POP ROCK IN THE PHILIPPINES

NOTES ON CONTEMPORARY PINOY RAKENROL: WHY POP ROCK AIN’T WHAT YOU THINK

December 14th, 2010

There isn’t a rocker chick that’s more visible in these shores than Yeng Constantino, and to dismiss her as just another network creation would be unfair. In fact, if you had a sense of Yeng, you would know that when she was a contestant on Pinoy Dream Academy, she seemed the most unlikely to win: she was surrounded by sexy sirens ready to be pop stars, as well as pretty boys ready to work the kilig factor. Yeng meanwhile was the girl with a rock band, the one who appeared in Chuck Taylors for most of the season, and would reconfigure songs like “I Will Survive” before we saw David Cook do it on American Idol.

But, too, Yeng had talent. So much of it that by the end of that season, and by the time she won, her original song “Hawak Kamay” was already on repeat in our heads. In fact, “Hawak Kamay” had become the theme song not just of that season of PDA but of every other love story real and imagined, including cinematic: it would come to be theme song of a Judy Ann Santos and Ryan Agoncillo starrer—enough to make it bigger than Yeng could imagine.

And Yeng was no one-hit wonder. In fact she would fare much better than most reality show winners, save for Sarah Geronimo who’s in a genre all her own (and will be reason for another essay). What is extraordinary about Yeng though is the fact that she’s in a rocker-chick space all her own. After all, we have lost track of Barbie Almalbis and Kitchie Nadal, and even in relation to them, Yeng would still be different: she ain’t of the rich, is willing to make fun of herself, and is more rakenrol than we imagine.

But also, she speaks with a humility that’s borne of her social class, the one that’s overwhelmed by the kind of success that very few are lucky enough to have. She has kept the band she had pre-PDA win called Morning Glory, and that’s about all I have to say about that name. While Yeng’s look has changed slowly but surely in pictorials and album covers given the expectations and requirements of her home network, she has ceased to be uncomfortable with it. Instead, in instances when she can be herself, she actually looks like the anti-thesis to her made-up, highly manufactured image. Have you seen her on Music Uplate Live? Given the late hours of this show, Yeng is less made-up here, and just seems more rakenrol—and one is reminded of how she was exactly this before she had to conform.

And yes, her songs speak of a sense of class, without it being heavy and sad. Instead there is a sense of what’s default about class, and how one can rise to the occasion of dreaming. Of course Yeng stands for exactly this, given her humble beginnings, but it also stands for the kind of rakenrol that she has consistently made popular in these shores, never mind that it might not be what we think pop rock should be.

The truth is you wouldn’t know pop rock in this country, if you don’t know Yeng Constantino.

source:http://www.pulse.ph/posts/sam-milby-yeng-constantino/

(credit to the owner of the picture)

I couldn't agree more with this article! Especially the last line, Yeng Constantino really defines the pop-rock in our country! :)