NY | LA: Two Benefits for Haiti this Week

While grand gestures of generosity like star-studded telethons and presidential charities are much needed and appreciated in the wake of the devastation in Haiti, there's also something special and intimate about local, artist-driven events, that may have more modest monetary goals, but hearts just as beneficent.

NYC | Tonight, Wednesday, January 27 @ 7:30pm - Stanley Pradel gathers together a stellar musical line-up for at the Arrow Bar in the East Village, including DJs Mas (Masaki Yamagata) and DJ Songco (Chris Songco).

What: Haiti Benefit
Where: Arrow Bar (85 Avenue A, bt 5th and 6th St)
How much: $10 donation (or more!) with 100% of the proceeds going to Doctors without Borders to give medical aid to Haiti. Link here to see what this money will help do.

The evening also includes a raffle with prizes from:
The Wat Gym | 10Deep |Acapulco Gold |Gap Adventures and more

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L.A. | This Weekend, Saturday, January 30 @ 8pm - Stand with Haiti, Listen! Dance!

Tropico de Nopal (1665 Beverly Blvd.), a community gallery situated on the cusp of Echo Park and HiFi (Historic Filipinotown), hosts a night of readings and music to benefit Partners in Health, providing medical care for Haiti's poor before, during, and after the earthquake.

Admission: $10 - but give more if you can!
100% of door proceeds will be donated to Partners in Health.

Music sets by:
Ceci Bastida + Domingo Siete

Poetry and prose featuring:
Will Alexander . Gloria Alvarez . Tisa Bryant . Percival Everett
Ben Ehrenreich . Sesshu Foster . Veronica Gonzales . Jen Hofer
Doug Kearney . Chris Kraus . Maggie Nelson . Abel Salas

DJ sets by:
Glenn Red | Concise |Gomez Come Alive

SOTW 11.15: "Defying Gravity" from Glee (feat. Lea Michele and Chris Colfer)

There are some friends you haven't seen in awhile with whom the conversation requires a little warm-up. Some superficial chit-chat here, a few perfunctory questions about how life has been going there.

And then there are the friends with whom you pick-up as if you've never left off--as if the weeks, months or years between encounters never eroded the ease of familiarity, the depth of intimate knowledge, or the dormant in-jokes and shared secret languages awaiting their special interlocutors.

Today my hope is that returning to Oh! with a song of the week will feel like the latter. Or like slipping into the comfy "at-home wear" you insta-change into after a long day buttoned-up and flying right at work.

Last week, during an extended east coast jaunt to Washington, D.C. for ASA, and to New York to find a spring semester sublet, I was fortunate enough to spend some quality time with a couple of old pals--"civilians," not academics--from college and high-school.

One is my friend Lynne ("neither male nor female, but Kvang" as the joke went about the fake I.D. we once bought with her on Alvarado Blvd., misidentifying her sex as "male," and transposing her Chinese middle name into something more sci-fi). The other is my galpal Keri, a former alto-sister from my high-school's equivalent of Glee Club, The Ramona High School Madrigals. I hadn't seen Keri since my 10th year high-school reunion back in the Riv in 2001, but we picked up right where we left off, re-enacting Sprockets skits and quoting other early-90s SNL joints that weren't nearly as iconic ("you put your weeeed in there.") [Right - Photo Detail from 1991: Keri in the middle of the bottom row; me, third from the left, standing | Below: Ramona Madrigals cutting loose on tour a long way from Riverside, CA at the Heritage Choir Festival in Seattle, WA, 1991].

Both encounters lifted my spirits after a long stretch of time spent "doing the work" (to invoke the mantra of my Oh! sistah, ATV). My hang sessions with Keri and Lynne didn't merely reactivate the comfort to be found with folks who "knew me then," but also reminded me how much I've desperately needed the spirit of "then" to leaven the now: the hustle, bustle and flow of an assistant prof.'s life on the verge. On the verge of sharing something--the first book--that's been lovingly if sometimes tortuously wrought in that writing bunker we find ourselves sequestered in starting around year 4, as the tenure clock tick-tocks. On the verge of one of the biggest auditions of my life, not just for a panel of unknown judges who will ultimately arbitrate my future, but also for the rest of you. For anyone out there who might be willing to read, to listen to me straining for a "high F" that could very well crack beyond my range even as it aspires to defy gravity.

