but what do i know
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Artist:
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Album:The Very Best Of The Platters
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Track:
i discovered something today: an entire country of people who don’t give a rat’s ass about songs.hold that thought whilst i pull you back to The Platters and The Andrews Sisters, favorites of my father. i was a new wave child of the ‘80s when he told me this, so when i asked what songs of theirs he liked best and he couldn’t think of any, it was beyond me. i knew practically the entire discography of The Cure or The Smiths, and here was my father claiming favorites whose songs he didn’t know.there went my daydreams of giving Alternative Press an interview where i say: well, you know, my father introduced me to Mr. Bojangles.my father was a teenager in the 1930s, you see, in the Philippines. there were not a lot of records going around in those days. there were certainly not any concerts by foreign acts. what they did have was radio. i imagine they simply kept the radio on as they went about their business all day long. hence, music appreciation in the form of background music.my father had neither a chance nor any reason to know the titles to songs by The Platters and The Andrews Sisters. i doubt he knew how these groups’ members looked like, much less, what went on in their lives. but, oh, he knew what they sounded like, and that was enough. (he did, to be fair, introduce me to Twilight Time, which i love.)one’s appreciation of music is only as good as one’s exposure to music, which for many isn’t out of choice but circumstance. it isn’t entirely true but there is some truth in it. i myself am a study of it; born and raised, as Americans like to say, in the Philippines, a third world country with a dominant middle class that tends to be very Americanized and trendy. (what middle class isn’t?)the Internet is obviously my great equalizer as it allows me some access to songs that you out there enjoy. beyond it, the world remains tilted: i have no real concept of gigs or tours or indie labels or basement records or zines or groupies. Almost Famous is fiction to me. and i’m one of the few remaining people on earth who have never seen U2 live.people in Cambodia lost a generation or two of contact with popular culture. in the capital city of Phnom Penh alone, there are zero record stores (of the legit, multinational-labels-distribute-here kind) and a total of one popular books store. outside Phnom Penh, it must be like my father humming nondescript to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy all over again.today, on work assignment, i went around asking what foreign music Cambodians are into these days. i got the usual replies (Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado) and the not-so-usual (Westlife, JoJo), which i then followed up with asking about songs. nil. ain't nobody got nothin'. it took me a while to recover from the shock that there are citified teenagers in the world who know not a single song by Britney Spears.somewhere in the bowels of Cambodia, there is someone whose life would’ve forever changed had he discovered Godspeed You Black Emperor. to some extent, i am the same. my experience of popular music is handicapped, but i can tell you that my love of music is no more or less pure than yours. in the end, god knows who Eleanor Rigby really is or what A Whiter Shade of Pale is on about.
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