Filipino Art: Carlos V Francisco's Fiesta

The Best of Filipino Art:
Fiesta
Carlos V. Francisco
1947

Bamboo represents Philippines in UNICEF!

Bamboo's latest hit album released in 2007 "We Stand Alone Together" is still in stores nationwide and EMI Philippines is gearing the boys up for an international release. Bamboo is the most successful rock band in Philippine history and have also recently been named as the Philippines international representative to UNICEF (The United Nations), placing them up there with such prestigious international acts as U2 and the Spice Girls, also UNICEF representatives. There's just no words to describe how spiritual their music is, it hits you, deep in your puso while you're rocking out and enjoying it at the same time. The band is made up of that great singer Bamboo Mañalac, Nathan Azarcon, Ira Cruz, and Vic Mercado. Listen to the #1 hit "Hallelujah" below. Philippine legend is that a bamboo split open, and out came the first man whose name was Malakas (Strong), and the first woman whose name was Maganda (Beautiful).

The Best of Filipino Art: Mamerto Evangelista

The best of the art works of Mamerto Evangelista.

The Best of Filipino Art: Juan Luna

Juan Luna y Novicio was born in Badoc, Ilocos Norte, on October 23, 1857, and, like Hidalgo, was the third of seven children. Early in his life, the family moved to Manila and lived in Trozo. The young Luna received his early education at the Ateneo Municipal and later at the Escuela Nautica de Manila. In 1873, he became an apprentice officer and traveled to various Asian ports. Whenever his ship was in port in Manila, he took painting lessons in the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura of Fr. Agustin Saiz.

The Best of Filipino Art: Fernando Amorsolo

Fernando Amorsolo

The first National Artist for painting, Fernando Amorsolo is the foremost Philippine artist of the early 20th century. An outstanding art student, the businessman Enrique Zobel de Ayala awarded him with a study grant to Spain. This allowed him to visit important museums in Europe and the United States.

In contrast to Luna's heavy and predominantly European themes, Amorsolo was known for sunny landscapes of Luzon and smiling images of dalagang bukid (country girls). His rendition of Philippine sunlight and its nuances was unparalleled during his time. Fernando Amorsolo was named National Artist in 1972.

Filipino singer-actor Antonio Morales Barreto "Junior" serenades Vilma Santos

Filipino singer-actor Junior (AMB or Antonio Morales Barreto) serenades Vilma Santos in Good Morning Sunshine (1980) with his hit song that he wrote and produced, Yakap.

Junior is the father of current hitmaker Shaila Durcal. Junior is 64 years old now and the oldest of 5 siblings and the Barreto sisters are 28 to circa-40 years old now (yes, they are, money does wonderful things in keeping you young looking and beautiful), and Filipino families are big so it's not uncommon to have cousins and immediate relatives that are twenty even thirty years older than you. But I don't have to tell you that, you probably already do.

Some Filipinos were comparing Claudine Barreto to Shaila Durcal, measuring their beauty against one another as if they were competing celebrities, but they're family by blood, Jesus Christ. But I guess it's normal since Filipinos always compare the beauty of Filipino actors/actresses with their sons/daughters or siblings, speaking of which, in my humble opinion, Gretchen is much more beautiful than her sisters, hehehe. I didn't like it before, but anyway I guess it's all fun, what fun is it having celebs if besides idolizing them, we can't also evaluate their beauty and compare them with each other, hehe.

Thanks to VSTProductions for sharing this great clip with Filipinos!

