MUSIC, RACE, AND IMPERIALISM: HOW FILIPINO MUSICIANS, BLACK SOLDIERS AND MILITARY BAND MELODY MADE HISTORY DURING U.S. COLONIZATION OF THE PHILIPPINES

SAN DIEGO, CA -- This past weekend, my one and only granddaughter Taylor excitedly informed me that she and her mom (my daughter-in-law Abigail), her Auntie Barbie and her first cousin Catherine watched the concert of a famous Korean (K-Pop) band. Since I mostly listen to music from the 60’s, the bands and singers of the current generation are all new and foreign to me. My eyebrows jumped off my face when I saw in the internet the average price for economy rate seats for a K-Pop band’s concert -$150 and above! Concert prices sure have come a long way since I was a youngster back in my beloved historical hometown of Sta. Ana in old Manila in the 1950s and 1960s.

Incidentally, in the past 50 years, I have seen Filipino singers and bands struggle to seek access to the international music industry. To be sure, some of the Filipino musical artists have found magnificent success outside of our beloved old homeland – the Philippines.

Filipino pop singer, songwriter, actress, comedian and television presenter Pilita Corrales and dubbed “Asia’s Queen of Songs” and was widely known for her rendition of “Kapantay ay Langit” which eventually became her signature song was the first female to top the Australian pop music charts in the late 1950’s.

The ReyCard Duet (Rey Ramirez and Carding Cruz) found success performing a musical and comedy show in Las Vegas, Nevada during the late 1960’s.

Folk-singer Freddie Aguilar’s very own composition entitled “Anak” (Filipino for child or more gender specific my son or my daughter) hit the number 1 spot in Japan’s music charts. The song also became popular in Malaysia, Hong Kong and parts of Western Europe and was translated into 30 languages.

Multiple award-winning actress and singer Lea Salonga became world famous when she was selected for the lead role in the stage musical “Miss Saigon.”

Filipino singer and television personality Charice Pempengco now known as Jake Zyrus stunned the American musical audience when she performed in the top-rated Ellen De Generes and Oprah TV shows.

All these Filipino artists broke through the music industries outside our old country because they had a God given talent. But before Charice, Lea Salonga, Reycards and Pilita Corrales, there was a Filipino band that became well known in the United States at the start of the 20th century period.

This particular “Filipino

Potpourri” edition is their story and also the tale of a courageous African American U.S. Army officer by the name of Walter Howard Loving.

FYI: Walter Howard Loving was brought about to former AfricanAmerican slaves in Lovington, Virginia in December of 1872. Two years after Walter was born, his mother passed away. The Loving family which consisted of the father, three boys, two teenage girls (one of whom was married and has a son) had to crowd in a small house.

In 1891, Walter moved to Washington, D.C. - and showed his musical talent by playing the cornet and directing the second Baptist church choir. In June 1893, he enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the 24th Infantry Regiment because he indicated his occupation as musician. Back then, African Americans who sign up for the U.S. Army were kept to one of the four segregated units: 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments and 24th and 25th Infantry regiments.

Private Loving was stationed in Fort Bayard, New Mexico in July 1893 and was transferred to the band in January 1894. Military bands were then an indispensable part of every regiment because they play in parades and unit dances.

In 1898 at the Treaty of Paris, the country of Spain sold the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. When the Americans took possession of the archipelago, it also brought itself a conflict with Filipino revolutionaries who were fighting for their independence as a nation. The Filipino-American War would cost the U.S. some $600 million.

There were about 28,000 American soldiers stationed in the Philippines and to augment this number, additional U.S. troops were shipped to the new colony.

Loving was assigned as a chief musician in the 48th U.S. Volunteer Infantry, which is one of the AfricanAmerican regiment that was sent to the Philippines. The other colored regiment was the 49th Volunteer Infantry. In January 1900, the 48th Infantry arrived in Manila. A local newspaper, the “Manila Times,” printed an announcement saying that 200 trained singers would be performing at the Luneta (now Rizal Park) public park accompanied by the 48th regimental band. When the African-American troops were deployed at different defensive lines around Manila to repel attacks from Filipino insurgents, Loving and his musicians tried their best to boast morale. On March 1900, the 48th regiment was moved to the city of San Fernando, La Union. The Americans found the place quite inhospitable with its mountainous terrain, thick overgrowth and very few roads. But in spite of these hurdles, troops of the 48th were able to operate well in the area which impressed Col. William Duvall, who was the 48th Volunteer Infantry commanding officer.

In February 1901, the U.S. Congress authorized the enlistment of 12,000 Filipinos for military service. This resulted in the formation of the famed “Philippine Scouts” which were armed with .45 caliber Springfield carbines. Hoping to serve as a lieutenant in the Philippine Scouts, Loving sought the help of influential people that he knew in the Army to get an officer’s commission in the Philippines.

