Shift in Sound in Post-Dictatorship Philippine Pop Music

Billy Ocean topped the U.S. airwaves on 15 February 1986 with his smash hit ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going.’ A few days later, the song’s simple thesis found an intriguing validation. Over the Pacific Ocean, in the Philippine archipelago, tumultuous events culminated in the forceful removal of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. from power. His firm grip on Philippine politics, after almost three decades of unchallenged rule, was quickly and severely weakening. His body, like his regime, was crumbling as well, suffering from severe kidney complications. In Marcos Sr., observant students of social science found both body and politic decaying. On 26 February, he and his family fled the country amidst widespread, deafening clamours for his ouster reverberating in the many clogged arteries of the capital. He wasn’t tough at all, but he and his family did get going. The people who filled the streets, however, after enduring decades of stern and suffocating Marcos rule, were the ones who actually embodied the original missive of Billy Ocean’s oeuvre.

Dubbed by posterity as the First EDSA Revolution (as many EDSA sequels were on the way), the events of February 1986 did far more than merely dispose a dictator. They tore open the floodgates of cultural and artistic expression, irrevocably altering the sonic topography of Philippine popular music for musicians to explore and investigate. For what seemed like an eternity, music had functioned as an executive megaphone, blasting the approved mores and messages of the prevailing political orthodoxy sanctioned by the Marcos government. During that supposedly golden, but actually gilded era, the airwaves hummed with grand, often bombastic, pronouncements of national unity and relentless progress. This utopian promise found no louder echo than in one of the regime’s official anthems, ‘Bagong Pagsilang’ (New Birth). Its confident lyrics declare a total overhaul: “Magbabago ang lahat, tungo sa pag-unlad!” (“Everything will change, towards progress!”) Notwithstanding the irony of delivering a message of complete change in a musical format rehashed from old marches, the anthem instilled in many Filipinos the hope of change and impending improvement.

The Marcos era, for all its thuggishness, produced a curious paradox: repression fertilized dissent. When the government strictly monitors voices, those voices learn to sing in code, expanding their reach. But the state didn’t silence all voices. In fact, it enacted the basic mechanism to guarantee local music with a public platform. The Broadcast Media Council Memorandum Order No. 75-31 of 1975 decreed that all radio stations should play one original Filipino song every hour. Despite how meager it was, this ensured that local musicians were given radio coverage.

Within this mandated airtime, certain genres particularly thrived, among them Filipino folk music. In many cases, folk ballads were written as thinly veiled social allegories wrapped in traditional kundiman melodies for extra stealth. One particular group stood out in this endeavour. Asin, who were the first Filipino group to incorporate indigenous musical instruments into their recorded tunes, comfortably found resonance in hushed college circles after limited radio airplay.

Asin’s famous 1978 lament, ‘Masdan Mo Ang Kapaligiran’ (‘Notice the Environment’), doubled as an ecological condemnation against industrial pollution and a melodic manifesto for environmental conservation. It directly challenged the fetish for progress in ‘Bagong Pagsilang’ by singing “Hindi na masama ang pag-unlad / At malayo-layo na rin ang ating narating / Ngunit masdan mo ang tubig sa dagat / Dati’y kulay asul, ngayo’y naging itim.” (“Progress isn’t bad / And we’ve achieved so much already / But look at the waters of the sea / It was once blue and now it’s black.”) At what cost was progress, the song seemed to ask the dictator right to his ear. Luckily for Asin, Marcos wasn’t paying that much attention. One song every hour might have been too little, but it was just enough to let musicians escape constant surveillance.

To be sure, there was outrightly loud music, which may have been considered already too rebellious by the general public and censors. Filipino rock pioneers Juan de la Cruz eschewed careful and heavily polished production for a rawer, louder, and almost physical sound. Their 1971 debut album Up in Arms announced the band’s vision of virtuosity, showcasing soaring guitar solos, a sensitivity for tasty chord selections on the keyboard, sultry saxophone sequences adding just the right heat, and a rhythm section grounded on firm principles of time. Its opening track, candidly titled ‘Justice (Where Are You?)’, introduces the band not with aplomb, but in introspection and self-examination. Was the song a subtle jab at the regime? It’s hard to say, but the music was in your face.