[Chris Colfer, aka "Kurt" performing his solo rendition of "Defying Gravity" from the musical Wicked]

And so my first SOTW back after a very long absence doubles-down with not one (the version you just heard above), but TWO renditions of "Defying Gravity" recently recorded for the hit-show Glee. Rest assured that my other Oh! sisters and I are bound to have much much more to say about the show in the coming months for reasons obvious (jazz hands, big feelings, Heart and Journey), and others maybe not-so. But that's for another time.

Last week's "Diva-Off" between Rachel, the pretty, but dorky and unloved ingenue spawned by two gay dads, and Kurt, the fabulously fashionable but ostracized queer son of a mechanic single dad, offered one of the most poignant "confrontations" I've ever seen on the small screen. Despite being billed as a clash of two divas, it was ultimately a reluctant stand-off, regardless of what the cut-away shots were meant to convey.

In the Broadway smash, Wicked, "Defying Gravity" is the finale to Act I, the moment when Elphaba, aka "Elphie," the green girl presumed to be wicked by virtue of her odd appearance, decides to "fly solo" in order to fight tyranny and prejudice in the land of Oz.

The nature of the conflict in last week's Glee is framed by a similar desire to ascend to great heights as a soloist in the hopes that a virtuosic display of talent might undo some of the tyranny and prejudice directed at a bunch of "losers" like the kids in Glee Club. And yet even the original source material from Wicked offers an option beyond the self, and beyond the individualistic gestures of heroism and self-sacrifice that win admirers and agitate adversaries.

[Wicked: "Defying Gravity" finale, Act I]

During the Glee "diva-off," Kurt cracks the high-F (keyed for a female vocalist) just at the moment triumph seems within his reach. We learn he does so out of sacrifice. Out of his wish to spare his dad (who passionately lobbied the principal and Mr. Schuester to let Kurt audition to begin with), the burden of a parental role he has yet to fully comprehend: caring for a gay son. Leaving aside debates about whether or not this gesture of generosity can be read as internally homophobic (for the record, I don't think so), something gives me the sense that Kurt is not done with "Defying Gravity."

In Wicked, Elphaba asks Glinda (the pretty, "good witch") to "Come with me. Think of what we could do - together."

Together we're unlimited
Together we'll be the greatest team...
If we work in tandem
There's no fight we cannot win

"Defying Gravity" is not strictly a solo number. The verses I just cited above are actually traded between the two divas of Wicked, Elphaba and Glinda (the latter role was originated by recent Glee guest star, Kristin Chenoweth).

Voices are best sharing verses. When we find ourselves struggling to reach notes beyond our range, solace and support come at unexpected intervals from companion voices capable of carrying the harmonies. As I learned from singing alto in the high-school madrigals, even if one splits from the splendor of a melody, a song will never truly soar without you. "Defying Gravity," in other words, is not something to be accomplished alone. (KT)

[Duet from Glee: "Defying Gravity" feat. Lea Michele + Chris Colfer]

This SOTW is dedicated to Kathy Rossi, my 7th grade English teacher. In that formative year at Sierra Middle School, she taught me how to love books, musicals and writing. I saw Wicked for the first time with her last December in Los Angeles. I know I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to say to her: "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."

¡Special Event! Latina Moves: New Adventures in Performance 10/08

Calling all Tri-Staters! Join us this coming Thursday, Oct. 8th for a jaw-dropping triple bill of Latina/o performance. Starring Carmelita Tropicana, Marga Gomez, and Nicolas Dumit Estevez. For free. At Princeton.


Co-organized by Ricardo Montez and Alexandra Vazquez
Thursday, Oct. 8th at 7pm
at the Marie and Edwards Matthews '53 Acting Studio
185 Nassau Street
Princeton, New Jersey

Come on ovah,
ATV

[Gomez photo credit-Jose Guzman Colon; Tropicana photo credit-Uzi Parnes; Dumit Estevez photo credit-Nicolas Dumit Estevez]

Dispatch from Rome and Paris

There's much to compress so I'll need to do this scrapbook style. For many weeks, it has been Rome. For 48 hours, it was Paris. Visiting them in sequence rustled up the past itineraries of two uncles who played a large part in my intellectual upbringing: Calvert Casey and Severo Sarduy. Casey's Rome is Havana with its peeling walls and too many reminders and erotic dark corners. A place that absorbed his stutter as yet another anomoly, a place to rest his falling apart body. Casey's Rome is a city for being alone, locked in an August apartment with a lover, a solitary Cuban in antiquity's surround. Sarduy's Paris is bookstores reserved for Franco-Japanese literaria, a different baroque, Tel Quel. Sarduy's Paris was a place to find and adopt a crew. He found, among others, Roland Barthes and Francois Wahl. It made him draw and make prints, to think through the other surrealism. It was a place to be Cuban with other non--Cubans.