In May 1901, the 48th regiment came back to America for redeployment to reduce the U.S. Army’s strength in the islands by 40 percent. Shortly after its homecoming, members of the 48th returned to their former civilian life. Fortuitously, Loving was not the only African-American who wanted to go back to the old country. A number of veterans from the 48th and 49th volunteer infantry regiments elected to remain in the islands and settled down with their Filipina girl friends or wives.

These men did not have the desire to return to the U.S. because of

Jesse T. Reyes Filipino Potpourri

whiles the” Pacific Coast Musical Review,” opined that “the Philippine Constabulary Band is in a class by itself.”

In 1916, Loving requested a medical retirement from the Constabulary. He later moved to Oakland, California and retired as a major. A short time later, he married Edith McCary, a daughter of an army paymaster’s clerk whom he had met ten years earlier in Manila. A year later, they had their first son, Walter Jr.

In September 1917, shortly after the U.S. declared war with Germany, Loving worked as a civilian for the Military Intelligence (MI). After his MI service ended in August 1919, Loving and his wife moved back to Manila and began directing the Philippine Constabulary Band once more.

America’s animosities towards the colored race.

In 1902, Loving returned to the Philippines and worked as a sub-inspector in the Philippine Constabulary. At the request of William Howard Taft, first Philippine governor-general, Loving started work in organizing a Constabulary band. He was promoted to second lieutenant by the end of 1902 then to first lieutenant in August 1903.

During his tenure in the Philippines, Lt. Loving became fluent in Spanish and Tagalog dialect which became helpful in searching for topnotch Filipino musicians. One of the instrumentalists that Lt. Loving recruited was Pedro B. Navarro who was able to play every wind contrivance in the band. Navarro eventually succeeded Loving as the band’s director. Incidentally, the residents of Manila always enjoyed the Philippine Constabulary Band’s two-hour evening concerts at Luneta Park.

The ensemble’s first international break came when they performed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, where it was awarded First Prize in competition against other leading military bands.

The U.S. military periodical “Army and Navy Life” described the orchestra as “one of the finest of all military bands in the world”

Loving was commissioned by then President Manuel Quezon at the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Philippine Commonwealth Army and also made “Special Advisor to the President of the Philippines.”

He retired in 1940 but continued to live in Manila.

Walter and Edith Loving were detained in 1941 by Japanese forces following the surrender of Manila. During his captivity, Loving composed a resistance song “Beloved Philippines.” He was released due to his declining health and advancing age in 1943. In 1945, during the Battle of Manila, Loving was again arrested and held up, along with other Americans and Filipinos, at the Manila Hotel.

The exact circumstances surrounding Loving’s death are unclear. According to one account – with Manila’s defenses on the verge of collapse to the advancing American forces and Filipino guerrillas, the hotel prisoners were ordered to sprint to the beach while the Japanese soldiers shot at them. The then 72-year-old Loving refused to run, declaring “I am an American. If I must die, I’ll die like an American,” whereupon he was beheaded. Meanwhile, in a 2010 article, a Filipino newspaper columnist contends, however, the Manila Hotel prisoners attempted escape and Loving used his body to barricade a staircase to prevent Japanese soldiers from pursuit; he was bayoneted to death in the process. A third report relayed in a 1945 Associated Negro Press story says that Loving was shot in the back by retreating Japanese troops. Mortally wounded, he crawled from the Manila Hotel to the battered bandstand at Luneta Park, the site of many of the Philippine Constabulary Band’s performances, and died. In 1952, Loving was posthumously awarded the Presidential Merit Medal by the Government of the Philippines during a ceremony at Luneta during which his final composition, “Beloved Philippines,” was performed. Loving was also the recipient of the Distinguished Conduct Star, the second-highest military honor of the Philippines, and the United States’ Philippine Campaign Medal, the latter given for his service during the FilipinoAmerican War.

By all means, military bands, like national anthems, are part of the complex of symbols through which a state projects its nationhood. However, this metaphor is particularly compounded when viewed from the colonial setting where military ensembles served to exhibit the authority of imperial rule and to project an image of empire. But despite their best efforts, American imperialism did not always succeed in binding colonial subjects to their proper place – individual agency and acts of resistance can never be fully contained.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States extended its empire into the Philippines while subjugating Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. And yet, one of the most popular musical acts was a band of “little brown men,” Filipino musicians led by an African American conductor playing European and American music.

The Philippine Constabulary (PC) Band was the principal military unit of the Philippine Constabulary and later, as the Philippine Army Orchestra, of the Army of the

Independence Day 2023 Series: National Identity and Modern Nationalism, Part 3

Philippine military and naval bases. Former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., had it shortened to 50 years up to 1991.

Looking back at the fractured history of the Philippines since the landing of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, one question comes to mind. Why was the bravery, quest for national identify, nationalism, and patriotism of the Filipino revolutionaries during the Spanish occupation did not transfer to the present crops of Filipino leaders? And if it did, why they went to the “wrong” crowd (rebels)?

