Performing the Filipino at the

Crossroads: Filipino Bands in

Five-Star Hotels Throughout Asia
STE PH AN I E N G

I arrived at the Concorde Hotel at about 8:50 p.m. on a Friday evening. The
Concorde Hotel is a high-class business hotel, located on busy Jalan Sultan
Ismail in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Across from The Concorde Hotel is
Shangri-La Hotel, a five-star establishment belonging to an international
chain. Jalan Sultan Ismail and its adjacent streets are home to several of the
largest business hotels in the city, such as Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Equatorial
Hotel, Mutiara Hotel, Renaissance Hotel, and New World Hotel. These hotels
cater to the needs of the business district of Kuala Lumpur and provide
accommodation to tourists and business travelers from within the country and
abroad. While this area is generally very crowded each evening because of the
many nightspots located there, traffic virtually slows to a crawl on Friday and
Saturday nights, and people have to wait in line to get into many of the more
popular clubs and restaurants. Malaysias only Hard Rock Caf, the haunt of
expatriates, travelers from the west, and the Kuala Lumpur elite, is located at
the Concorde Hotel. Here one can savor western food and rock music.
However, what specifically drew me to the Concorde Hotel that evening was
the band performing at Crossroads Lounge, located in the lobby of the hotel. An
inconspicuous poster at the entrance of the lounge advertised the two bands that
were playing there that evening, a Filipino band called 2 By 2 and a local band,
Memorabilia.1 2 By 2 had been performing at the Concorde for the last three
years and the hotel had pre-booked them for the next year. I was shown to a
table near the stage, was proffered snacks of muruku and kacang puteh, and my
drink order was taken. On looking around, I observed that the audience was
diverse. Two tables near the stage were occupied by middle-aged Caucasian
men, accompanied by young local women. Seated to my right were three Jap-
anese men whom I judged to be in their mid-thirties or early forties. A group of
men of Middle Eastern descent occupied the table next to mine. I concluded that
these internationals were either expatriates working in multinational corpora-

Modern Drama, 48:2 (Summer 2005) 272

 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 273

tions in Kuala Lumpur or business travelers. What particularly caught my atten-

tion, though, was the number of locals in the crowd. They formed at least half
the audience at the lounge. The Malaysians, who lived in Kuala Lumpur and the
surrounding suburbs, consisted of middle-aged couples, families with teenaged
children and elderly grandparents, and yuppies in their thirties. When 9:00 p.m.
approached, the musicians took their place on stage. The band consisted of a
male and two female singers and a male keyboardist. The women were dressed
in identical black pantsuits with gold fringe, while the men were more casually
dressed in shirts and dark pants. The singers waved to some audience members
with whom they were familiar and greeted them by name. Good evening ladies
and gentlemen. We are the 2 By 2 band from Manila, Philippines, here to enter-
tain you at the Crossroads Lounge, Tina Argao announced, on receiving her
cue from the keyboardist.
It is not uncommon for Filipino band members performing throughout Asia
to introduce themselves in this manner. Even hotels where they perform
advertise these bands in local newspapers and on promotional material as (a
band) direct from the Philippines (City Bayview Hotel, Advertisement),
sensational Filipino band (Holiday Inn Resort) and Filipino show-
band(City Bayview Hotel, Leaflet). These examples suggest that the musi-
cians and the hotels perceive using the term Filipino to be beneficial to
them, either from an entertainment or business standpoint, and believe the
term has positive connotations for their audience. This paper, therefore,
explores what Filipino means to the hotels, the audiences, and the musicians
of the bands in order to understand the reasons behind the demand for Filipino
bands in hotels throughout Asia. It examines the extent to which this meaning
is shared and indeed performatively made by all of them. And finally, it iden-
tifies the ways in which these musicians maintain Filipino-ness, giving rise
to a specific configuration of and implications for the diaspora in perfor-
mance. This paper suggests that Filipino entertainers are a form of global
labor, diasporic performers who give multinational performances in order to
earn a living across Asia. Performing the role of the Filipino entertainer
involves intensive effort as they strive to invoke feelings of home among
their transnational audience while foregoing their own homes. To perform
transnationally, they have also had to subjugate their cultural identities and
personal musical desires. However, performing in a global setting provides
them with material and financial compensation and gives them the opportu-
nity to travel, often in luxury, despite their limited economic resources and
unstable, if not at times ambiguous, social status.
Filipinos have been entertaining overseas since the late nineteeenth century.
By the 1890s, Filipinos had built the reputation of being capable musicians
throughout East and Southeast Asia (Baas 51). Filipinos were the initial
musicians of the state brass bands and police bands in Malaya (Matusky and
Chopyak 440). They also played active roles as musicians in the royal courts
274 stephanie ng

and nightclubs of Cambodia2 and as orchestra and dancehall musicians

(Gibbs, Reform) and teachers to the Vietnamese elite in French-ruled Viet-
nam in the 1900s (Gibbs, Nhac Tien). Furthermore, Filipino jazz bands
were very popular in Shanghai in the 1930s. In addition to in foreign clubs and
cafs, Filipino musicians performed at dance halls such as The Paramount and
Ciros. Several Chinese jazz musicians, such as Jimmy King, learned their
craft playing in Filipino bands.3 Several Japanese jazzmen have also credited
Filipinos with introducing them to jazz (Atkins 59). Since the 1950s, Filipino
singers, dancers, and musicians have been performing at high class clubs and
hotels throughout Asia. They put on cabaret-like shows, complete with elabo-
rate costumes, in the Middle East; give Filipino cultural performances in
Japan and Taiwan; and play jazz and dance music in Hong Kong, Tokyo,
Guam, Singapore, and Bangkok. Filipino musicians have also held important
positions in Malaysian orchestras from the 1950s. Alfonso Soliano, for
instance, helped steer the Radio Television Malaysia (RTM) orchestra at its
inception, while Danny Francisco was a conductor and musician with a num-
ber of Malaysias orchestras in the 1970s and continues to arrange music for
the Kuala Lumpur City Hall orchestra up to the present. Filipino musicians
also entertained American soldiers during the Vietnam War because they were
able to sing and speak in English and could perform music that appealed to
Americans. The disco era of the 1970s and 1980s further catapulted Filipino
bands into the Asian hotel and club circuit. Bands of seven or eight members
were popular throughout Asia because discos required live bands then. These
musicians helped establish the reputation of Filipino bands in this circuit,
which ensures their marketability up till today. However, the performance
sites of Filipino musicians are not limited to those in Asia. A group of 80 Fili-
pino musicians performed under an American bandleader as early as the 1904
Worlds Fair in Louisiana.4 Filipino musicians can also be found performing
in The Netherlands, France, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland and Germany, the
Pacific islands of Saipan and Palau, Djibouti in Africa, and on cruise ships
plying North American and Caribbean routes.5
Economic difficulties in the 1980s have caused the Philippines to rely
heavily on its export entertainment industry for foreign revenue. Filipino
overseas performing artists (OPA) range from magicians and karaoke
lounge hostesses to some of the best bands in the Asian hotel circuit. Their
performance venues include five-star hotels, cruise liners, international chain
pubs and restaurants like the Hard Rock Caf and Planet Hollywood, and tiny
karaoke lounges in Japan where entertaining entails singing karaoke with
guests. An elaborate network has been set up throughout Asia by agents repre-
senting these entertainers. These agents seek employment on behalf of the
entertainers, negotiate the terms of employment including salary, arrange
employment and immigration authorization, and sometimes even pay for the
costumes, training, and plane tickets of the entertainers. The Philippine gov-
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 275