In the Paris of now, I saw fine cashmere sweaters with weaved in portraits of Che for 600 Euros. And traces of the past and present vogue négre too comfortable with the spectacle and trademark they made and make with the body of the other. Both did much to encapsulate an easy multiculturalism that made me feel more affectively delinquent than usual. I wanted to be vulgar, use the wrong fork. Reject butter and their food. Litter. Harbor music from Putamayo tendencies. My mouth wouldn't form their words.

But, as many have felt and sung, Paris is a Brown city. It is a place where I got to use two words I've rehearsed enough to say out loud and proud: Pho and Mango. Both were enjoyed at the island oasis Dong Phát, 10 rue Malar. And later, in a dirty bar, I heard AC/DC's Hells Bells before Habib Koité before Grace Slick needing somebody to love. I had a warm conversation about Marseilles football with a cab driver whose open-door policy extended to my ice cream. There were opportunities to make other multicultural connections (the messy and irresponsible kind): like that long roaming charge phone call to CBB after having made a ridiculous left off of Rue Descartes onto the Rue de Ecole and past the Square Michel Foucault.

This is all a scene-setting preface for what I really want to talk about. Since the too recent, too early passing of the great Barbara Johnson, I've made an oath to be more forthcoming about fan letters. More on this soon. She deserves a careful and time-consuming obituary.

...

I went to Paris for 48 hours because of Cuba Linda, the album universe made possible by the Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez. I cannot yet share all of why this work has been the most transformative portal I've had the privilege of going through. This will happen when my book goes live. For now, by transformative, I mean a sustained, body-rocking philosophical reckoning that has gone down in a mostly alone space, under headphones, for several years. This monk-like relationship to the album was a necessary gateway; time was needed to get out the salt, to do the homework. And yet the album has not indulged stasis or isolation. Cuba Linda has made me talk to people and (thanks to a research fund) go places. It has made me seek out relationships with its intimate informal fan collective. It was the writer Armando Suárez Cobián who introduced me to the album over a Brooklyn summer. Other hearings of note include a formative car ride in Miami with Raul Fernandez en route to interview Juanito Marquez; and seeing Reginald Jackson get it during a talk I gave in New Haven. My relationships with them and many others have been forever made more affectionate by the shared fact of Cuba Linda.

I've also had the dream (deferred then fulfilled) of meeting some of the kind folks who actually made the thing. There was a chapter inspiring conversation with Yosvany Terry, (right) one of Cuba's righteous young musical emissaries who calls Harlem home. I've even had reason to make contact in the U.K., the base of music critic John Child, who was kind enough to send me a copy of a recorded interview he conducted with Rodriguez in 1990. Hearing Rodriguez's voice, in perfect Cuban Newyorkese, gave me an urgency to follow other ephemeral leads.

Which brought me to Paris.

I went to Paris to meet Miké Charroppin (left), a painter who has kept descarga alive between Cuba and France and long nurtured the jazz furrow in that city. She was called early by Cuban music via old 78s of the Orquesta Aragon. Born in Bordeaux, to a Martinican mother, she later became the runaway child running wild and moved to Paris to study art in 1968. Her vita is too humbling to address in this small space, but take this entry: she brought Conga de Los Hoyos to Paris for the first time in the early 1990s. It was Charroppin who was behind the concept of Cuba Linda. She wrote the liner notes and arranged two of its most stunning tracks, "Merceditas (Ya Me Voy)" and "Para Francia Flores (Y Para Cuba Tambíen)." She did all kinds of undocumented work. She was also Rodriguez's wife. When you talk to her you get the sense of a historic collaborative relationship (the stuff of storybooks).

