'Dangdut' and 'ped xing'

'Dangdut' and 'ped xing'

Michael L. Tan Philippine Daily Inquirer Asia News Network Manila

An Indonesian anthropologist, Irwan Hidayana, likes to ask his students what comes to their mind when they hear dunia Melayu or "Malay world." His students quickly volunteer "Malaysia," "Indonesia" ... then silence.

Irwan has a special affection for the Philippines because he got his master's degree here, so he is alarmed that his students don't think of the Philippines as part of the Malay world.

It's not just our closest neighbors who distance themselves from us. A British friend once told me that when one of his Thai friends asked what he was going to do in the Philippines, he said the University of Philippines was coordinating a Southeast Asian regional research project. The Thai man huffed, "But why the Philippines? They're not Asian. They're part of America."

Such remarks are offered partly in jest, but sometimes it's said with a condescending, even contemptuous, tone. We're perceived as being too quick to ape America in all aspects of life, from fast food to foreign policy.

Religion does come into the picture. Irwan's students explain that maybe one reason the Philippines seems "un-Malay" is because we're Catholic. But it may not be so much our being Catholic than our being anti-Islamic that estranges us from the rest of dunia Melayu. The impression that we're anti-Islamic comes not just in the way we treat Muslims here, but also, lately, in the President's alignment with George W. Bush in his "war on terror," which is interpreted by many Muslims as a war against Islam.

Ultimately though it all boils down to our insular, parochial mentality: We have little interest in the cultures of our neighboring countries. Yet our languages are filled with loan words, evidence that in the precolonial period, there were dynamic social exchanges with cultures near (Malay, Chinese) and distant (Indian, even Arabic). Today, it is mainly American English worming its way not just into our vocabulary but even into the way we speak.

My Indonesian colleague was in town for a meeting with professors from different Southeast Asian countries. Irwan chatted with Pimpawun, another anthropologist from Thailand, on a Thai television series called Nang Nak, a hit in Indonesia. Nang Nak (Mrs. Nak) is about a woman who dies in childbirth and returns as a ghost to torment people.

"So Southeast Asian ..." Irwan suggested, and indeed it is, such stories of mournful vengeful women ghosts.

In much of Southeast and East Asia there are vibrant exchanges going on among Asians and this includes young people, who seem fascinated by other Asian cultures' pop cultures.

Visit a video shop in China and you'll find a selection of Japanese and Korean pop music. Readers might react, oh, but that's because there's so much affinity among East Asian cultures, but a few Chinese video shops carrying Indian movies. In Jakarta shops, I wasn't surprised to find Indian music and movies, but I was flabbergasted when I learned that Indonesian kids rave over a Taiwanese rock group called F4, referred to as "ef se," "se" being the Chinese word for "four."

Then, too, there's the popular Bangkok-based China Dolls, teenaged sisters who've made it with hits in Thailand and China, belting out songs and electrifying videos with lyrics like Sawasdee ka (a Thai greeting) mixed in with Wo ai ni (I love you in Chinese).

Sure, there's an element of the "exotic" involved here, a craving for something different. But the openness to things different eventually leads to "fusion" and "cross-over".

Again, Filipino "fusion" tend to follow Western fads. Our neighbors, in contrast, have been concocting their own fusions throughout history. Indonesians dance to dangdut music -- imagine the Indian tabla and other instruments going "dang dang, dut dut" -- drawn from the Indian subcontinent but now distinctly "Indonesian."

Surprise your Muslim vendor selling VCDs and ask her for dangdut discs. The dangdut craze has spread into Malaysia and now, to some Muslims in Mindanao. The Mindanao rendition of dangdut dancing is different from that of Indonesians and Malaysians; ours is a bit more subdued, I suspect because Filipino Muslims are actually more conservative than Indonesians.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying Western culture, but we miss out on so much when we don't "tune in" to our neighbors. Irwan came with kilos of tempeh, a sumptuous soybean product that you can cook a thousand different ways.

And I know what Irwan needs from here, from mangoes to Filipino pop songs and movies, which he'll be sharing with his students.

But as they watch the stuff from the Philippines, they might end up even more convinced we're not quite Malay, or Asian. Especially too as Irwan shares this little anecdote from Manila:

The other night he suddenly pointed to a sign asking, "Mike, what's 'ped sing'?" Irwan was incredulous when I explained it meant "Pedestrian Crossing."

"I thought it was Chinese", Irwan mused. Oh but "ped xing" again shows how terribly American we Filipinos can be, putting up signs like that in the heart of the tourist belt, abbreviating words and presuming the whole world will know what we mean.