ernment has also been playing an active role in the deployment of entertainers
overseas. The Philippines Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), through
the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), for
example, auditions entertainers before issuing them with an Artiste Record
Book (ARB) certification that then enables them to obtain work visas abroad.
The Filipino government also has trade agreements with the government of
Japan that allow for the export to that country only of entertainers dubbed
Japayuki.6
Although Filipinos partake in various types of entertainment in a wide vari-
ety of sites in Asia, this paper will focus on their performance of mainstream
popular music in high-class hotels in Shanghai, Nanjing, Singapore, Kuala
Lumpur, and Penang. International hotels are the mainstay for a large propor-
tion of Filipino entertainers. Their audience ranges from tourists and business
travelers to expatriates working for multinational corporations7 and the local
middle and upper classes. They are in demand in international hotels for their
ability to perform mainstream western pop and rock in the most authentic
style, including the oldies and the latest hits on the British and the American
music charts. By authentic, I mean they are able to imitate the voice quality,
singing style, and dance movements of well-known singers from Britain and
the United States. In other words, these Filipinos are unoriginal in their
singing in order to sound like the original. Hotels advertise their cover
bands with such statements as great impersonations of personalities such as
Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Westlife (City Bayview, Advertisement).
Filipino musicians are also in demand in Asian hotels because they can sing
in many different languages and can appeal to the local audiences in the dif-
ferent countries where they perform. The local audience often makes up over
half the clientele at the hotels.
From the very beginning of the twentieth century, Filipino entertainers
plied their trade abroad. The musical affinity of the Filipinos, as noted by
some scholars of Philippine music,8 seems to have brought about this demand
for them in Asia. Hence, for their employers in the hotels, for their audiences,
and for the musicians themselves, being Filipino has meant more than being
a citizen of the Philippines and encompasses a much longer history of per-
forming in the diaspora. One may go so far as to say that, in this context of
musical performance, the category of Filipino constitutes a musical cate-
gory or rather a category of musicians, namely traveling musicians, rather
than a designation of nationality and is fundamentally diasporic both in its
function and connotation.

l o o ki n g b e yo n d t h e m u s ic

Filipinos who engage with western popular music have been accused of living
in Americas past, what Appadurai calls nostalgia without memory (30).
276 stephanie ng

Iyer describes the prevalence of American pop music and pop star imitators in
the Philippines and characterizes that country as the worlds largest slice of
the American Empire, in its purest impurest form (168). Negative reaction
has also been expressed to their reputation as performers of western popular
music abroad. Caruncho notes that the international popularity of Filipino
musicians is more of a tribute to their ability to imitate Western pop than any-
thing else (66). Iyer describes the Filipino as Master of every American ges-
ture, conversant with every western song [] the Filipino plays minstrel to
the entire continent (153). In focusing only on the repertoire and imitative
style of performance, both these authors have pointed an accusing finger at the
lack of cultural identity displayed by Filipino entertainers in the Asian per-
forming circuit. These authors however fail to take into account the lives of
the performers in relation to the very nature of their job of being Filipino
entertainers, one that requires them to perform music that can blur various
borders and appeal to a wide segment of audiences of different nationalities.
In fact, their identity as Filipino entertainers hinges on their ability to adapt
to various performing environments throughout Asia. The reward is clear in
economic terms: many of them spend more time away from the Philippines
than in the Philippines because they are able to earn a higher income abroad.
Some have not returned to the Philippines in over six years.
Filipino entertainers are transnational subjects who constantly cross borders
for work purposes. I share Mitchells use of the term subject, which she ties
to Foucaults subjection to and of the nation, as well as to global forces (228).
Filipino entertainers are not only subjected to the controls of the nation-state
through various immigration and labor policies of both the Philippines and the
host countries but also bear the brunt of economic pressure from the home
country, agents, and the global forces of making a living in a transnational set-
ting. Filipino entertainers are part of a huge force of overseas Filipino workers
(OFWs) exported by the Philippines since the 1970s. The Philippines exports
its labor in order to accumulate foreign exchange and balance the countrys
trade deficit and to help reduce the unemployment rate in the country. Pres-
ently, the economy of the Philippines is sustained by remittance from citizens
who are working overseas. The Philippines stands as the biggest exporter of
labor in Asia and is second in the world only to Mexico. For the year 2000,
approximately 5.5 million OFWs could be found in 152 countries around the
world (Quiambao). Over 58,000 Filipino entertainers were deployed in the
year 2003 alone, according to a report by TESDA. To ensure that workers are
marketable, POEA has, since 1994, authorized privately run training centers
to offer classical and jazz ballet lessons to potential entertainers (Lucila and
Lucila).
Becoming an entertainer is more lucrative than other occupations available
to OFWs. According to John Chacko, an agent representing Filipino bands,
Filipino entertainers in Malaysia can earn up to RM5,000 a month, while
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 277

domestic workers are only paid an average of RM550 to RM700 monthly.

