumed it to be another American-period song.
Yes, our teacher sang it to the whole class line by line -- even to us boys. "How could she?" I thought.
The incident taught me the truthfulness of the saying "Boys will be boys," for we boys instinctively balked at "lady" and used "gentleman" in its place. But as anyone can imagine now, inserting "gentleman" will not do -- for no less than a major overhaul is needed.
"When I Grow to Be a Lady"
When I grow to be a lady
I’ll be a queen, a lovely queen
Walking in a garden shady
In gowns of green
With silver sheen
Maids in gold and white shall follow me
And suitors of a high degree.
When I grow to be a lady
A fine and noble queenly lady
Then my prince will come to claim his own
And love will crown me on my throne.
I won't fault these music teachers of mine, however, for teaching us to be even more American than we already were, for they also taught us Filipino songs, in fairness to them. Our music teacher, for example, taught us songs I never heard again, such as the Tagalog folk song "Tirinding-ding," the Visayan (Cebuano, to be exact) ditty "Pobring Alindahaw" which we pupils never understood (it's about a poor man's life), and the another sad Visayan song "Dandansoy." Mrs. Muñoz even went so far as assigning us to compile all the lyrics of Filipino folk songs that we could gather, which was a great learning moment for us all.
If anything, I am grateful for this cultural enrichment of my youth. These American musical pieces were part of parcel of our past and our cultural heritage, though they were American in origin.
Since we became grownups still right smack in the middle of the American Empire's 'hegemony' and are now fast maturing at its tail-end, it's but second-nature to us to be American in at least some of our ways, preferences, loyalties and aspirations. The American has been so deeply embedded in our own sense of self that it had come to a point where we couldn't tell whether a song in English language was actually American in origin or already Filipino. That is the case with "When I Grow to be a Lady," it turns out, which they say is actually a Filipino composition.
Notice how American the aspiration is -- "lady," "high degree,"... It reminds me of how Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, in one of her memoirs, almost unabashedly admits how she has been "thoroughly colonized" by the invading Americans.
One sordid incident in this episode is the use of the song "Philippines the Beautiful," which -- we student were not informed -- was a blatant appropriation of the lyrics from "America the Beautiful." It hardly inspired patriotism, this song.
This next song, however, erases any suspicion as to originality, as the simple melody is telling and the last line is a giveaway:
Glory to our leader
Hail him with great delight
Leader of our nation
Champion of our right
May wisdom guide his rule
As years are born and spent
Hear o great Bathala
Bless our president!
If I am not mistaken, Manolo Quezon said in his blog that this one was composed for then president Manuel L. Quezon by Francisco Santiago in 1939.
Come graduation time, my schoolmates and I were taught another such song -- written in English, but suspiciously Filipino in origin (written and composed by a Filipino): "Alma Mater."
Loyal classmates come together
Be glad and let us sing
Give praise to Alma Mater
And let her glories ring
Let our duties noble and loving
To bring her honor high
For her our school inspiring
Our love shall never die
Long live Alma Mater's glory
Whose spirit shall guide us ever
We'll labor with faith and nobly
In dedication to her.
Long life! Long life!
Alma Mater
This is not all. The last two songs remind me that there were many other English compositions unmistakably done by Filipinos. We could tell it from the title alone. An example is "Don't You Go to Far Zamboanga."
Don’t you go, don’t you go to far Zamboanga
Where you may forget your darling far away
Don’t you, oh don’t you, for if you leave me
How can I, without you stay?
Oh weep not, my dear Paloma
Oh weep not, for I’ll return
Oh weep not my little darling
I shall remember and I shall yearn.
This song, however, turns out to be originally a Spanish song, which tells me that it was composed at the end of the Spanish era and the English version must have been made when it was the Americans' turn to rule these isles.
No Te Vayas de Zamboanga
No te vayas, no te vayas de Zamboanga
Que me puedes, que me puedes olvidar
No te vayas, no te vayas, ni me dejes
Que yo sin ti, no puedo estar
No llores, paloma mia
No llores que volvere
No llores que en cuando llegue
Paloma mia, te escribire
"No Te Vayas...," in turn, reminds me that, in the country's music history, there are compositions ending up in three versions: the original Spanish and the ensuing English and Tagalog and other native-language versions. An example would be the Philippine national anthem itself: the original "Filipinas" by Jose Palma in 1899, the official Commonwealth-era English version called "The Philippine Hymn" (1938), and of course the present anthem, "Lupang Hinirang," written in the '50s and revised in the '60s. We pupils referred to the latter as "Bayang Magiliw" instead, taking the alternative title from the first two words of the song.
Of course, I still remember the English version that Mrs. Agas once sang to us.
Land of the morning
Child of the sun returning
With fervor burning
Thee do our souls adore.
Land dear and holy,
Cradle of noble heroes,
Ne’er shall invaders
Trample thy sacred shores.
Ever within thy skies and through thy clouds
And o'er thy hills and sea
Do we behold the radiance, feel the throb
Of glorious liberty
Thy banner dear to all our hearts
Its sun and stars alight,
Oh, never shall its shining fields
Be dimmed by tyrants might!
Beautiful land of love, o land of light,
In thine embrace 'tis rapture to lie
But it is glory ever, when thou art wronged
For us, thy sons to suffer and die.
All the songs Mrs. Agas/Aunt Naty taught us came from a music songbook we used at the time as textbook. It must have been an American-era songbook. Curiously, it contained one Czech song titled "Aj Lučka, Lučka Široká," which I never got to hear until the advent of YouTube. It must have been among the American favorites at the time which spilled over to their tiny colony on the opposite side of the Pacific.
That these songs got transmitted to our, the succeeding, generation, indicates how a colonizer was eventually accepted, even loved. It also reminds of a time when Filipinos were more American than Filipino, how many Filipinos would rather speak English than another Filipino language apart from their own native tongue, preferring a foreign colonizer over a native one. We could say that my generation is not just Gen-X, and lest we forget, the generation of martial law babies, we are also minions of the long tentacles of the American empire.
March 25, 2016
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