OPM and Filipino psychology
When I think of Original Pilipino Music (OPM), I think of the harmonic disco tunes of Manila Sound, the sappy rock of the ’90s and early 2000s, and the high-octane rap music being blasted in patok jeepneys. Like Philippine culture itself, OPM cannot be just one thing; it is an umbrella term for a lot of different things.
But is it not a bit ironic that most of what we call “original” and “Pilipino” are just Filipinized versions of whatever is trending in the US music scene? Of course, this is not true for all songs, but it is observable enough to be noticed as a trend.
We deserve better
Actually, I am not the first to point this out. In a booklet he published in the same year he passed away, the father of Filipino psychology Virgilio Enriquez said that most OPM did not seem to be inspired by Indigenous Filipino styles. Most of the popular singers copied what was “uso” in America. They would sing like Elvis or the Bee Gees, and some bands are just the “Filipino version” of, for example, the Beatles.
In his 2016 book “Basagan ng Trip,” Lisandro Claudio claimed, alongside other critics, that OPM is dead. That, maybe, the last great Filipino band was Eraserheads, and that nothing as profound as their music has been produced since. It could be that this is just millennial sentimentality, maybe a bit of snobbery.
That said, there might be some truth in the fact that it seems as though we have not really changed our tastes so much. People will continue listening to the same hugot lyrics, the same pagbirit and pagkulot, the same inoffensive millennial pop (I am sure you already know who these are). Some people, such as Claudio, believe that we, as listeners, deserve better.
Why it resonates with Filipinos
Personally, I have no intention to prescribe what we should be listening to. We all like different things. I have my own preferences, too. But in terms of understanding collective Filipino psychology, what I am interested in is what we are actually listening to—and what that reflects about our shared mindsets. There is probably a reason why everyday Filipinos resonate with and overplay the same themes and styles.
Could it be that we just like what is familiar, or “hiyang”? Could it be that OPM, for better or worse, reflects actual Filipino tastes? Maybe we just express ourselves well through disco because we get to dance with our friends. Maybe we like rock because we enjoy rocking out with our barkada. Maybe we love deeply, so most of our songs are also about heartbreak and hope—about tadhana, torpe, torete, and so on.
Turn the radio on today, and it is the same 10 songs on repeat since the 1980s. Does this mean we have stagnated in our musical taste, or does it mean that we just really, really know what we like?
If a loved one keeps telling us the same thing over and over in different ways, maybe we should listen. Maybe what we keep hearing on the radio is that cultural pahiwatig. Maybe the consistent list of favorite songs best reflects what the everyday Filipino feels about themself—the driver and commuter, the sari-sari store owner, the labandera, the construction worker, the tambay, and so on.
A gateway of understanding
The thing is that we already have a societal idea of what OPM should sound like—but what does that say about how much we have limited our own capacity to appreciate Indigenous sounds? What gets to be “Pilipino music”?
In fact, I am not sure whether some people are ready to face the fact that budots can also be considered as OPM, being that it is probably one of the truly “original” styles we enjoy. But I will save that discussion for next time; for now, it may be good to just sit with the idea.
For better or worse, whether cool or corny, burgis or baduy, OPM is a gateway to understanding who we are as people. Popular OPM, the stuff that gets replayed for decades, may offer clues to what we value in our culture.