Some top Filipino entertainers in the hotel circuit in Asia can earn up to
US$2,200 a month. Furthermore, entertainers who perform in high-class
hotels in Asia keep their whole salaries because food, accommodation, laun-
dry services, and transportation are provided by the hotels. Their employers
also pay their income taxes for them. Hence, in his estimation, Filipino enter-
tainers are typically able to send 60 percent to 70 percent of their salaries
home to their families in the Philippines.
Despite better working condition and higher salaries, Filipino entertainers
nevertheless share many characteristics with the new helots described by
Cohen (2529). They continuously seek employment in different cities over-
seas that require large supplies of entertainers while enduring extreme costs to
their physical, emotional, and familial lives. They, nevertheless, cannot be cat-
egorized together with the new wave of international labor emanating from
Asia that comprises Filipino and Indonesian maids, Bangladeshi laborers, and
Filipino maritime workers, since they work and live in high-class hotels and
eat at fine restaurants all over the world. Although Filipino entertainers do not
possess mobile capital or multiple passports, they have been able to achieve a
certain proximity to the kind of transnational mobility experienced by the eco-
nomic, social, and professional elites described by Ong and Nonini (11). Such
proximity, however, discloses its problematic nature when, for instance, the
hotel that represents the fine life also serves as a prison that ensures that Fil-
ipino musicians will have no excuse not to work late into the night entertain-
ing their guests in ways that are beyond their official function as musicians.
They function, for example, as companions at dinner and other nightlife activ-
ity. Thus, Filipino entertainers inhabit a complex and constantly negotiated
space between that of the new helots described by Cohen and Ong and that
of Noninis capitalist elites.
Filipino entertainers utilize an intermediary or third culture, one that results
from the fluid social condition of their occupation. Featherstone explains that
third cultures are conduits for all sorts of diverse cultural flows which cannot
be merely understood as the product of bilateral exchanges between nation
states (1). Hannerz adds that these cultures are often associated with the
occupational cultures of the transnational job market (243). Third cultures are
the cultures of transnational subjects who constantly move between multiple
borders and have to negotiate the problems of inter-cultural communication
(Ong and Nonini 11). Because Filipino bands perform in international hotels,
a large proportion of their audience is business travelers and tourists of differ-
ent nationalities. Western pop and rock is the music of choice at these hotels
because it is music that is recognizable to the diverse clientele of the hotel.
The taste for western pop and rock is not limited to Filipinos, since, as a result
of the aggressive expansion of international recording companies since the
early twentieth century, this music can be found worldwide. Unlike for other
278 stephanie ng

areas of technology, like the industrialization of printing,9 which began in the

west decades before it was brought to the colonies in the east, recording tech-
nology and recordings spread abroad almost as soon as they were developed
(Gronow and Saunio 1112). The dissemination of music videos through sat-
ellite TV in the form of MTV since the 1980s has further supported the spread
of music and images worldwide.10 Western pop and rock, therefore, serve as a
lingua franca, or a communicative hegemon, for these people from different
parts of the world. Strikingly, whatever their origin may be, mainstream pop
and rock rarely discriminate in the global arena because they are mostly man-
ufactured under the category of love these are love songs posited on the
genre of heterosexual romance.11
Despite the apparent predominance of western influence on the music of
Filipino bands, the process of what has been considered as imitating evinces
how these bands are not mere imitators of western pop and rock musicians.
On the contrary, Filipino entertainers are able to inject something into their
performance that makes it distinct or different and thus highly marketable
among high-class establishments in Asia. Taylor offers the term strategic
inauthenticity to explain the strategic use of western popular music forms
by musicians outside the United States and Western Europe as a means of
resisting western demands for authenticity in the Orientalist sense and to
enable themselves to be global citizens, capable of using cultural forms as
(post)modern as the wests (143). Agency is displayed in the strategic ways
Filipino entertainers have made use of the cultural and musical heritage left
behind by over four-hundred years of colonization. They have taken the musi-
cal foundation and sentiment of Spain and the jazz, popular music, and
English language of America and have combined them with the hard work,
discipline, adaptability, and cooperativeness of Filipinos, to create a trans-
national-cum-multicultural product that has put Filipino musicians on the
Asian entertainment map for last hundred years.
The music performed by Filipino bands complements the space in which
it is performed, that of the international hotel where guests can feel at home
routinized familiarity made of brands of goods and services for global con-
sumption because of the modern and international standards of food, dcor,
service, and entertainment provided there that can be found in international
hotels the world over. The feelings of home invoked by Filipino musicians
through their music are two-pronged. Mainstream western pop raises feelings
of homecoming because it represents a return to the familiar for tourists, expa-
triates, and business travelers from the West faced with an unfamiliar environ-
ment abroad. The widespread dissemination of this music makes it intelligible
and nostalgic, though, not just for audiences from United States or Western
Europe, since the catchy melodies of many of these pop songs are recogniz-
able even to those with limited knowledge of English, living within the
expanding sphere of influence of the U.S. entertainment industry. Many top
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 279

hits for example, My Heart Will Go On from the movie Titanic, or

Lemon Tree and Unchained Melody, popularized in the movie The Body-
guard have been translated into several Asian languages. Asian and western
favorites, on the other hand, also represent the actual music from the home
country for some foreign audiences. The music chosen to typify the music of
the national homeland of the audience, however, presents a very narrowly
constructed sense of home, since home here is only represented by songs
that use the official language of the home country and rank high on the
music charts in that country. Asian hits, for example, are often derived from
genres of rock and pop and the local musical elements in them are limited,
indicating a sense of home that is deeply mediated by the lingua franca of
the international entertainment industries.
Sentimentality is a valued form of expression as much as it is a valued prod-
uct on the transnational-cum-multicultural music market. It serves as compen-
sation for human feelings to global travelers whose mobile lives consist
mostly, if not entirely, of work. Filipino musicians consciously tap into such
market needs and contribute to maintaining such needs through their perfor-
mance. Cannell describes how participants of amateur singing competitions in
the region of Bicol in the Philippines put on careful expressions of emotional
excruciation copied from western and Filipino popular singers (211), while
Iyer witnesses the ways in which nightclub musicians in Manila play on the
crowd with their eyes [] twist the microphone wire in their hands [] simu-
late every shade of heartbreak (17273). Filipino musicians in the Asian
hotel circuit sneak sentimentality into their performances particularly when
singing love songs, as I will illustrate in the next section of this paper. It is suf-
ficient to say here that they manipulate affect in order to raise feelings of
nostalgia, homesickness, happiness, and a sense of connectedness among their
audience. Hardt and Negri describe them as affective labor, one of two
forms of immaterial labor offered by them. They define immaterial labor as
the work of those who provide services, information, and communication, as
opposed to labor that generates tangible goods (108).
While denying neither the colonial history of the Philippines nor the
continuing neocolonial influence of international recording companies and
multinational media corporations, I thus caution against promoting an essen-
tializing view of Filipino musicians. To understand the intricacies of per-
forming the Filipino, we need to take into account the views and voices of
the entertainers in response to an audience that requests such songs and the
hotels that employ them. Ong criticizes the way globalization tends to be
described in macro terms such as flows of capital, people, technology, and
media to the exclusion of individuals adrift in this sea of various scapes.12
She proposes that globalization be measured at its very basic unit, that of indi-
viduals who are affected by these changes in the world (1011). Although I
reserve my distance from such theorizing and deployment of the figure of the
280 stephanie ng

