Pop Convergence: Musical Multimedia in Manila

What do the power rock band Aegis, multimedia superstar Vice Ganda, queer zombie film Zombadings, and glocalized movement P-Pop have in common? These subjects of Philippine pop culture embody novel convergences in aesthetics, style, tone, and thematic content culled from local, regional, and global ideas.

Pop Convergence explores the contemporary pop music and related multimedia cultures of Manila, the center for commercial entertainment industries in the Philippines. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the country was recovering from decades of political mayhem and economic turbulence against a backdrop of swelling class divide and the maturation of mass media. Distinct from the somberness of nationalist anthems, Western music covers, and protest songs of prior years, the creative industries of new-millennium Manila generated a multimedia movement emphasizing kitsch, parody, and overstatement. These works, author James Gabrillo claims, can be read as complex expressions of consumer fatigue, ironic self-consciousness, and instinctive reclamation of social power by the creative working class.

This entertainment industry developed a buoyant system of mass culture, filtered through the demands of postcolonial, postmodern Manila’s broadening capitalist media enterprises. Pop Convergence locates the hallmarks and contributions of this scene within an assortment of platforms--on screens, via streams, and on the streets-- to explore musical sequences in cinema, reality television spectacles, melismatic power ballads, song-and-dance contests, musical comedy bars, and viral virtual sensations. Dissecting these arenas of musical articulation and negotiation, Pop Convergence metaphorizes the interplay within Manila’s contemporary networks of artistic production, power, and spectatorship as a complex patchwork of convergence. This multimedia patchwork is framed not simply as a culmination of tradition stained by outside influence but as a fascinating force resulting from endless confrontation.

James Gabrillo is Assistant Professor of Music at The University of Texas at Austin.