In 1973, the band released their sophomore effort, Himig Natin, which surprised many, as it showed the band changing on two fronts: personnel and philosophy. Some members left, new members joined, resulting in the iconic trio which would serve as the definitive face of the band. As with all things, quantity affects quality, and with only three members, Juan de la Cruz now went for a more direct, blues-driven rock sound. This musical metamorphosis would culminate in their third album, where they, arguably, finally found their signature sound.

‘Beep Beep’ from 1974’s Maskara is widely considered the band’s most iconic and memorable song. It gave voice to the daily travails of jeepney (public transportation) drivers in the metro, turning them into the unsung heroes of urban dwellers while highlighting their everyday predicaments: “Beep beep beep beep / Dadalhin ko kayo kahit saan / Beep beep beep beep / Dalian niyo, hindi pa ako nananghalian” (“Beep beep beep beep / I’ll take you anywhere / Beep beep beep beep / Hurry up, I haven’t had lunch yet”). The song shows them experimenting with command and confidence. Gone are the stacked licks that sprawl the first album; now, the guitar is more riff-heavy, without abandoning lead guitar technicality. Despite the lack of layers, the tune is palpably thicker, so much so that ‘Beep Beep’ would fit into Cream’s 1967 Disraeli Gears with ease. Waly Gonzales wailed all over with his guitar, bassist Mike Hanopol grounded the songs in solid, groovy bass lines, and drummer Joseph ‘Pepe’ Smith smashed the skins to shape the bones of the track.

To further emphasise the ‘Pinoy’ identity already embedded in their name, Juan de la Cruz started to name more of their songs in their native tongue. Tagalog was the vernacular voice of the capital, and it started to feature more and more in their later albums. All songs in the first album were in English. In Himig Natin, three songs out of nine were in Tagalog. Then came Maskara, where the linguistic turn was definite: only two of the 12 tracks were titled in English. This was ‘Pinoy’ music unabashedly embracing Tagalog as its vocal vessel, helping it resonate across ethnic and class boundaries all over the archipelago.

Beyond the coded folk tunes and the raw energy of rock, the Marcos era also saw the rise of a new sonic escape: disco. Here the metronomic staccato of military marches was replaced with carefully choreographed dance steps. It also invited young people to temporarily forget political consciousness and embrace kinetic catharsis. With its infectious rhythms and undeniable pull, disco offered a vibrant, more fashionable, and less confrontational (unless extending an invitation to dance), avenue for youthful expression. The primal energy of youth found release not in headbanging, but in synchronized hip-swinging. VST & Company were the undisputed maestros of this burgeoning scene, polishing the dance floor with their signature falsettos and smooth crooning. “Tayo ay magsaya at iwanan ang problema,” (“Let’s have fun and leave our problems”) they sing in one of their famous tracks, ‘Magsayawan’. In public gatherings, disco helped relieve the omnipresent tension under authoritarian rule, opening a social dimension where people could form connections with dance and song.

However, the broader pop landscape proved a remarkably effective, if often unintentional, amplifier for the regime’s propaganda of progress, skillfully tuning out dissonant realities. Hotdog’s iconic 1976 hit, ‘Manila,’ exemplifies this phenomenon with its seemingly innocent celebration of the capital.

The song’s lyrics, “Ang ingay mong kay sarap sa tenga / Mga jeepney mong nagliliparan” (“Your noise is so sweet to the ears / Your jeepneys flying about”), paradoxically desensitize listeners to the harsh, noisy existence of metropolitan drivers and the precariousness of their daily grind by framing it as charming chaos. Far from acknowledging Metro Manila’s urban deterioration, the song instead redirects attention by personifying the city as a woman: “Maraming beses na kitang nilayasan / Iniwanan at iba ang pinuntahan /Parang babaeng ang hirap talagang malimutan” (“I’ve left you many times / Left and went somewhere else / Like a woman that’s truly difficult to forget”).