individual, my approach leads me to pay close attention to the living per-

formers as social individuals. Hence, to understand what Filipino means, we
need to look beyond the repertoire to their live performance as a whole their
style of rendition, their dancing and gestures on stage, their interaction with
their audiences from the stage and during intermissions, and their relationship
with their employers in order to identify the role that performance plays in
shaping this Filipino identity. Rather than merely dubbing Filipino enter-
tainers in Asia as clones of western pop stars, I propose that their singing of
mainstream pop and rock, communicating in English, general demeanor dur-
ing performance, and constant perpetuation of their performed identity are all
part of their adoption and packaging of a transnational work culture or third
culture. Through a detailed ethnography involving observations of perfor-
mances and interviews with the musicians and their agents, audiences, and
hotel employers, the next section articulates the various interpretations of
Filipino and the different ways Filipino-ness is invented, performed, and
reinforced.

c r e at i n g t h e f il i pi no, p e r f o r m in g t h e fi l ipi no

The evening began with a fast number, Cant Take My Eyes Off You, popu-
larized by Andy Williams.13 This toe-tapping number immediately caught the
attention of the audience at the Crossroads Lounge, particularly since the sing-
ers also performed synchronized dance steps to the music. This was followed
by The Ketchup Song, another fast-tempo song, made famous by Las Ketchup,
that was popular on the hotel circuit in 2003. Next, the members of 2 By 2
sang Kenny Rogers and Dolly Partons Islands in the Stream, Nat King
Coles L.O.V.E., and the ever-popular Mariah Carey number, Hero.14
Hotel employers do not stipulate the repertoire required of their entertainers.
However, they do provide bands with information on the general age group,
nationality, and social class of their customers so that the musicians can deter-
mine the music that would best appeal to these different customers of the
hotels. Andrew Charles, Food and Beverage Director of Rasa Sayang Hotel in
Penang, Malaysia, explains, People come here to relax. They want to hear
something soothing [] easy listening, something they are familiar with.
Much of mainstream western popular music is easy listening and is familiar to
many people around the world. Familiarity here is therefore based on ease of
consumption.
Many Filipino bands have a repertoire of over one-thousand songs. 2 By 2
had performed music that spanned from the 1960s to 2002 in the opening set
alone. It is this ability to sing a wide selection of songs that puts Filipino
bands in good stead on the Asian entertaining circuit and enables them to pro-
vide the wide range of songs requested by audiences in hotels. Stiff competi-
tion to meet market demands forces producers of every kind, including
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 281

producers of affect like Filipino entertainers, to be more flexible and offer

more extensive choices in order to appear more attractive to customers. Mem-
bers of different bands sometimes exchange music to ensure that they all have
a good selection of songs and will, therefore, be able to maintain their reputa-
tion as quality performers in the region. In addition, Filipino entertainers keep
their repertoire up to date by reviewing oldies that are constantly being reis-
sued on cassettes and CDs, as well as by learning the newest hits on the Top 40
charts. They also listen to local radio stations in the cities they perform in to
familiarize themselves with local favorites. Members of 2 By 2, for example,
learn a minimum of three songs per week, as Andrew Granado, the leader and
keyboardist of the group, informed me. Cues about what is popular are also
gleaned through the songs that are being frequently requested by the audience.
Filipino musicians who are unable to meet a song requested by a guest will
make it a point to learn that song so that they can meet the requests the next
time around. Genalyn Gaspar of Tender Tunes related how members of her
band had on occasion gone to a great deal of trouble to track down certain
remote songs requested by their guests. In addition to scouring record stores
and the Internet, she also contacted members of other Filipino bands who were
performing in the vicinity and in other cities for assistance. Tess Domatican of
Retro has even had guests give her band members CDs in order that they could
learn the song requested. In addition, bands belonging to the same agency pro-
vide each other with information on what is popular at a particular venue.
According to John Chacko, an outgoing band will give an incoming band a list
of the thirty most requested songs in that outlet so that they will be able to
appeal to their audience tastes the moment they start work at the outlet.
For many local bands, playing at a hotel is a part-time job. Malaysian musi-
cians, for instance, do it either to supplement their day jobs or take it as a step-
ping-stone to a recording career sometime in the future. On the other hand,
Filipino musicians perceive playing at hotels to be a career. Most do not har-
bor aspirations of becoming recording artists. For them, getting jobs at increas-
ingly better venues for higher salaries seems a goal in itself. Unlike many local
bands, which practice infrequently, Filipino musicians practice regularly
because they are housed together in the hotel. Their lives, which consist of prac-
ticing and performing, revolve around the hotel six days of the week. Their day
off is often spent away from the hotel securing costumes for their performances,
purchasing musical instruments, or locating recordings and scores of new
songs. Hence, there is little distinction between work time and private time for
Filipino entertainers performing abroad. They are highly intensive laborers,
who produce the most pleasing, leisurely, personal, and intimate emotions
through the most disciplined and totalized labor, labor like that of helots.
While the products manufactured are intangible, the efforts that are poured into
producing them are nevertheless very material, since they involve the phys-
ical and mental toil of these immaterial laborers (Hardt and Negri 109).
282 stephanie ng

Bonnie & Rhea. Photo courtesy of their agent, John Chacko Holdings Sdn. Bhd.

