“Clean and honest governance begins with me and my cabinet”
I’m writing live and direct from Manila (a la Main Source/NAS - Live at the BBQ) sitting in the lobby of the Edsa Shangri-La hotel rockin’ the themed yellow polo that I copped from the infamous Greenhills flea market.
It was literally only moments ago that Benigno Aquino III was sworn into office as the 15th president of the Philippines. Benigno, aka NoyNoy who won the overwhelming majority vote, delivered his inaugural speech earlier this afternoon in Manila to an international buffet of political figures and a crowd drenched in yellow estimated to be well over five-hunnit-thou-wow (500,000). His inaugural speech incited many feelings familiar to a young Fil-Am looking for change, yet I couldn’t honestly say the true scope of his importance to the Pilipino citizen is beknownst to me.
Food trucks are all the craze. The flavor of the month. Unfortunately some of those flavors are overpriced and overhyped.
What sparked off with the Korean taco truck, Kogi BBQ [1] tweeting their ever changing location, became Los Angeles infested with others following suite. Many trucks utilizing the cringe inducing fusion of cultural dishes were met with foodies willing to try out spots that were discovered through Twitter.
I’ve had my fare share of Los Angeles based food trucks, with Asian Soul Kitchen being my current GOAT pick.
Recently, a personal mission of mine has been to scour for Pinoy funk. Music from the Philippines, as well as from Filipinos living abroad. Having been exposed to more funk recently, since I’ve surrounded myself with lockers and boogaloo style dancers, I’ve been wanting to expand beyond Kano’s “I’m Ready” and Herbie Hancock’s “Ready or Not”. Rather than deciding to make this task easy for myself, why not create a challenge and find some funky ass Pinoy cuts?
The latest discovery: a pre-gentrified SF Mission District funk group named Dakila.
May 18, 2010, a trio consisting of microphone fiend, Nomi, and two production wizards, Fatgums and Mister REY, dropped a collective project that asked listeners to hear tales from the perspective of a proletariat nomad. The group: Power Struggle. The project: Remittances.
If experiences have shown me anything, they have shown me that everything that I have ever learned about life, I have already learned through Saved by the Bell. From seeing what abusing caffeine pills can do, finding out about the importance of ethnic identity formation through learning AC Slater’s real last name, to knowing not to trust Johnny Dakota. The situation in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment is no exception.
Maybe if big oil actually did presentations with Zack Morris in the room, things might have been so much more different.
Besides demonstrating the creative talent of artists in the Philippines, hip hop in the Metro tells us a story of how race, culture, and power operates globally. And for Filipinos, the impact of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines cannot be underestimated, especially in a country where mestizo looks are overvalued and billboards for skin-whitening pills tower over the Metro. For many Filipino artists, hip hop culture has provided alternative narratives of black and brown humanity in the Philippines and in the United States, whether they state it in their lyrics or not.
I know I have had my prejudgments about what Filipino rap is, and it’s good to see Mark dispelling some of the myths that I have held, providing a critical scope personalizing the experiences of a few Manila emcees.
Mark’s short documentary that accompanies this piece premiered in LA this weekend. [Click here for the trailer] He’s currently looking for spots that are willing to screen it.
[1] It was intended that this piece be blogged about last week. Again, apologies for boggin’ in my bloggin’. Does this last sentence even make sense? I was trying to come up with a blog version of “slackin’ on my mackin’”.
[2] Amidst the multiple reasons to be embarrassed for going to UCSD, there are some reasons to be proud. The UCSD birthed, Evil Monito, started up by Ricky Kim, has been a journal deserving of my respect ever since I was hipped to it.
Robert Rodriguez filmed a Mexploitation flick that takes place in Arizona over a year ago. Surprisingly, Fox backed him on the project. Fast forward to today, and the situation in AZ is more heated than ever.
Interesting how planned projects with one intent ends up resonating on multiple levels due to timing.
You may have seen it on Grindhouse, but more was added specifically calling out Arizona.
Apologies for the lack of updates. Graduate school and the search for virtually non-existent school counseling jobs has gotten in the way.
But with the racist clusterfcuk that Governor Jan Brewer and the rest of the Arizona state legislature have created, I feel it important to share some words, or at least some links.
