Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila (review)

Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila is by far the best work on Philippine historical musicology in terms of new data presented. It attempts to put into perspective the influence of Western musical practice on the musical traditions of the indios.

The book is in three parts: Colonial Cultures, Enharmonic Engagements, and Strict Counterpoint. As these titles aptly describe the main parts, the subtitles guide the reader in his/her journey through the different sections of the book: (I) Colonial Capital, Global City; Musical Transactions and Intercultural Exchange; (II) Mapping Musical Cultures; The Hispanization of Filipino Music; Courtship and Syncretism in Colonial Genres; (III) Cathedrals, Convents, Churches, and Controversies; and, Fiesta Filipina.

Part I sets the stage for the meeting of western colonizers and the inhabitants of the islands. It situates the Spanish colonizers and the succeeding waves of European migration to the archipelago and the eventual opening up of local cultures to foreign domination (in terms of the material and spiritual). Th is acculturation includes the initial introduction of music, instruments and performance practice, and the natives' eventual adaptation through improvisation and approximation of the new musical experience.

Part II orients the reader to the "anthropological" work undertaken by the religious orders to map out local cultures—the natives' major languages, differing cultures, dances, and songs. Knowledge of the local cultures was eventually used to restructure the natives' worldview. Syncretic forms and approximation of praxes eventually resulted in this deliberate cultural manipulation and imposition.

Part III discusses the rules by which the natives were to function—in musical practice, and the norms that resulted in the adopted foreign forms. What also resulted was an imitation that is removed from that of Mother Spain—brown (character), Asian (folk leanings), family/barangay-oriented (with very weak regard and sense for the national), in direct "counterpoint" and contrast to the internationalist (in terms of evangelical mission), white, and king/church-oriented Spaniard. The Catholic religion did not escape the same fate. It was received and appropriated by the natives with as much folk belief (i.e., Dios replaced the notion of Bathala, the native god; saints replaced the anitos, spirits of the departed relatives) and secularism (i.e., operatic overtures and dance tunes played during mass celebrations) as they can infuse it with.

Irving recalls the theoretical framework in Said's use of the music compositional device counterpoint in Culture and Imperialism (1994) to frame his analytical tool for the present work. He also mentions Foucault, Marx, and the structuralists Saussure and Levi-Strauss as guides that informed his analyses of data. However, the work leans more heavily on the formality of the polyphonic parts to highlight the music and sociohistorical narrative of the early-modern Manila under Spain. Irving emphasizes the musical parts of the polyphonic genre to highlight opposing cultures, worldviews, and reactions, and mentioning, quite often, the counter and parallel voices that inform the history of the music of the Philippines vis-à-vis Spain.

Counterpoint, as analytical tool, falls short in comparison with the scientific bases that inform and make legitimate Foucaultian and Marxist theories of society. To argue further, I find the emphasis on counterpoint (that does not explain the social aspects of the music history of the native) too narrow for a socio-historical research. Said may have used the musical device to identify parallelisms and multi-voices in the aforementioned work to analyze novels based on the history and relationship of England with its colonies, but he also relied heavily on "scholarship in anthropology, history, and area studies." The novels analyzed by Said (Dickens' Great Expectations, Hughes' The Fatal Shore, Carter's Botany Bay, Conrad's Nostromo, Kipling's Kim, etc.), peopled by fictional characters, were used to give life to the narratives of England's colonial experience vis-à-vis the colonies/Orient. Th ose characters can be compared with the...