After singing Lady Marmalade, a lively and highly rhythmic song by

Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, Mya, and Pink,15 2 By 2 shifted to a lower gear
with Whitney Houstons I Have Nothing, from the movie, The Bodyguard.
Marites Santos, the lead singer of 2 By 2, who was wearing a beret, came to
the forefront. She waved to the crowd and thanked them for their applause.
Neither the timbre of her voice nor her Filipino accent resembled those of
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 283

Whitney Houston. Miguelito Villa then introduced Marites as the Whitney

Houston of the Philippines. When Marites started to sing, Miguelitos
description of her seemed fitting, since she had perfected her rendition of this
song down to the R&B artists voice timbre and breathing techniques. At that
moment, the Filipino singer on stage appeared to have been transformed
into the famous singer, at least to judge by the expressions of awe on the faces
of the audience, who had a good idea of what Whitney Houston should sound
like.
All the Filipino musicians I interviewed believed that Filipinos are very
sentimental and are, therefore, able to effectively convey the feelings of the
songs that they sing. The feelings of love ballads are communicated through
stock facial expressions and actions, such as closed or beseeching eyes, fist
clenching, hands clasped together around the microphone, and pounding of
the chest (or heart) to simulate heartbreak. These manufactured emotions
extend to the graduated dynamics of the voice from a hushed whisper to a loud
proclamation of love or heartache, occasional embellishments in the melody,
or the repetition of certain words for emphasis.
Next, Miguelito announced that Tina Turner would be making an appear-
ance at the Crossroads Lounge to sing The Best. Tina Argao appeared on
stage in a Tina Turnerstyle wig and completed her impersonation by imitat-
ing the singers walk and gestures. The audience seemed tickled by the strik-
ing resemblance between Tina and her famous namesake. In trying to give as
close an imitation as possible, to the extent of putting on a wig and duplicating
the walk, Tina Argaos presentation succeeded in surrogating and skewing the
empowering message of the song and the brand image of Tina Turner. The
dynamism of the famous singer was, therefore, eclipsed by the impersonator,
the mimic becoming almost the same, but not quite, to borrow Homi
Bhabhas phrase (86), highlighting the Filipino on stage precisely by play-
ing the non-Filipino Tina Turner. By appropriating the music and physical
characteristics of a famous pop star, the overseas contract entertainer had tem-
porarily acquired the power to mock an artist, someone she would normally,
as far as the assumed expectation goes, strive to emulate.
Although a carbon-copy rendition of the original singer was not an expecta-
tion for most of the audience interviewed, many audiences have come to asso-
ciate good impersonations with Filipino singers. John Hines, a product
manager attached to a U.S.-based multinational corporation who travels a
great deal to China and Hong Kong for business, admitted that he does not
judge a band by their ability to perform like well-known recording artistes but
was, nevertheless, very impressed by the good impersonations he observed of
the Filipinos performing in hotels there. During the interviews that I con-
ducted with a range of Filipino singers, such as Chuchie Fontanos, Genalyn
Gaspar, and Melanie Santos, I listened closely as they expressed their feelings
of pride about the fact that they are able to sing like the original singer
284 stephanie ng

because they believe that this ability is what sets them apart as Filipino
entertainers. Copying entails a high degree of accuracy, achieved through
much effort. Singers often spend hours listening to the recordings by the orig-
inal singers, in order to capture every inflection. The burden of exacting imita-
tions is compounded by the burden of performing this life, creating a double
burden of labor. It places a great deal of pressure on Filipino musicians,
who know that they are being judged not only by how well they sing or play
an instrument but by how well they sing and play like so-and-so. The audience
of Filipino bands shows their appreciation of these efforts by way of
applause, tips, and positive feedback to band members. Connoisseurs
among the audience have on many occasions come up to the musicians to
praise or criticize the imitations witnessed. Original songs are less popular
with the diverse audience in hotels in Asia because audiences are unfamiliar
with these songs. Adapted versions of well-known songs may be well or badly
received, depending on the audiences willingness to listen to unfamiliar ren-
ditions of familiar songs.
Some Filipino musicians also have the ability to morph into different pop
stars. Earlier in the set, Andrew Granado gave a convincing imitation of Louis
Armstrong in his rendition of What a Wonderful World, but towards the end
of that set, he became Michael Bolton. Andrew informed the audience that
the Bee Gees had previously recorded To Love Somebody but that he would
be performing the Michael Bolton version. Filipino singers usually announce
the version they will be singing so that the audience is aware of the artists
being imitated. Members of 2 By 2 succeeded in getting their culturally
diverse audience to clap and sing to portions of the chorus of To Love Some-
body by facing the microphone in their direction, thereby engaging their
audience in staging the familiar in a way that gave rise to momentary feelings
of community; however much such a community may be or really is a simu-
lacrum. In an environment of constant transit, where encountering strangers is
the norm, the Filipino musicians had used a global pop song as a common
denominator to link their audiences.
Beneath the performance of emotions and community lie the harsh eco-
nomic realities that spur Filipino musicians to engage in a performance of a
different kind the maintenance of social relations with their customers and
employers in order to ensure continued employment. According to Andrew
Charles, in addition to their ability to perform music well, hotels hire Filipino
bands over local bands or bands of other nationalities because Filipino
musicians have built a reputation of being, in Charles words, always pleas-
ant and always willing to please both their employers and their audience in
personalized or, more accurately, customer-made ways. Musicians of hotel
bands have the contracted job tasks of attracting customers to the different
food and beverage outlets of the hotels. Genalyn Gaspar explained that they
make the effort to learn the individual names, nationalities, and favorite songs
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 285