From the time General Emilio Aguinaldo and company frontally confronted the Americans in the battlefield in 1899, only the HUKBALAHAP (or Huks) carried the fight against the invaders (Japan, then the United States) who trampled Philippine shores. “Independence or death!” was General Antonio Luna’s battle cry against the Americans, but his bravery has been long forgotten because he had the ignominious fate like Andres Bonifacio who was felled by a Filipino assassin’s machete (bolo) loyal to Gen. Aguinaldo.

The answer to the profound questions posed earlier lies in the strategy that the Americans employed to effect wholesale behavior modification for Filipinos beginning with the arrival of the Thomasites in 1904. It was a human experiment that robbed Filipinos of their true identity by transforming them methodically into the image of Uncle Sam. Through progressive intervention, Filipinos were introduced to American history at the expense of their own. Language (English rather Filipino) became part of the strategy to affect the desired changes the Americans wanted to accomplish. This overarching strategy included interventions in other areas like defense, that because the government was militarily ill-equipped after both wars it was involved in, Filipinos needed America’s protection from external security threats.

In 1934, the Tydings-McDuffie Act allowed the United States to basically do what they want to do with the Philippines “with the consent of the Filipino people” courtesy of then President Manuel Roxas who became America’s surrogate president. The Military Bases Agreement that Roxas pushed for was passed in Congress in 1947 for a 99-year lease on a number of

This is a confounding condition that many Filipinos will perhaps not understand because of what we have become - Westernized. Perhaps an example will do. Supposing a two-month-old daughter of a White American couple was kidnapped by Muslims and raised as a Muslim, brainwashed that the girl grew up to be a Jihadist with lots of antiAmerican bent. How would the American couple take it, much less the American public? Mad as hell, I’ll say.

For Filipinos, however, it is one of gratitude towards the Americans. There was clearly a shift of the Filipino mind from Spanish to American influence. From a few months old democracy, Philippines was taken over by the Americans and slowly transformed into what it is now – a culture, mind and body subservient to the former master.

The remnants of colonialism, colonial mentality if one will call it that, is so pervasive that the ideals that Bonifacio and Gen. Luna espoused had become anathema to American (or Filipino) thinking as personified by how Filipinos view today’s insurgencies. So, how can we explain this other than that to say that the Philippine project was a very successful experiment? Recent surveys of Filipino’s perception of China and the United States indicates that majority of Filipinos will prefer the latter, including accommodating what the Americans want to reinforce such belief.

Let’s pause for a minute and listen to a couple of 17th century thinkers – Rene Descartes and John Locke, explain the nuances of epistemology – of consciousness and knowledge transfer. French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed that because we think, is evidence of the presence of mind distinct from the body. This notion came to be known as the Cartesian Theory of man’s dualism. Consciousness, according to Descartes, is irrefutable because it is observed from within and not from what you actually see.

The problem with this is that do we believe what we actually see or what we think it is we are seeing. That even if what is in front of us is illusory (American benevolence assimilation, for example), our hatred towards 300 years of subjugation from the Spaniards can color our thinking, that our mind tells us that President William McKinley’s “benevolent assimilation” is acceptable and that America’s promise of independence, armed forces modernization no matter how delayed or protracted (illusory) was the real deal – the perceived reality.

British philosopher John Locke disagreed with the Cartesian concept of mind and body dualism. Locke introduced us to the concept of personal identity and survival of consciousness after death. Locke believed that consciousness can be transferred from one soul to another, and that personal identity goes with consciousness. This is heavy stuff because it goes against what St. Augustine preached that man is originally sinful, and Descartes’ position that man knows basic logical propositions.

Locke believes that everyone is born with an empty mind and with time, is shaped by experience, sensations and reflections. Therefore, consciousness is related to personal identity but not in the brain, as Descartes and Augustine argued about life, death and immortality. Brain can change but consciousness (or memory) remains the same. In essence, what Locke was saying was that in the Last Judgement, in order for a person to exist after death, that there has to be a person after death who is the same person as the person who died.

Perhaps an example would illuminate. When a person dies, the body rots, and the soul loses its substance (departs), but consciousness (or memory of who that person was) remains intact.

When a person loses consciousness as in insanity, dementia or utter forgetfulness, the soul (or thinking substance) and body remains the same but is a different person. The body and mind might have committed the crime, but it was not the same person who did it – the insane one did it.

Ergo, Locke posited that neither the soul or thinking substance is necessary or adequate for personal identity overtime. Personal identity for him is psychological continuity. We are all familiar with the rock group Journey (that Arnel Pineda is now part of). When we hear the songs, we associate them with the group’s identity – “Journey,” although they are no longer the same original rock. The band’s identity transferred to other minds (generation) despite the fact that bandmembers have physically changed.

So, what has this got to do with national identity and nationalism? What Locke was saying was that the memory of our revolutionaries should have transferred in substance to the next generation. In other words, Filipinos should have continued to resist the Americans despite their superiority in many things. What Locke and others failed to take into account, however, was a guy named Julius Caesar who would later come along and employ what is now popularly used by governments and entities with sinister agenda, albeit imperial in nature, to lead people or a group – “divide and conquer.” (To be continued)