I met Ms. Charroppin as I met Montmartre for the first time. being in that ground was long past due. I've lived with Montmartre in the sonic distance whether through the writings of Langston Hughes, the repertoire of Rita Montaner, and Graciela's anecdotes. It was a beautiful introduction. When you walk with Miké around the neighborhood--it feels less quartier, more barrio. She's got the kind of animas that makes you nostalgic for that 1980s generation of working artists in New York.

After Mr. Rodriguez passed away in 2005, Charroppin went through years of live recordings to put together Oye Afra, a lump-in-the-throat album homage (buy it from itunes). Also see this lovely and heartfelt review of the album by Maya Roy.


Charroppin's gift at assembly does not only extend to the songs she arranged, but for the making connections between like-souled people. The good vibes didn't stop there.


Back in Rome. As I turned the corner to his house, he was out front trimming the Bougainvillea. From Paris, Charroppin made my introduction to Roberto "Mamey" Evangelisti, another musical intimate in the Rodriguez buena gente orbit. One of those rare non-Cubans who is actually Cuban. Evangelisti is a Roman born and based percussionist whose childhood obsession with (and isolation from) the congas meant that as he taught himself to play, he also had to learn how to build an instrument to play on. To get that sound he could hear in recording but had no physically present models for. He was called to it by hands that didn't want the distancing of drumsticks, by the stuff that Armando Peraza did for Santana. I learned about his training with too many Cuban greats to mention and was shown footage of Rodriguez and Cuba Linda in the live. Evangelisti is an heir--actual, sonic, soulic--of Tata Güines . As such Evangelisti's is vecchia scuola elegance. His tender structuring held up many of Rodriguez's songs in the live, and continues to do so in recording. Hear him on the virtual whole of Oye Afra (see above) and especially, Alfredo Rodriguez y Los Acerekó Cuban Jazz.

Critics too often deserve their sullied reputation because so many have used the bodies and words of others to advance their own. And yet many remain generous. Charroppin and Evangelisti reminded me that the experience of interviewing musicians can echo that album that changes your life. Gracias. Merci. Grazie.




Tonight I light my last antizanzara spirale. That smell now means summer.

More from the other side,
ATV

Memento Mori

They were five total strangers, with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse. Before the day was over, they broke the rules. Bared their souls. And touched each other in a way they never dreamed possible.

For a majority of the 1980s, my family’s suburban home in LA's San Gabriel Valley became a way station for our personal family reunification program, as one wave of recently naturalized kin sponsored another set of newly immigrated family members. At the height of this era, my parents and I were joined by two other families – four siblings in their twenties and their retired father, another middle-aged cousin, her husband and their two toddler children. In this intergenerational and transnational household, our lingua franca became American and Filipino popular culture. From the family room, a television blasted the day's cycle of programming –from the morning news to Donahue, from afternoon soaps to Dynasty and Dallas. Over the sound of running showers and blow dryers in the morning, the bathroom radio blared out Boston, 38 Special and Rush. Crackling through the living room’s turntable coffin on the weekends, a double LP of provincial songstresses Pilita Corrales and Susan Fuentes’ torch songs and the smooth sounds of Nat King Cole and the Platters marked the twilight time of a lazy afternoon.

In 1986, our television’s screen was filled with the faces of students, nuns, and mothers fed up but still peaceful in protesting the Marcos dictatorship. Before the massacres at Tiananmen Square, these otherwise feminized, domesticated masses faced off with military tanks and machine gun-toting officers. Before Shane and Jenny, they brought to the globe another “l” word—Laban—through the digital display of simply a letter. In those uncertain political times, this visible public of revolutionary possibility brought me closer to my Philippine-born cousins—the ones who grew up in Metro Manila's Project 4, smoked hash at UP (University of the Philippines) while reading the Communist Manifesto, left their country with accounting and nursing degrees only to end up in America working at the McDonald’s on the corner of Amar and Azusa. This spirit of unlikely banding and bonding that I shared with my cousins was best captured onscreen in John Hughes’ detention hall classic.