of their customers in order to personalize their performances and, in Gaspars

words, to make the customers feel special by addressing them by name and
giving them a song dedication. Building rapport with the guests ensures that
they will stay in the lounge for a longer period of time and return to support
the band in the future. Shan Selvadurai, of the Malaysian Association of Life
Entertainment Promoters (MALEP), for instance, pointed out that the finan-
cial controllers of many hotels in Malaysia vouch for the profitability of hav-
ing a Filipino band. Furthermore, Malaysian hoteliers perceive Filipino
band members to be more disciplined than those of local bands, since they
refrain from drinking and smoking on the job and rarely miss a days work.
The facade of the ever smiling and friendly Filipino entertainers on stage
also conceals the challenges they face as overseas contract workers, chal-
lenges that include physical, emotional, and sometimes sexual exploitation.
The friendliness of female Filipino entertainers is often misconstrued by male
hotel guests as promiscuousness. Hence, some guests try to take advantage of
the musicians by putting their arms around the women, holding their hands, or
kissing them. In fact, both female and male entertainers have been solicited
for sex. Because some guests perceive them to be in need of money, since they
are from a poorer country, money and gifts are often used to seduce entertain-
ers. Some women have even been promised marriage, only to be jilted by their
false suitors. In addition, some Filipino entertainers face the stigma of being
foreign workers, especially in countries that also employ Filipino maids and
laborers here, then, is the other space they inhabit, as other transnational
Filipinos in the hierarchical arrangement of the global economy. Furthermore,
Filipino musicians are sometimes regarded with hostility by local musicians
and musicians unions in certain countries where they perform because they
are perceived to be depriving local musicians of jobs. While Filipino enter-
tainers are in the business of invoking feelings of home and the familiar for
their audience, their own homes and families are, on the other hand, put on
hold. Many have had to leave families, including young children, behind in
the Philippines. A range of problems, including infidelity, has resulted in
some cases. Most Filipino entertainers maintain a virtual family life through
their use of e-mail and cell phone technology, in particular, text messaging or
texting as they often call it, which is the cheapest means of communicating
quickly with those at home.16 Sheryll Ballestar and Marvin De Chavez had a
virtual birthday celebration with their three-year-old son back in the Philip-
pines in 2004. An Internet connection and Web cam were set up in the musi-
cians lodgings in Shanghai and at Sherylls mothers home in order to enable
the entertainers to view and share in this celebration. Because of her perform-
ing schedule, Sheryll has missed out on her sons first words, first steps, and
birthdays, and she is grateful that the Internet allows her glimpses into her
childs life. The stories behind the grateful feelings that she expresses seem
to have been kept to herself. Butch Dejos also relies on the Internet to keep in
286 stephanie ng

touch with his sons in the Philippines and America. Through the e-mailing of
news and photographs, he is kept informed on the goings-on of his children,
whom he has not seen for the last two years.
During the break, the members of 2 By 2 mingled with the audience. At this
point, they appeared to get out of their Filipino stage characters and spoke to
each other in Tagalog.17 They also spoke English with a Filipino accent to their
audience. This was very different from the American accent they had used
when singing on stage. Sarita Carreon, the vocalist of URB band, shared that
the stage presence she adopts is very different from her actual personality. She
feels more in charge on stage and is conscious that she is putting on a perfor-
mance. Hence, she speaks differently on and off stage and appears more outgo-
ing and flirty when she is performing. Jenelyn Gaspar of Tender Tunes does
her bit for the Golden Sands Hotels public relations by smiling a lot during her
performances. She can sing well in English and sounds remarkably like Cline
Dion and Mariah Carey when she sings their songs. However, she speaks very
little English, so she leaves all the talking to her sister when they perform
together. While she is among many Filipino entertainers who have a reputa-
tion throughout Asia for being good singers of western pop songs, she is, at the
same time, silenced by her inability to communicate well in English.
As members of 2 By 2 went around the lounge, they asked their audience
what songs they wanted performed. I was surprised that the entertainers were
familiar with most of the songs and knew the original singers of the numbers
requested, especially since the audience that had made these requests was of
different nationalities, gender, and age groups. We sing for the guests, not
ourselves, Andrew Granado explained. We think of it as a business rather
than what we like, Star Glows Diary Cornelio elaborated: suppressing per-
sonal musical desires in favor of the audiences musical preference is not
something new to Filipino musicians in the circuit. Even well-known jazz
bands from the 1950s and 1960s had to concede to the demands for commer-
cial pop by the audience. The Romy Posadas Band, which performed at Hyatt,
Hilton, Marriott, and Mandarin hotels in Bankok, Manila, Singapore, and
Hong Kong had to perform bubblegum pop in addition to swing and Latin
jazz. Romy and his wife Rita expressed dismay at having had to sing the same
hit songs several times in one night. Roger Herrera, Jr., the bandleader of
another jazz group, agreed, recalling how his band had played supper club,
dinner, and dance music while in Bangkok, Beirut, and Teheran. Juan Cadiz, a
jazz pianist who was playing in Bangkok in the 1960s, added that he looked
forward to Sundays, when musicians from different clubs and hotels would
get together to play jazz, since he had to play Chinese, Thai, and western pop
music the rest of the week. Trumpeter and vibraphone player Popoy Valmonte
remembered that getting together with the musicians at the President Hotel in
Bangkok for these jam sessions enabled Filipino musicians to indulge in their
personal musical interests.
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 287

2 By 2 began the second set with Barbara Mandrells Im Not Your Super-
woman. On noticing the arrival of a group of middle-aged, affluent Cauca-
sian men at the lounge, the singers reverted to the Beatles Yesterday. This
was followed by two other evergreens, Simon and Garfunkels The Sound
of Silence and I Get Around by the Beach Boys. This is an example of Fil-
ipino musicians tailoring their repertoire to suit their audience. According to
Filipino entertainers Melanie Santos and Delsarpe Cortez, who were perform-
ing at Rasa Sayang Hotel, bands do not usually have a fixed list of what they
will sing each evening. The leader of the band will size up the audience and
decide what to sing, in so doing assigning different identities to a diverse audi-
ence. By selecting western pop songs from the 1960s, 2 By 2 was establishing
that they thought these latest additions to the audience were people who had
knowledge of music of that era. The middle-aged Caucasian men appeared to
be enjoying the music. They were aware that the songs were directed at them
because of the frequent glances and smiles the singers sent their way. They
clapped when each song and its original singer was an-nounced to show they
were familiar with the song and the particular version the Filipino singers
were presenting. The actions of these men showed that they were acknowledg-
ing the identity assigned to them by the entertainers. In an attempt to deter-
mine and meet the musical tastes of their audience, Filipino entertainers
sometimes compartmentalize their audience into demographic segments based
on age, gender, and nationality, resulting in their singing songs that reflect a
stereotypical and generalized view of their audiences musical preferences.
They rely on the responses of the audience to songs sung to decide if a partic-
ular line of identification of their audience members should be pursued or
abandoned.
An American who frequently witnesses the performance of Filipino
bands is Roy Armes, a corporate vice-president of a Fortune 200 company.
From his business travels in Asia, he has formed the impression that Fili-
pino musicians are good at performing western pop and rock and are capable
of imitating the musicians he grew up listening to, classic American music
such as Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys. For Roy, it is the Filipino bands
ability to raise nostalgic feelings that makes these bands appealing to him.
Malaysian Kao Pei Lin is another business traveler who enjoys listening to the
Filipino bands perform. Her job as a human resource executive for a multi-
national corporation takes her throughout Asia where she has on several occa-
sions encountered Filipino bands. The near-perfect imitations of these
musicians call to mind favorite pop musicians of Pei Lins youth. For her, any
changes from the original style or musical arrangement would mar her mem-
ory of these songs. While she had no objections to musicians performing their
own versions of the oldies, she nonetheless felt such renditions would not
strike a chord the way the performance of the Filipino bands could.
Another characteristic of Filipino bands is their ability to sing in the local
288 stephanie ng