Filipino fashion during Spanish colonial period: Part 5

New York University
Sheer Realities

Filipino fashion during Spanish colonial period: Part 4

I was just thinking that probably a Filipino's preference or rejection of the Spanish language or culture of the Philippines often has to do with an individual Filipino's upbringing. For example, if they had a positive experience with the Spanish language growing up and they were encultured into it; their family occasionally spoke to them in Spanish or spoke to each other in Spanish, sang Spanish songs, and had you know, a proper upbringing where delicadeza reigns supreme in everything you do and say, then they wouldn't be so strongly against it. But if a Filipino perhaps grew up in an entirely different perspective where Spanish wasn't spoken at all, and perhaps they were part of the servidumbre class working for those Filipinos who spoke Spanish or had stronger Spanish-influenced traditions, or grew up overseas where the influences are instead American or Australian or British, or just perhaps they had nothing in their immediate lives growing up that would endear them to the culture, then of course it wouldn't have such a positive effect on them today in their lives, and they have no emotional connection to it like other Filipinos, so they don't feel a strong need to incorporate it as part of their lives, and don't feel it's part of their identity, especially since it had very little to do with their own upbringing. But I don't think it's right to say that just because a Filipino speaks Spanish or wants to learn to speak Spanish, they're automatically suffering from an identity crisis or is not being authentic to Filipino culture, because what exactly is authentic Filipino culture? It's not just one thing, and it's not the same thing for everybody. A culture is the amalgamation of all the things that happened to it, there is no one single influence to any culture in the world, and the same thing can certainly be said about the Filipino culture. This is something that needs to be taught to Filipinos so they don't feel like their culture is not authentic or bastardized since it has Spanish influences, Chinese influences, Indian influences, etc. like many do.

It's like a lot of different worlds in the Philippines (and among Filipinos overseas) exist side by side with each other, and they cross paths, but they're not always from the same place, I guess what is right for one Filipino is not necessarily right for another, because not everybody always has the same upbringing or views on things in life even those among the same culture. So it's like there really isn't just one Filipino identity, it's probably good to let people choose what they want to do in their life and let them carve their own identity and what language to speak, but it's not up to me to decide what the national language is, so it doesn't really matter, the government is gonna do what they want regardless of what the masses say or vote for (eeek!), and hopefully they do something positive for the country, that's all.


New York University
Sheer Realities

Filipino fashion during Spanish colonial period: Part 3

New York University
Sheer Realities

The paintings below displayed the preferred skin type for mestizos in the Philippines: white, however, I've included a photo of real historical mestizos which in itself shows that not all mestizos necessarily had white skin, in fact, many times white skin only shows up in castizos or those with more than 50% European or Chinese blood. But of course, as to be expected in most books written about the Philippines, the writer of this article didn't use the historically correct term of castizo or criollo, because like most writers are who write about the Philippines, he was probably not as educated in the colonial history and social stratification system of former Spanish colonies, which is so important to understand if you're going to understand Filipino history and lacking in most writers who write about the Philippines, which leads to the miseducation of the Filipinos and inevitably, the world about our country's history.

Historical preference: the Philippines has its chosen few.
(Special Section: The Philippines Survey) John Andrews.

Most developing countries encourage a sense of
their uniqueness. Nationalism, patriotism,
chauvinism: all play their part in exorcising
memories of colonial inferiority. Some countries,
like Singapore, speak explicitly of "nation
building"; others-for example, Arab
countries-stress a golden age which may yet
return.

The Philippines is different. True, there is a
sense of national identity. Newspaper columnists
(dozens of them, each capable of churning out a
couple of thousand entertaining words a day)
deplore the way foreigners, be they American
multinationals or Australian sex-seekers, exploit
brave but innocent Filipinos. Senators and
congressmen rail against America's bases as an
affront to Philippine independence. Taxi-drivers
and shop assistants say Cory should now let Marcos
return "because he is a Filipino".

But the sense of nationhood is a tide moved by
external forces. Television, radio and the
ubiquitous pop music are Americanised, or anyway
westernised. Over 400,000 Filipinos work overseas;
thousands more would like to join them. Bar girls
dream of finding an "Americano" husband to
transport them "stateside". Even cabinet members
cherish green cards that permit work and residence
in the United States. Objectively, it is a
national tragedy: each woman who goes as a maid to
Hong, kong or as an "entertainer" to japan, each
man who goes as a crane driver to Saudi Arabia
represents a family broken for two, three or more
years. But those involved react subjectively-the
lure of foreign wealth and sophistication is a
powerful antidote to heartbreak, and a stint
abroad confirms the belief that foreign is better
than Filipino.

Does it matter? The answer must be yes.
Resource-poor Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore
have all prospered through will-power and hard
work. Just think what the Philippines, so blessed
with natural resources, might have achieved with
even a modicum of national discipline and
cohesion. Instead, a country which 30 years ago
was arguably Asia's richest after japan is now
almost as poor as Indonesia.