To this day, The Breakfast Club still holds a special place in my heart because it gave me models of intercultural exploration and alternative counterpublics that my 12-year old self could understand. A lot of it may have had to do with the fact that, despite wanting to call MTV mine, my main source of pop culture was syndicated television and KTLA seemed to love playing John Hughes' Brat Pack-filled flick at least once a year. A lot of it may have also had to do with the fact that, in middle school, I chose to spend afternoons in detention with my friends – the other kids who spoke multiple languages in their homes, fought the shame of moms’ packed lunches everyday, and would rather draw comics, write stories and rhymes, and crack jokes than sound off the same roster of dates and names from somebody else’s U.S. history, year after year. Like the Schermer High School quintet, what we found in a seemingly abject event (detention) was the potential for outsider camaraderie and scattered belongings, a room of our own built precisely because we broke the rules and didn’t fit in.

The fantasies of adolescence and revolution share a similar affective relationship to time —their presents paradoxically angst or anxiety-ridden but full of hope. What brings together the 1980s of Hughes and Aquino is how they rested upon the potentiality of the visual, creating imagined communities in their wake. In an era before tweets and RSS feeds, before even emails and texting, the imaginary time lines of adolescence’s Neverland Club and revolution’s People Power could only be interrupted by late breaking news and reruns. Perhaps, more than anything else, what some of us mourn in the death of these two individuals is the loss of that imagined innocence -- a simple past viewed through rose-colored glasses, made pretty in both pink and yellow. - (CBB)

Dispatch from Manila: Songs of the City

A ten-hour flight from Honolulu to the Philippines translates into a quantum leap from Monday morning to Tuesday evening. In this way, Manila is light-hours ahead of any U.S. city.

Upon your return, you will notice that Manila is a city of noise. The early morning moans of cranes building the latest high-rises. The incessant honking of cars to signal a quick movement, a disagreement, or the recognition of one’s existence. The loud rumble of train tracks above and the tiny voices and large, open palms of pleading beggars from below. These sounds become that much clearer as you try to read Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Listening” on this journey. He instructs you that listening is not just about turning the ear outwards but, also, the turning yourself inwards required so that sounds resonate. You decide that the only way to keep sane in Manila is to deploy this active listening. You sharpen your skills of tuning in and tuning out when necessary.

In the midst of all this cacophony, it’s no wonder that what is pumped out of speakers in taxi cabs and malls in this country are the sounds of soft rock (what scholar/musician Theo Gonzales and theatre artist Allan Manalo dub “the ubiquitous slow jam” and what DJ Un-G and Rani D lovingly refer to as “yacht rock”). The sounds of soft rock not only invoke the archipelagic propensity for sentimentality or are symptomatic of its throwback tendencies, the sounds of soft rock cushion one from the grueling noises that signal a seeming progress and the harsh demands of tropical heat, smog, and urban life. It’s the old De Barge melody that transports me, KT, and Kangagi from our teenage suburban bedrooms to that epic cross-town ride from Divisoria to Makati. It’s the lilting and haunting message from the 1990s Pinoy rock powerhouse, The Eraserheads – an uplifting anthem for the people of this island nation, the musical ethos of those who have too little and know too much.





Just like theory, songs travel. Like that sensual 1980s slow jam, “Careless Whisper.” Previously linked to its famous singer’s notorious escapades, it arose again and penetrated the ears of Filipinos through its repetitive referencing of the Hayden Kho-Katrina Halili sex tape. Despite and through the drama of sex, lies, and videotapes, we stole dance moves (an island instantiation of the insta-snake), fashion (red bandanas), and mottos ("ooh la la" and “sizzling hot!”) which we recreated on VIP dance floors at Ascend, karaoke band stages at Mag:net, and brunches in Quezon City apartments. That well-known lick of crotchy chords famously played on a solo saxophone were dropped, like a DJ inserts a break, into band sets and warm-ups from the indie rock stage at Ortigas Metrowalk's Fete de la Musique to the cavernously intimate playing area of Katipunan’s Route 196. Each time we heard it, each time it was played, we understood it to be a tongue-in-cheek sonic reference to the absurdity of Philippine politics and cultural life.

Careless Whisper - George Michael


When you are a female music critic, you also take songs along with you. You put them on, as ATV brilliantly describes, like the armor you need to get through a day, a sonic force shield of sorts. Like the recent female empowerment offering from Beyonce (made known to me by Rin on the Rox’s pared down, a capella rendition), “If I Were a Boy.” The melody and title lyrics echo in heavy rotation in your head while you avoid eye contact walking down Makati streets or refrain from too much conversation in late-night solitary cab rides or even when just choosing outfits for that day’s jaunt, that evening’s show.

