Our Culture Resounds, Our Future Reveals: A Legacy of Filipino American Performing Arts in California
Submitted by Maureen Russell on October 20, 2020 - 1:17am
The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is thrilled to announce the publication of Our Culture Resounds, Our Future Reveals: A Legacy of Filipino American Performing Arts in California.
Our Culture Resounds, Our Future Reveals: A Legacy of Filipino American Performing Arts in California is a community partnership between the Archive and Ube Arte, a Southern California-based collective of professional musicians, dancers, and academics with a shared mission to advance Philippine cultural research and education among the Pilipinx American community. The book features Filipino American artists and scholars in essays, interviews, and photos. In addition, two Ethnomusicology Archive collections that are part of California Revealed are highlighted. California Revealed is a California State Library initiative to help California’s libraries, archives, and cultural heritage groups to describe, digitize, preserve, and provide online access to archival materials that tell the stories of the many diverse communities in the Golden State.
“Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles (AFAMILA)," funded by a UCLA in LA Community Partnership Grant, began in 2003 and worked to document, preserve, promote, and increase access to Philippine and Filipino American music in the Los Angeles area. Selections from AFAMILA are now part of California Revealed and are featured in the book. The second collection highlighted in the book is the Ube Arte Collection, generously donated to the Archive by artists, musicians, dancers, and academics affiliated with Ube Arte. There are currently 741 titles online, including video and audio recordings, still images, and scores, as part of the Ube Arte Collection on California Revealed and there are another 100+ items that are currently in the digitization queue.
The creation of the book was made possible by a California Revealed "Our Collections, Our Communities" grant, with additional support provided by the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology and the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. I would like to especially thank Professor Mark Kligman, Chair, Department of Ethnomusicology, Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music, Director of Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, and Professor of Ethnomusicology and Professor Helen Rees, Director of the World Music Center and Professor of Ethnomusicology, for their support.
Now I'd like to hand over the proverbial mic to my amazing colleagues, Eleanor Lipat-Chesler and Mary Talusan.
We’re thrilled to share with you the product of a 20-year-old dream, a rich collaboration, and labor of love completed in a mere four months. As college students, researching Philippine music and dance was like trying to solve a mystery. We set out to write the book we wish we had at the beginning of our journeys.
Our Culture Resounds, Our Future Reveals brings together Filipino American artists and scholars to provide a resource for exploring the multifaceted motivations, perspectives, and experiences of a community that has a long legacy of performance in California. Through intimate interviews, thoughtful essays, and vivid photographs as well as archived videos and sound recordings on California Revealed, this work opens up spaces to discuss, debate, and discover Filipino Americans’ unique contributions to culture and performance.
This interactive PDF with links to online audiovisual archives is a free resource book intended for wide distribution among community networks, students, educators, and the general public. Download your free PDF from the California Revealed website: https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A209355
The way Mary Talusan and I have compiled and editorialized the contents of this book belies our generation, our biases toward certain genres, our music-heavy academic backgrounds, our concerns as mothers who want to pass cultural knowledge on to our own children, as well as the sense of wonder that we east-coast transplants share regarding the astonishing quantity of Filipino American arts practices in California. Part mini-encyclopedia, part archive guidebook, and part performing artist handbook, we have attempted to bridge academic perspectives with community artist realities. In doing so, we have compiled a book that defies easy categorization.
-Eleanor Lipat-Chesler, Co-Editor
There is no one ‘thing’ that is and only is ‘Filipino American music.’ As Filipino Americans, we have a variety of influences, both internal and external to the Philippine nation, that stretch across time and space, and we make individual artistic choices. As a diasporic community, we adapt, assimilate, appropriate, localize, and transform music, music-making, and listening in an infinite number of ways. Encouraging a more robust debate and exploration of these issues is my motivation for creating a space for ‘Filipino American music’ especially in scholarly literature that is neither objective nor immune from larger social forces such as racism, prejudice, and exclusion.
-Mary Talusan, Co-Editor
List of contributors and interviewees (in the order they appear in the book)
Dr. Ricardo D. Trimillos
Eleanor Lipat-Chesler
Dr. Mary Talusan
Florante Peter Ibanez
Dr. Neal Matherne
Nico Delmundo
Dr. Bernard Ellorin
Parangal Dance Company
Jonathan Wandag
Dr. Christi-Anne Castro
Marlo Campos
Patrick Tanega
Will Simbol
Darleen Principe
Barbara Ele, Ave Jacinto, Joel Jacinto of Kayamanan Ng Lahi
Peter de Guzman
Michelle Camaya Julian
Guro Alvin Catacutan
Ron and Lydia Querian of House of Gongs
Caroline Cabading
Diane Valencia and Nicanor Evangelista of Ginto Seeds
J.A. Ruanto-Ramirez
Dr. Theodore S. Gonzalves
Giselle Töngi-Walters
Nilo Alcala
Anthony Angelo T. “Gelo” Francisco
Jasmine Orpilla
Dr. Roderick Labrador
Bambu DePistola
Maureen Russell
More exciting book-related community events are coming your way in 2020-2021. Don’t miss out on future events!
Click here to join the Ube Arte email list: https://bit.ly/3dEoytK
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Follow us on Instagram: @ube.arte
Find us on Twitter: @ubearte
Email us: ubearte@gmail.com
We look forward to hearing what you think!
Sincerely,
Eleanor Lipat-Chesler and Dr. Mary Talusan Lacanlale, Editors
Maureen Russell, Project Lead Archivist
This project is supported by California Revealed and administered in California by the State Librarian. The program is made possible by funding from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. Additional support for this book was provided by the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology and the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive.
Danongan Kalanduyan Tribute and Memorial, Nov. 8, 2016, San Francisco, Calif.
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