language, one that sets them apart from bands of other nationalities. Genalyn
Gaspar and her sister Jenelyn, the duo from Tender Tunes who were perform-
ing in Golden Sands Resort in Penang, shared that they take the time to learn
local favorites at every city in which they perform in order to make the local
audience feel more at home with their music. They learn these songs from
recordings and solicit the help of local hotel staff with their pronunciation. In
fact, many Filipino entertainers can also manage a smattering of the local
languages of the cities in which they perform. Through their travels abroad,
they have acquired the ability to speak and sing in several Asian languages.
Asian hit songs constitute an important part of the repertoire of Filipino bands.
These songs, while not as widely distributed globally as mainstream western
pop, are transnational and mainstream in their own right, at least in the Asian
region. Appadurai and Breckenridge point out the existence of multiple cen-
ters of culture besides Europe and the United States, centers that include Hong
Kong, Tokyo, and Bombay (2). Bollywood songs from India, for example,
make it to Southeast Asia and even reach diasporic Indian communities in the
west, while Canto pop from Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop have a big fol-
lowing among the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and the United
States.
One song that was constantly requested by guests at Crossroads Lounge
was the theme song from the Bollywood movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. This
song was comically presented, with Tina Argao and Miguelito Villas
exchanging of the roles of heroine and hero. They were able to copy all the
dance moves and gestures from the movie and reenact the hero-pursuing-hero-
ine scene, complete with a playful hide-and-seek behind trees. 2 By 2s per-
formance of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai can only be appreciated by audiences who
have had exposure to Bollywood movies and can recognize the scenes and
gestures being imitated. 2 By 2 were confident enough to perform this song
because they knew a fairly large proportion of their Asian audience at the
hotel had at one time or another seen a Bollywood movie or music video and
shared the same frame of reference with them. Bollywood movies are well
distributed in the Asian region, while music videos of Bollywood hit songs
saturate the MTV Asia channel. Quite a number of the transnational Asian
pop songs performed by Filipino bands are evergreens such as Yue Liang
Dai Biao Wo De Xin [The Moon Represents My Heart], a Taiwanese song
made popular by Teresa Teng, and Pang Yao [Friends] a hit by Hong Kong
singer, Alan Tam. This multinational dimension of their performance is
another reason for the popularity of Filipino entertainers in Asia.
2 By 2 dedicated Subaru to their Japanese guests in the lounge. These
Japanese businessmen clapped and cheered at hearing a song from their home-
land, as they were pleased at having their presence acknowledged by the
musicians of the lounge in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. While many Filipino
musicians I observed did not imitate well-known Asian singers as convinc-
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 289

ingly as they did western pop stars, the Asian audience usually still responded
positively to the efforts of the Filipinos. Tess Domatican of Retro, who was
performing at Miramar Hotel in Singapore, pointed out that her band would
learn one or two Thai, Malay, Chinese, or Japanese songs in order to entertain
their foreign guests. For her, it was not the number of songs they could sing or
their interpretation of these songs that mattered to their guests. They are just
happy that we know their songs, she explained. Filipino entertainers often
equate performing hit songs from the country of origin of their guests with
knowing and meeting the entertainment and nostalgic needs of their audience.
Their guests, in this case the Japanese businessmen, accepted this song and its
explicit assignment of identity and proceeded to perform their Japanese-ness
in accordance with the song dedicated to them. Hence, the performing of
home feelings is not restricted to Filipino entertainers, since their audiences
also reciprocate by performing the identities associated with that home. The
ability of Filipino entertainers to invoke feelings of home through their per-
formance is contingent upon their audiences being away from their effective
homes. In a hotel setting, the entertainers are very likely to encounter guests
who are from somewhere else. Filipino entertainers create surrogate emotions
of longing and nostalgia with the music they choose to perform for that audi-
ence. Their agency lies in their ability to manipulate or simulate affect, despite
their not possessing the economic means of production or ownership of the
original music, to the extent of enacting sophisticated virtual homes and
virtual communities, using live bodies their own and those of their higher-
status audience.
When requests are made for Filipino songs, Nora Aunors Dahil Saiyo or
Freddie Aguilars Anak often are picked because both songs made a great
impact on the Asian popular music scene in their heyday. Anak was even
translated into several different languages, including Malay, Japanese, Man-
darin, and Cantonese. In requesting Filipino songs, the audience displayed
their awareness that the band playing western pop music on stage was not
from the west, despite their talent at imitating western pop stars. In the same
way that Filipino entertainers allot homes and identities to their audience
through their prescription of certain songs, their audience also constructs a
home and an identity for these diasporic entertainers by requesting Filipino
songs. Asked how they felt about these two songs, most of the entertainers
responded that they hardly ever sung these oldies in the Philippines and found
it interesting that these should be the songs pegged to Filipino musicians.
While they spend their lives providing music and songs, such music and songs
were not part of their lives.
The traveling and performing lives of Filipino entertainers exist within a
global network erected by agents who export these entertainers abroad. In
addition to having offices in various parts of Asia, these agents also travel
extensively in order to service their clients at the different hotels and to secure
290 stephanie ng

Peach Apple Tree. Photo courtesy of their agent, John Chacko Holdings Sdn. Bhd.