If I were a boy even just for a day
I'd roll out of bed in the morning
And throw on what I wanted
And go drink beer with the guys

And chase after girls
I'd kick it with who I wanted
And I'd never get confronted for it
'Cause they stick up for me




But travel and research is always a two-way pedagogical experience. I learned that being asked each time I arrived alone at a show— “Sino ang kasama mo?” (Who did you come with?)—does not always signal patriarchy or women’s limited social mobility. What it more often gestures towards is the strength of the Filipino social formation—the barkada, or crew. I learned that the directives from Q-Feel’s “Dancing in Heaven” fit perfectly with the tempo of life in Manila, what some might call polyrhythms, as most un-American people know how to keep moving even when life and cars and other people switch their days’ rhythm on them. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.

Dancing in Heaven - Q-Feel



No proper way of ending, since this trip is only a beginning…Salamat na lang kay The Diegos (Diyegs and DMaps), Raimund Marasigan, Myrene Academia, Sandwich, Mikey Amistoso, El Bee, Zack Linmark, and Quark Henares for helping me to listen and learn.

Here, a few summer favorites from the streets, bars, and clubs of The Fort, Cubao, Quezon City, and Ortigas that I continue to keep in my musical pocket, for safe keeping. The first - a literal sonic mapping of the city of Manila (from Pedicab, the band that brings you the 45-minute megamix set). The second - a dark and funny noir-ish tribute to dead milkmen (from Ciudad, the band you can check out in New York in Oct/Nov 2009). The third - another artsy and upbeat video about friendship and life's trips (from Bagetsafonik, the band that brings the melodica back in full effect). The fourth - a geometrical journey around Manila's Global City guided by my newest favorite female vocalist, Sarah Marco (from the director that brings the best of David Lynchian aesthetics to Philippine film and the band, Taken by Cars). Enjoy! - CBB

Smooth Criminals: Michael Jackson & the Last ‘Thriller’ in Cebu

Late last night, passing from the waning phase of my jetlag from the Philippines to the jarring realization that my actual sleep schedule in the States has always been fucked up, I sat in a stupor watching the relentless media coverage of Michael Jackson’s death: the prurient repetition of the 9-1-1 phone call; the heartrending messages of mourning from his inner circle of tortured show people like Liza Minnelli and Liz Taylor; the Larry King Live blindsiding of Miko Brando by Deepak Chopra, who accused Michael’s intimate coterie (Miko implicitly included) of enabling the pop star's alleged prescription drug dependency.

Just when I thought all this had to be the sideshow, Anderson Cooper and one of his lady sidekicks on CNN clarified the stakes for me by nervously cackling at the "freakish" spectacle of the CPDRC inmates preparing their last “Thriller in Cebu” tribute for MJ this Saturday.

AC and his gal pal really lost it during the quick cut close-ups of Wenjiel Resane, the transsexual inmate who famously originated the "girlfriend” role in the prisoners' mass “Thriller” reenactment, a viral video sensation that's racked up over 20 million hits since it debuted on YouTube in 2007.

"Yikes!” the devilishly handsome, gay Vanderbilt exclaimed as Wenjiel whipped her hair back in a bluster of baby powder make-up.

AC’s sidekick in the Tina Fey glasses (I think Erica is her name), could only respond to Anderson's awkward, tell-tale giggle of self-recognition by vamping quickly into a he/she, gender trouble joke:

"I don't remember THAT guy! Or was it a woman? I don't know if I wanna know which one it was..."



I can’t deny the quick cut humor of the video and its awkward close-up. Wenjiel is also clearly hamming it up for the cameras. But I still have plenty of reasons to be suspicious and pissed off about AC and his gal pal’s gigglesnorting. What exactly were they laughing at beyond clever editing?

Were they laughing at Wenjiel’s trannyliciousness? Laughing at those crazy Filipinos for being such over-the-top show people with a flair for jazz hands, even in a maximum security prison? Were they laughing at the fact that Anderson was hair-flipping in his heart, but holding it together for the broadcast? (Clearly this is my very reparative read). Or were they laughing at how appropriate a tribute like the Cebu inmates’ video truly is for Michael Jackson who, as Richard Kim explained so eloquently in The Nation, is a “freak like me, a freak like you.”