Who is to blame? Filipinos, uniformly devout in
Asia's only Christian country, will attribute
responsibility to God, the Americans and the
Spanish. In all cases, they are right. Divine
decree has sprinkled the Philippines over a
typhoon-prone Pacific archipelago of around 7,100
islands. Anthropologists claim there are Ill
different cultural and racial groups speaking some
70 different languages, from Muslim Malays in the
southern islands of Sulu to Episcopalian Igorots
in the Cordillera mountains of Luzon. Nobody would
pretend it is a promising recipe for a sense of
national integrity.

What makes it still less promising is the
country's nuances of class and colour. "Filipinos"
exist only as a definition of citizenship. Reality
is a brown-skinned peasantry of Malay origins and
an elite whose skins have the lighter hues of
Spain and China. Filipinos are too friendly to be
bigots, and the melting pot of history-Chinese
traders and Spanish soldiers needed local wives or
concubines-rules out fantasies of ethnic purity.
But all Filipinos are aware of their place in the
spectrum: peasant women whiten their faces before
going to a dance; and in last year's campaign for
the Senate the high-born candidates would publicly
apologise for suntans caught on the hustings.

The phenomenon is not unique to the Philippines.
There are, for example, parallels in Brazil and
Venezuela. Nor should the impact on individuals be
exaggerated. It is probably easier being a brown,
Malay-faced Filipino than being dark in America.
But the harm is in the implied social rigidity.
The Philippines, despite almost a century of
democratic institutions, remains a feudal society.
The top one fifth of the population receives half
the country's income. Famous family names-Lopez,
Laurel, Romulo, Soriano, Zobel, Cojuangco, Ayala,
Aquino-crop up constantly in the arenas of power,
both political and financial. Too often, the name,
not the policy, is the key to success. One
academic claims the economy is effectively
controlled by a mere 60 families. A matter of
birth Blame both Spain and America. The former, in
over three centuries of colonisation, created the
Philippines' elite; the latter, in an occupation
lasting from 1898 until 1946 (with an unkind
japanese interruption from 1941 to 1945),
preserved it. At the top came the mestizos: those
whose blood was mixed". The best mestizos had
mainly Spanish blood, with just a dash of indio-or
native-genes. The next best were Chinese mestizos.
Both groups prospered. They leased land from the
Catholic friars and sublet it to the indios. They
gained still more land because the law limited an
indio's debt to just 25 pesos. The indio would
evade the law by selling his land to the mestizo
with the right to repurchase it later. It was an
early form of loan-sharking; invariably the indio
failed to find new money with which to repurchase
his land.

And so the fair-skinned mestizos became rich. The
lines between Chinese and Spanish blood were
blurred into a more-or-less single aristocracy as
the Chinese hispanicised their names (the
syllables of the Aquino name and the president's
own Cojuangco clan tell the tale). By the end of
the nineteenth century the top educated families
were the ilustrados-the "enlightened" who would
lead the fight for independence against a selfish
Spain. In the event, they were pre-empted by
America, which had gone to war with Spain over
Cuba. America's victory meant Spain's surrender of
not just Puerto Rico but also Guam and the
Philippines. In the process, the ilustrados were
co-opted by an America which could not quite admit
to building an empire. Instead, America, with a
patronising concern for its "little brown
brother", would help the Philippine elite turn the
country into a "showcase of democracy".

The concept has a soothing logic. Why not enlist
the favoured few in the evolution of a system that
will help the less fortunate? But there is a flaw
beneath this veneer. Democracy is based on the
will of the majority; by definition, the elite is
a minority. And the Philippine elite, like any
other, is hardly likely to surrender its
privileges voluntarily. Indeed, hardly any
criticism today attaches to the Laurel family for
collaborating with the japanese: they and others
were preserving the continuity of Philippine
leadership "in the interests of the people".

The Economist, May 7, 1988 v307 n7549 pS4(3)
COPYRIGHT Economist Newspaper Ltd. (England) 1988

Filipino fashion during the Spanish colonial period: Pt. 2

New York University
Sheer Realities