New Music and the Politics of Space: “Patangis-Buwaya” and the Transformation of Landscapes in Philippine Modernity

Abstract

From the lenses of ethnomusicology, this essay presents critical views including that of the Iraya-Mangyan indigenous group of people—on the very nature of the present discourse of space- music/music-space interconnections. I intend to show the “politics of space:” here defined by showing on the one hand how the Iraya-Mangyan contest and assert their claims to their ancestral lands, which is similarly the case for many other indigenous people groups in different areas of the Philippines being encroached upon by gigantic multinational mining and logging operations; and on the other hand, by presenting one of my creative works as a mode of advocacy and a rallying call for this group of people, among others in the world who similarly bear the impact of “development aggression.” The work called Patangis-Buwaya has for its trajectories the communities either living amidst the affluence of modern urban spaces, or those living in about the same marginal conditions as with the Iraya- Mangyan.