Ultimately, ‘Manila’ transforms the frantic, always cacophonous, urban center into a fantasy playground, a nostalgic haven primarily for the privileged male Filipino living abroad. It’s a selective serenade: harmonizing perfectly with the myth of a prosperous ‘New Society’ by celebrating surface pleasures while silencing the underlying noise. The inconvenient vanishes beneath a deceptively cheerful melody that anyone can easily sing to absent-mindedly.

The EDSA Revolution violently ruptured the regime’s carefully constructed facade of national coherence. While potent, the initial euphoria of freedom that followed quickly yielded to the democratic disarray of a society genuinely unleashed. This profound societal disruption reverberated through across cultural tissues, with music experiencing one of the most dramatic transformations. An industry once rigidly centralized, sustained by state patronage and crippled by censorship, found itself suddenly unfettered.

Out of the rubble, debris, and smoke of EDSA, the Filipino youth emerged groping for its identity and placement in this newly opened cultural vista. What followed was a truly dizzying array of new artists, each ostensibly eager to explore lyrical and musical themes far beyond the tired, nationalistic anthems of yore. But they were not alone. Keen commercial executives were astutely observing this nascent market, agog to exploit the new musical landscape for profits. Musicians tapped into their own creativity to break from the previous mould. Music moguls latched on to them to see which genres sold.

This abrupt commercial liberalization was, in hindsight, a pivotal historical force in the story of Philippine pop music. With the bothersome benevolence of strict censorship withdrawn, outright state patronage gave way to national policy in defining the future contours of Filipino music. In 1987, then president Cory Aquino signed Executive Order No. 255, which ordered music radio stations to increase to four the required number of Filipino songs to be played in every hour. With more airtime for Filipino musicians to showcase their tunes, more were thrown into the merciless maw of the market, forced to compete with their peers. The story of Philippine pop music post-Marcos is therefore not one of political liberation, but of a people trading the familiar chains of censorship for the velvet manacles of commercialism, all while mistaking the jingle of coins for the chime of liberty.

This was the precise backdrop where youth culture, previously a mere murmur outside of street demonstrations, truly began to assert its distinct spirit. It found its collective voice not in patriotic marches, which by then seemed utterly anachronistic, but in songs about quotidian quandaries. Adolescent angst, unrequited love, the joys of youth gimmicks, and the almost subversive act of salvaging any semblance of meaning in the meaningless repetition of work became the thematic scenery of the newly minted 90s Philippine music.

This steadfast lurch toward the authentically mundane is best measured by how two generations approached the concept of friendship in their music. Consider the 1988 ode to committed camaraderie ‘Awit ng Barkada’ by then already music veterans APO Hiking Society.

Its lyrics read like a formal pledge to a friend suffering from the conveniently vague affliction of pagkabigo. The word can either mean failure or frustration, and the song isn’t that helpful in clearing that distinction. They see their friend constantly frowning (“Nakasimangot ka na lang palagi”), but instead of asking their friend what was the matter, they offer a lecture: “Kahit sino pa man ang may kagagawan / Ng iyong pagkabigo / Ay isipin na lang na ang buhay / Kung minsan ay nagbibiro” (“Whoever is at fault / Of your frustrations / Just think that / Life is sometimes joking”). In the end, what is important is that, “Sa lunkot at ligaya / Kami’y kasama mo” (“In sadness and happiness / We are with you”).

Friendship in Awit ng Barkada is more of a potential than an actual performance. It relishes in abstracting personal difficulties, which are best dealt with socially, especially with friends. Listeners are bereft of any sense of real strain and are left to wonder: who are they singing this to? Someone who just lost a pet? A recently laid-off software programmer friend? Or a close buddy whose savings all went up in smoke in online gambling? Regardless of the real vexation, the support offered is less a visceral bond and more a polite, moral exercise, devoid of the messy complexities of real connection.

