CDs in 2024
Dear Diary,
While I was doing some research for my novel, I stumbled across a documentary by Living Asia Channel in YouTube. It featured the Ullalim festival in Kalinga, which is celebrated annually in February.
The festival celebrates the Kalinga people’s cultural heritage through traditional dances, music performances, and local products. And in the documentary, there were many stalls selling different commodities, including agricultural goods, local delicacies, clothing, and handicrafts.
Among those items, there was one that caught my attention—a group of young people selling small stacks of CDs.
First of all, CDs? In this day and age? I remember it was in 2015 when I last bought a CD. Some of the artists in my music collection like MYMP, Kamikazee, Noel Cabangon, Bamboo, Phillip Phillips, Ricky Martin, Lenka, and many more, I’ve only come across them through their CDs. It was always a pleasant experience for me: the joy of discovering something special amidst the heap of old and new.
Nowadays, we have platforms like YouTube and Spotify that make finding new music easier, whether it be rock, pop, alternative, jazz, or 80s city pop (which I’m currently listening to). These platforms have their list of pros and cons. However, one clear consequence of their widespread adoption is that many of the CD stores I used to visit have disappeared.
I guess I’m just being nostalgic of the old days, but I digress.
In the documentary, the CDs in the festival were produced by a band called “The Living Anitos.” The band is known for making what can be thought of as “Kalinga music.” Their founder, Edison Balansi, described their music as follows:
“Most of our recordings are near forgotten Kalinga songs. I wrote in some new lyrics, and infused them with modernized instrumentation.”
Out of curiosity, I decided to check out their songs, which are also available on Youtube. After listening to them, they sounded as Mr. Balansi had described: Kalinga songs with modernized instrumentation, which comprised of electric guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard—a stark contrast to the traditional Kalinga instruments of gangsa, kulintang, and bamboo flute.
Most of The Living Anitos’s songs (like Kalinga Tale and Ama, Ina) reminded me of the Filipino rock ballads of the 90s: songs that make use of strong vocals and similar instruments. I’m guessing that The Living Anitos took these rock ballads as inspiration, using them as basis for their modernized adaptations of Kalinga songs. It’s interesting to mention that these Filipino rock ballads are still being played today—mostly on the radio and by bands in the provinces.
For a while, I was reflecting about what Mr. Balansi had said about their music. “Near-forgotten,” he described their Kalinga songs as such: songs only accessible by the Kalinga population, but somehow slowly disappearing from the public mind space. This kind phenomenon is not uncommon in the Philippines, which is a home to more than a hundred languages. And in those hundred languages, only less than ten percent are only being spoken by the millions; the rest are spoken by people in remote regions, usually far away from the city centers. Many of these languages are not accessible by the majority of the Philippine population; hence, a language barrier might exist between people of different ethnic background.
One thing I noticed from The Living Anitos’s songs is that they draw more attention to their lyrics. I think this is intentional on their part. The heart of their recordings is the old Kalinga songs: the instruments only serving to supplement the lyrics.
At present, the old Kalinga songs are competing for attention against the proliferation of Western music, K-Pop, and Filipino music itself: music that managed to gather wide popular appeal. And as it seems, the old songs of the Kalinga people struggle to achieve the same appeal to their younger population. Of course, there might be other factors besides competition and appeal, but regardless, the sentiment holds true. I could only imagine that if this trend continues, the old songs will eventually disappear—like the CD stores I used to visit.
But unlike CD stores, these old songs bear with them a major heritage of the Kalinga people. The disappearance of these songs is akin to the disappearance of culture, the disappearance of an identity. For other people such as myself, it may only be a matter of nostalgia. But for the Kalinga people, it is a matter of survival.
I believe such is the thought that motivates The Living Anitos to produce their recordings. In a way, their music can be interpreted as a revival of some sort, an attempt to bring onto public mind space the Kalinga songs that are on the way to being forgotten.
To accomplish this is not an easy task. As a matter of fact, since ancient times, we have lost millions of songs to oblivion: songs that belonged to different cultures in different times, with only a tiny fraction of them fortunately preserved. But now, even with other millions of songs freely available on YouTube and Spotify, we can only get to listen so very few of them in our entire lifetime. I can imagine that most of these modern songs are preserved one way or another—through CDs or cloud storage. However, the life of a song is determined less by its preservation, and more on its propagation: that is, whether people would perform it in their community, to be shared across people, and whether it be passed and appreciated by the next generation so that they, too, will spread the music.
I think these attempts of modernizing ethnic songs are important in our day and age. The harsh reality of it is that, we’re continuously losing our cultural artifacts as time passes, and this process is an irreversible one. Going back to the point about hundred languages in the Philippines, some of these languages are spoken by only less than a hundred people, and a few of these languages (that we’re aware of) are already extinct.
It is only through the efforts of people like Mr. Balansi and his group that their songs can survive—songs that help carry their culture across time. I believe that people in the Philippines are capable of shining even in disadvantageous circumstances. We are responsible for our own survival, and we are the only ones who can create something for our future.
Because, if we don’t do it, then who will?