Martial Law wanted a soundtrack, but the kids kept changing the lyrics

• The Marcos regime sought to win the hearts and minds of the youth during Martial Law by promoting a controlled cultural narrative through music and media, but the youth often subverted these efforts with their own interpretations.
• Radio stations were mandated to play Filipino pop music, leading to the rise of artists like Freddie Aguilar and bands like Juan de la Cruz, who expressed social commentary and national pride, often in ways that challenged the regime.
• While music alone did not overthrow the dictatorship, it maintained a cultural dialogue that resonated with the public, ultimately contributing to the collective consciousness that fueled the 1986 EDSA Revolution.

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From day one of Martial Law, the Marcoses and their “New Society” administrators understood that a dictatorship cannot thrive on soldiers alone. It had to capture hearts, minds, and ears, especially the young, whose embrace would secure the family’s rule for another generation. The New Society needed a soundtrack; it had to sing its way to consent. To the Palace’s dismay, the kids kept changing the lyrics.

I was 10 when Martial Law was declared. In school, after the national anthem, we sang “Bagong Lipunan” (officially “Bagong Pagsilang,” by National Artists Levi Celerio and Felipe Padilla de Leon) and “Mabuhay ang Pilipino.”

But these were marching tunes. 

By 1973, fear had given way to a semblance of normality. Television stations, reduced to a handful of stations owned by the government and friends of the Marcoses, aired local variety shows and dramas, American sitcoms, cartoons, and anemic news programs in English. Presidential events were aired live.  

Newspapers — Daily Express, Bulletin Today, and Times Journal — were all crony-owned and heavily censored. 

Radio was another matter. The airwaves were filled with a new sound.

Going pop

To win the youth, the regime had to go pop. Radio stations were ordered to play Filipino songs every hour, a quota that rode on the mainstream success of “Manila Sound” radio-friendly bands like Hotdog and Cinderella. 

In 1977 came the Metro Manila Popular Music Festival, a brainchild of influential columnist Teodoro “Doroy” Valencia. With Imee Marcos among its champions and the full backing of Malacañang, it turned songwriting into a national event. 

The first grand prize went to Ryan Cayabyab’s “Kay Ganda ng Ating Musika,” sung by Hajji Alejandro, all bigote and twinkling eyes, over a Cayabyab pang-festival areglo that was all bombast. The message was pride in “sariling atin,” the New Society’s ideal of nationalism set to the grand sweep of orchestra.

Here was the paradox the cultural overseers failed to anticipate: When you tell a people to be proud of their own language, songs, and stories, you cannot control which stories they tell.

Freddie Aguilar, of the sequined hat and magic three chords, was the crowd favorite of that same Metropop. “Anak,” a prodigal son’s painful confession, struck a chord with ordinary Filipinos. It won nothing but became a monster hit here and abroad. 

Aguilar later recorded “Bayan Ko,” a nationalist kundiman that became the anthem of the protest movement. It was a song the regime could not ban without banning patriotism itself.

Louder 

Pinoy rock got there first, and louder. Juan de la Cruz Band, founded by Wally Gonzalez, recorded Up in Arms in 1971, an experimental jazz-rock album. 

In 1973, with Joey “Pepe” Smith and Mike Hanopol back from Japan, it regrouped as the power trio that fathered Pinoy rock and gave us “Himig Natin.” The band also mocked the ideal of a disciplined, wholesome society with overt paeans to drugs like “Nadapa sa Harina” on their third album Maskara.

I first heard “Himig Natin” at a religious retreat in an Antipolo seminary. At the afternoon break, a bespectacled guy played a three-chord song whose first chord stumped me (a barre E major 7, I would learn). The words were just as plain: loneliness turning into an invitation to sing together toward hope.

Troubadours 

Then came the troubadours who took the nationalist opening and pointed it inward.

Heber Bartolome and Banyuhay wrote social commentaries, none more strident than “Oy, Utol, Buto’t Balat Ka Na, Natutulog Ka Pa,” an indictment of apathy amid hunger and repression worthy of the protest songs of Jess Santiago and Paul Galang. Yet the song was a staple request on DZRJ’s Pinoy Rock and Rhythm program. 

“Awit Ko” held that the clenched fist at birth proves we were born to resist foreign domination. “Tayo’y Mga Pinoy,” a First Metropop finalist, was no mellow declaration of Pinoy pride but a stab in the eye of Western colonizers and a slap on the faces of natives aping their oppressors. Harmless enough, until you ask who, exactly, was holding the Pinoy down.

The folk-rock group Asin melded acoustic guitars and four-part harmonies with the kulintang of Mindanao, birthplace of Pendong Aban Jr. and Saro Bañares, and the tribal percussion of the Cordilleras. They sang of a poisoned environment in “Masdan Mo ang Kapaligiran,” of war in the South in “Balita” and “Ang Bayan Kong Sinilangan (Cotabato),” and of farmers, workers, and teachers in “Mga Limot na Bayani.”

None of them were activists and they weren’t reading from protest literature. They were singing about lived experiences.

Radio played them because they were in Filipino, catchy, and not overtly seditious. Still, Aban told this writer that Valencia once warned them to steer clear of controversial topics. 

Younger listeners heard what censors missed. The anger was in the details: the polluted river, the troubles in Mindanao, the overlooked worker, the child in “Itanong Mo sa mga Bata” who could answer what grown-ups wouldn’t.

A parallel vocabulary

Songs didn’t topple the dictatorship, at least not by themselves. The economic crisis, the intensifying repression, the glaring corruption, and the airport murder of Ninoy Aquino did the heavy lifting. But culture kept a parallel vocabulary alive, so that when the moment came, people already had the songs to sing.  

During Ninoy Aquino’s funeral, the Asin song “Pagbabalik” played again and again on the sound system mounted on flatbed trucks. The marchers sang along. The kids raised on nutribun and the “Bagong Lipunan” hymn were marching in the streets or fighting in the hills. Then came the 1986 EDSA Revolution.

The Marcoses believed culture could be funded, given prizes, and made grateful. Perhaps they were right that it could be funded. They were wrong that it could be owned. The nationalism they sponsored came with a question: para kanino tayo umaawit? The artists used the platforms and answered in songs the dictatorship  did not like. – Rappler.com