Wednesday, December 07, 2005

On the Occasion of the NU 107 Rock Awards

It ended on a sour note, a night that feted the country's rock stars. The people have spoken, and the band that won the night's most prestigious award has become famous for playing a song that has been used not only as the theme song of a show that panders to our voyeuristic tendencies, but as a government's rousing call to unity for an imperiled people.

There is nothing wrong with proclaiming our shared nationality, but all too often, this declaration has become an excuse to drown collective dissent in the name of national unity.

Whenever the Pinoy Big Brother theme song is played, I see Bayani Fernando with sll his MMDA emplyees dancing in front of an extremely amused Beijing mayor, the PSG cleaning up the barbed wire that used to swathe Malacanang in order to turn it into Christmas trees, and a band that rose to fame emulating the music and accent of an imperialist country, and that didn't care enough about its music (or maybe, wanted fame and needed the money) to allow it to be used as an ideological state apparatus.