En masse, through their own spectacle of disciplined collectivity, the CPDRC inmates embody MJ's many demons as well as triumphs: their accountability to an opportunistic and violent task master; their troubled relationship to race as it intersects with celebrity; the naive belief that success and fame will set you free if only in your own mind. These logics associated with MJ's tragedy also expose the world to the Philippines' vexed relationship to American popular culture, to all its "whiteness and promises"--as a typo on the Magic Mic karaoke lyrics to The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" once declared.

(For a ferocious, thoughtful and affecting take on Michael's blackness and gender, see Ernest Hardy's beautiful words, excerpted here at length: "Coming of age amidst proud shouts of 'Black is beautiful' and effortlessly embodying the adage, but somehow getting infected with the centuries-old disease of white supremacy and internalized racism that will have you repeatedly take a knife to your natural born beauty… that’s so very Black...So many of the tributes being written, especially by Negroes, and most especially by Negro males, think they are bestowing the ultimate praise on him by positioning him alongside conventional, traditional soul men or icons of Negro male cool. Make that unquestionable hetero Negro male cool. But the thing about Michael, especially in his adolescent and early adult years, was that he resonated so powerfully precisely because he upended and shimmered beyond gender convention...Mike evolved from childhood mimicry of the masculinity of soul titans to something more complex and more layered. It was his. And it eventually housed a much more problematic sexuality.")

During the frenzy of the 2007 release of the CPDRC "Thriller" video, Wenjiel remarked in a CNN Asia interview that "I tried being a performer before, but no one took any notice…Now, in jail, I have become a star." She continues to share a single cell with about a dozen other transsexuals in the CPDRC, offering us another perspective on Erica's joke to Anderson on CNN:

"We clearly know who the star is in this prison!"

Like their exemplar, Michael Jackson, the CPDRC inmates bear the burden of having their own fame stand in for real reform. Despite the positive PR generated by throngs of tourists who now make special trips to the Cebu prison just to see the inmates' performances, the penal justice system in the Philippines continues to devolve to Marcos-style totalitarianism at the hands of GMA and her cronies.

As I mentioned in an MLA talk this past year, the emergence of the CPDRC dance videos coincided in 2007 with the end of a 4-year moratorium on capital punishment in the Philippines, which was abolished after the first People Power revolution in 1986, but crept back into the criminal justice system in 1993. The man who reintroduced the death penalty into Filipino law was Congressman Pablo Garcia of Cebu. The man who choreographed the inmates’ re-enactments of “Thriller” among other pop hits, is Byron F. Garcia, the Congressman’s son.

Byron choreographed the routines in his official capacity as Consultant on Security for the Cebu Provincial Government, a position he was appointed to by the Governor of Cebu, Gwendolyn Garcia—his sister.

Though the Garcia's bureaucratic family melodrama may be the real 'Thriller in Cebu,' I'll leave that muckraking for another moment in time when we poptimists of the world won't have as much leeway to play fast and loose with metaphors about monarchs.

The King of Pop's tragic fate as a songbird trapped in a gilded cage wrought by the media, as well as of his own making, has and will continue to shape every story about his life and untimely death. And yet I worry that in the frenzy of it all, Michael Jackson's earnestly critical relationship to spectacles of suffering on scales both global and intimate will garner little attention (with the noteworthy exception of course, of Jason King's stunningly comprehensive take on MJ's voice, life and humanitarian efforts on his blog, "Passed the Curve").

Like the legions of poptimists he leaves bereft with his passing, Michael Jackson never stopped believing in the power of pop to (at the very least) try. To try to say something important, even if it sounds silly and schmaltzy, or fails miserably. To try bringing the world together even as it all falls apart (as he so famously did when he climbed atop an SUV to wave to spectators at his own arraignment in 2005). To try giving your best performance day in and day out, even if it kills you.

I conclude here with the memory of that Michael Jackson, popping strident and soft. Michael imagining himself in prison in "They Don't Care About Us." Michael rehearsing "Human Nature" alone on stage, picturing himself in front of his audience, preparing to sing and dance not just for us, but also with us, despite our eerie absence. Michael saying, Michael singing the things we needed to hear. Or at least trying with all his heart to. - (KT)