By Yzabela Velez-White

National Artist for Music Ramon Santos emphasized the importance of ‘penetrating the awareness’ of of music composed by Filipino composers during the Japanese Occupation from 1942 to 1945 to enhance the preservation of Filipino culture.

In a lecture on Filipino music during the Japanese colonial era held at Ayala Museum on Saturday, Dr. Santos explained that the work of groups such as the University of the Philippines (UP) Center for Ethnomusicology and the Filipiniana Heritage Library (FHL) must be promoted to the younger generation in the advent of mass media and social media to help strengthen Filipino identity.

“ If only people would know about them and use them. Who else will use these (resources) but us?,” the 84-year-old Santos said during the open forum. He said compositions from this period are also in YouTube.

Santos’ lecture explained the cultural policy implemented by the Japanese to reduce American influence in music and culture of Filipinos.

“Three basic principles were emphasized: reduction of Anglo-American influence, the shift of cultural relevance from the US to Japan, and the revival of pre-Spanish cultural practices, especially those that are relevant to the moral code of the Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Santos explained.

Various music composed by Filipino composers from the time were also presented, created in an era when Oriental music and a return to pre-colonial music were promoted by the Japanese occupation.

“New works from the time were either commissioned or composed as competition entries. There were pieces that extolled the ideals of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and those that were written for specific events or sectors of the society,” Santos added.

Santos also said that the Japanese administration’s policies helped Filipino composers bolster nationalism, encouraging Filipinos to explore their national identity.

“In spite of the fact that many pieces composed during the Japanese occupation were utilitarian in character, the Filipinos were still able to articulate nationalist sentiments by grafting quotations of meaning motifs in their works,” Santos said.

Works such as Felipe Padilla de Leon's Awit sa Paglikha ng Bagong Pilipinas and Lucio San Pedro's Martsa ng Bagong Pilipinas were presented as examples by Santos. ''The Filipinos' facility of Westrern musical idiom was already such that they could easily weave these materials into the overall musical fabric with a measure of artistic finesse,'' said Santos.

These compositions are still being studied at UP, Santos added.

The lecture was organized by the Ayala Foundation, FHL, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts under the Roderick Hall Memorial Lectures series, commemorating the FHL’s longtime patron, Roderick Hall, who built a substantial collection of books and materials on World War II in the Philippines. DMS