Then came the Eraserheads with their seminal track ‘Pare Ko,’ (My Friend), off their 1993 debut album ‘Ultraelectromagneticpop!’, which dragged the notion of friendship out of the sermon hall and into the gritty, crass, sometimes alcoholic, and always confusing world of the urban youth. Here, pagkabigo is never opaque. Ely Buendia, the voice and main songwriter of the band, makes it clear that the narrator is a forlorn lover desperate for assurance, not seeking lofty vows of support, but merely asking for an empathetic ear: “Oh, pare ko, meron ka bang maipapayo? / Kung wala ay okay lang / Kailangan lang ay ang iyong pakikiramay / Nandito ka ay ayos na” (“Oh, my friend, do you have any advice? / If not then that’s okay / All I need is just your sympathy / You being here is enough already.”) This candidness was a breath of fresh air, especially when mouths rejected alcohol early on: “huwag na natin idaan / sa ma-boteng usapan” (“Let’s not do this / In a bottled conversation”).

Friendship, in this context, isn’t a choral promise to endure an ambiguous hurdle. At its core, Pare Ko is the defeated sigh of a friend seeking solace in the safety of proximity. The glorious retreat announced in the line “Kung wala ay okay lang” is the audible surrender of idealism to the weight of reality, signifying the death of platitudes.

However hazy the world might seem behind the lens of youth, the way young Filipino musicians viewed their world was in no way insular. On the surface, many of their lyrics pointed to an inward solipsism, but in doing so, they were able to see reflections of the greater economic drama unfolding around them. They were acutely aware that the depressions voiced in their expressions weren’t just passing moods; they were a direct consequence of empty pockets in a supposedly booming economy.

There were dark, heavy economic clouds over Asia in the 90s, casting a gloom that worried nations in the region, except the Philippines which, almost as an aberration, found itself shining instead, with positive stripes in all forecasts making others name it “Asia’s Rising Tiger.” Fiscal adjustments made by the Aquino administration, and the further liberalization of the market, along with the revival of the national bank sparked a surprising boom for the economy. But, proving once again the false promise of economists, a successful economy doesn’t automatically translate to better living standards, as these outcomes only affected strong market players. Those who were already at the periphery were bound to stay at the margins and found it even more difficult to escape. Such difficulties were especially familiar to young people, and their songs reflected the reality of living in a cloud of prosperity amidst sweltering inequality.

The band Siakol emerged out of the mid-90s with a rawer brand of Filipino music now known to many as Tunog Kalye (Street Sounds). Their music and lyrics brought the common experience of the tambays (meaning someone loitering about doing nothing, a play on stand by) to the greater public, not as some sort of social justice fascination, but as an authentic social condition. Their songs took the hums in the slums and made it louder with guitar distortion and punk sensibilities. In their song ‘Kanto’ (Street Corner), off their 1996 debut “Tara na sa Paraiso” (“Let’s Go to Paradise”), they paint a rather coarse picture of brotherhood weighed by the overhwelming burden of finances, spelling out the unspoken axiom of a cash-strapped youth culture: “Masakit tanggapin / Ang katotohanan / Kung wala kang pera / Wala ka ring kaibigan” (“It’s hard to accept / The truth / If you have no money / You also have no friends.”)

It was difficult to listen to your friend’s dilemmas on an empty stomach, more so with an empty wallet. Siakol and their peers were chronically aware that their sacred and expanding social sphere overlapped with the greater world, and the forces of economics and politics were constantly in motion to shape their bubble. Inwards, they could resist by staying true to their adopted ethos, but the physical world they lived in was slowly being sculpted into privatised paved purgatories, and the market’s vision of heaven slowly descended on earth as malls, swallowing up whatever was below it. With their world shrinking fast, many things of pleasure and satisfaction were now out of reach.