new performing venues for their bands. Hotels throughout Asia rely on these
agents to obtain bands of various nationalities for them. In his interview with
me, John Chacko, the owner of Seagulls Promotions, for example, informed
me that his agency has over one-hundred bands, 90 percent of which are Fili-
pino with the rest Latin American, Caribbean, Australian, and American
which are based in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malay-
sia, Brunei, and India. Because of the large number of bands under their
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 291

charge, as he puts it, his agency is able to keep hotels constantly supplied with
musicians of every kind. Some agents also make or break bands by adding
or removing band members, depending on the makeup of instrumentalists or
the number of musicians required by the hotels. Employers from the hotels
appreciate this flexibility in Filipino band membership because the enter-
tainment needs of the hotels vary from season to season and from food-and-
beverage outlet to outlet. The impermanence of Filipino bands is also
reflected in the names adopted by these bands such as Nite Star, Starland, Mil-
lennium Star, Star Friends, and Glitter. These names are easily changeable
once a band moves to a new venue or varies its membership. Names like Star-
dust further provide proof of the ephemerality of these bands, while Foreign
Affair reflects the irony of being displaced. This fluidity in the movement of
bands from one city to another across the globe and the flexibility of band
members, in particular Filipinos, enable the global network of hotel entertain-
ment to function effectively. Filipino musicians are part and parcel of such
global businesses of the post-Ford service industry, producing the virtual
home and affective community that seem to be in such a demand through-
out economically ascending Asia, at least at the moment. Here, Jamesons
assertion that culture is business in late capitalism appears to have been taken
to the extreme by Filipino entertainers (12425). Their specific marketabil-
ity, as manifest in the demand for the particular goods that they are capable of
providing, often at the cost of their own real family lives, namely feelings of
home and community in settings where effective family and actual com-
munity are by structural definition absent, indicates that more specific explo-
rations of their mobile physical location and the cultural implications of their
labor are needed to further our understanding of the various human features of
such late capitalism.

c o n c l u s i on : p er f or m i n g f i l i p ino s i n d ia s p o r a

The culture of Filipino entertainers in the business of the entertainment

industry, then, should not be equated with Filipino culture. Filipinos per-
forming in the Asian hotel circuit have, over the years, developed a reputation
for good musicianship and a talent for impersonation, versatility, and oblig-
ing-ness, characteristics that are recognized and expected by their hotel
employers, audiences, and agents. By appropriating the music and language of
their former colonizers and combining it with these Filipino characteristics,
they have created a brand image for themselves transnationally. This is the
occupational culture of the transnational job market that Filipino enter-
tainers strive to maintain. Filipino musicians in the Asian live-band circuit
take advantage of the reputation made for them by their predecessors who per-
formed in the diaspora. They continue to preserve this Filipino reputation or
performed Filipino-ness through the strong ties they maintain with each other
292 stephanie ng

in the performing circuit. Senior musicians instruct their juniors about what is
expected, given their position as Filipino musicians. They share songs
among themselves and pass standard repertoires down to new recruits. Their
agents play a role in maintaining the image of the Filipino musician by
briefing their bands on the requirements of their occupation. Hence, Filipino
entertainers are created, sometimes even mass-produced, as was the case with
Japayuki, with foreign markets in mind. Despite spending most of their time
away from the Philippines, to the extent that they have to create virtual homes
and families, they still perceive the Philippines as the ideal home because it is
where their families reside and where they intend to retire once they can stop
performing abroad. Some of the older musicians, like Butch Dejos, have
bought land in the Philippines to build a retirement home for themselves
sometime in the future. Others have invested their earnings in businesses in
the Philippines, which they plan to run after they retire from entertaining. For
many of the musicians, who may not end up with such purchasing power after
years of performing Filipino entertainers and feelings of home away from
the ideal home, the idea and desires of returning raise questions about a
labor-intensive, mobile life rather than offer answers for human resettlement
in a world made of transit crossroads.

n ot e s

1 The Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism of Malaysia requires that all entertain-
ment outlets in the country give priority to the hiring of local musicians in their
establishments. Hotels that hire a Filipino band also need to employ a local band to
meet the 1:1 quota set by the ministry (Selvadurai).
2 They are credited with introducing Latin and western dance rhythms through the
big bands that they formed. This music spawned a popular genre called phleng
Manil (Manila music) in Cambodia; see Sam (863); Sam, Roonruang, and Nguyen
(207).
3 See Shi; Shanghai Gets Jazzed Up; Jazz Up the City Life.
4 The Greatest of Expositions Completely Illustrated provides a photograph of the
Philippine Constabulary Band led by Lieutenant Loving (226).
5 Filipino bands have been performing on luxury cruise liners, such as the Japanese-
owned Taiyo Maru that sailed between Hong Kong and New York, since the early
1900s (Pena).
6 Numerous training centers, ranging from those with fewer than fifty girls to
those with over two-hundred trainees, have mushroomed all over Manila. These
centers recruit young women from all over the country and then train them to sing
and dance in the short span of about three months so that they can pass the audition
conducted by the POEA. Physical makeovers are also provided by the centers in
order that these women can be presented as entertainers (Beech; Catan; Domingo).
 Performing the Filipino at the Crossroads 293

The mass production of Filipino entertainers bound for Japanese clubs will not be
explored in this paper.
7 Ong and Nonini give a list of transnational professionals and technocrats, whom
they refer to as a globalized capitalist managerial elite (11).
8 See Baas 1316; Hila 4; Mirano 46.
9 Printing was invented in China but industrialization of its usage first occurred in
the west.
10 See Malm and Wallis 199202; Roe and de Meyer 3343.
11 Negus quotes a Senior Vice President of Polygram as saying that ballads have uni-
versal appeal (28).
12 See Appadurai for an explanation of the five areas of global cultural flow or
scapes (3337).
13 This song was originally released by Frankie Valli in 1967 (Ruhlmann).
14 Since its release in 1993, Hero continues to be regularly requested by customers in
hotels, to the extent that many female Filipino singers have mastered this song
down to the expressions and embellishments employed by Mariah Carey.
15 This song was previously released by Patti LaBelle in 1975 (Wilson) but 2 By 2
performed the 2001 version that was extremely popular between 2001 and 2003 on
the hotel circuit due to the inclusion of the song in the Moulin Rouge soundtrack
(Huey).
16 There are many regional phrases used to designate this method. Texting is the
standard term used by major Anglo newspapers in Asia.
17 Tagalog is the language spoken in the Tagalog region of Luzon Island in the
Philippines. Filipino, one of two official languages of the Philippines, is based on
Tagalog. Tagalog is the language most spoken in Metro Manila, together with
English, the other official language.

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