MUSICAL HISTORY

The Philippines was a colony of the United States from 1898 to 1946. American culture had a profound impact on that country, influencing government, social institutions, and musical tastes. Disco, funk, and Motown soul music, popular on American military bases, found their way onto local radio stations. Eventually, so did rap.

During the 20th century, many Filipinos immigrated to the United States in search of better jobs. Filipinos and their families in the United States continued to share music. Filipinos and Filipino Americans would trade rap albums, tapes, and CDs back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, either in person or through the mail. (In recent years, the Internet has made this exchange happen much faster.)

Filipino Americans were some of the first people to experiment with mobile DJ crews in the 1960s and 1970s. Disc jockeys, or DJs, were responsible for providing the music at clubs, parties, and other social events.

“The film Saturday Night Fever made it trendy to go to a disco,” says Dr. Oliver Wang, assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach. Wang is an expert on the Filipino American mobile DJ community.

“People were exposed to a glamorous nightclub culture, with the DJs providing the technical wizardry,” Wang said. “Kids too young to go to a traditional nightclub started to copy the disco experience by DJing in a garage, or a gym, or a church hall.”

By the 1980s, some mobile DJ crews started to experiment with new music technology. Faders let the DJ switch the music from one turntable to the other, allowing them to play two different records at the same time.

Another technique involved breaking up the music by switching the position of the needle on the record. This switching back and forth between beats and melodies on different records was called beat juggling. DJs who specialized in this new music technique were called scratch DJs.