This dizzying development was put into song by the band Yano in their song ‘Esem’, their own phonetic moniker to SM, one of the biggest mall chains in the country still building new malls today. “Paamoy-amoy, di naman makakain / Busog na sa tubig / Gutom ay lilipas din” (“Taking in the smells, still unable to eat / Already full with water / Hunger will eventually pass”), they sing of their experience inside one of these malls. In the end, one could not help but go insane, “Nakakabaliw, ang ganitong buhay” (“This life is making me insane”). And who could blame them? The youth fought so hard to save their world from a tyrant only to see it snatched by tycoons.

But the youth endured, although with gnashing teeth. There was a general sense of exhaustion as everyone was trying to keep up with the times. The ambition and willingness to change the world were there, but the energy to do so wasn’t. It was a punishing period that eventually forced many to urban resignation. This fatigue manifested in the daily routines that crushed the soul. “Cool Ka Lang” (“Keep Your Cool”) by Prettier Than Pink was the period’s guide for surviving in the metro.

The song begins by charting a usual day, beginning with a walk in the perilous streets, “Buhol-buhol ang traffic, cinut ka pa ng jeep / Minura pa ng driver at ulo’y uminit” (“Traffic is a tangled mess, a jeepney cuts you off / Cursed by the driver and your head starts to boil”). It was a white flag set to a placid, easy-listening groove. The national struggle had evidently devolved from toppling a tyrant to simply enduring jeepney fumes without committing vehicular homicide. Progress.

The evolution of Philippine pop through the 90s, from the biting social critiques of Eraserheads and Siakol to the resigned exasperation of Prettier Than Pink, paints a vivid portrait of a youth caught in a complex, often bewildering, transition. The initial euphoria of post-dictatorship freedom, once imagined as boundless possibility, quickly soured into the stark reality of economic disparity and shrinking public spheres. Music, once a tool for coded defiance against a visible oppressor, transformed into a balm for unseen wounds inflicted by market forces. The rage that simmered beneath Marcos’s rule was replaced by a more insidious, pervasive anxiety – the paranoia of a generation navigating a world where success was promised but rarely delivered, and basic comforts became luxuries. Their aspirations, once channeled into grand political movements, now found expression in the mundane, the personal, and often, the desperate plea for simple human connection. The public spaces of the street corners gave way to privatized malls, symbolizing a new kind of entrapment where abundance tantalized but remained out of reach. This wasn’t merely a shift in musical taste; it was the soundtrack to a fundamental reordering of Filipino youth’s aspirations and disillusionments.

Amidst this dizzying economic development and social reshuffling, a deeper yearning persisted, one that cut through the noise of both urban chaos and consumerist promises. It was a longing not for political victory or material wealth, but for something far more fundamental – a true sense of belonging and affection. This profound desire for authentic connection in a disorienting age found its most poignant expression in Rivermaya’s iconic “Awit ng Kabataan” (Song of the Youth). Beyond the catchy melodies and raw energy that defined much of the era’s OPM, Rivermaya tapped into a more vulnerable, almost whispered fear that resonated deeply with the anxieties of their peers. The song captures a generation’s private prayer, a communal whisper in the dark for solace and genuine care.

As the day dims and sleep descends, the hidden anxieties of the young emerge in hushed pleas: “At sa pagtulog ng gabi / Maririnig ang dasal / Ng kabataang uhaw / Sa tunay na pagmamahal” (“And at night’s slumber / One can hear the prayer / Of youth thirsty / For true love.”) This wasn’t the defiant roar against a dictator, nor the cynical sigh at empty pockets. It was the raw, unadorned cry for emotional sustenance, a reflection of the paranoia that even love, in its purest form, seemed a scarce commodity in their fragmented world. The youth, who had bravely faced down tanks, now found themselves grappling with an invisible enemy: the creeping alienation of a society where economic “progress” came at the cost of communal warmth. Their music, therefore, became more than just a chronicle of their times; it was a desperate, hopeful testament to the enduring human need for comfort, company, and, most profoundly, for love that was both tangible and true.

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