A Musical Atmosphere That Covered the Megalopolis
Text by Aki Onda
Published for the exhbition “José Maceda: Echoes Beyond the Archipelago,” curated by Aki Onda, at Western Front, Vancouver, 2024.
Likely the most ambitious, provocative, and controversial work in José Maceda’s repertoire, Ugnayan is a fifty-one-minute composition for twenty radio stations, consisting of twenty recorded tracks. When the work premiered at 6:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day 1974, Maceda broadcast the recordings through all thirty-seven radio stations in Metro Manila for his sound diffusion, with some tracks playing simultaneously from multiple stations. It was a participatory event that encouraged anyone with a transistor radio to gather at one of the 142 “Ugnayan Centers” established across the city. At the time, Manila’s population was 4.7 million, and in one of the biggest Centers alone, 35,000 people congregated with radios to catch one of the frequencies. Maceda’s idea allowed for the original twenty tracks to be multiplied by thousands, resulting in a dense mass of sound. He wasn’t interested in presenting his composition in a complete form; rather, his intention was to create a musical atmosphere that covered the entire city.
Considering Martial Law was declared two years prior, you may wonder, how was this extravaganza of unprecedented scale, with regards to large numbers of people congregating in public space, even possible? Well, it was supported by the notorious authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos as an extraordinary sociopolitical music event. In addition to holding this one hour segment on all radio stations in the city, Ugnayan was heavily promoted by the national media. The nine-month production drew strong patronage by First Lady Imelda Marcos, who was also the chairperson of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). The regime wanted to employ Maceda’s expertise in Filipino indigenous music and the use of native instruments, as well as his practice of collective music making, as a symbol of national unity.
Music production began in October 1973 and unfolded over three months. Maceda began by preparing a fifty-one-page score with his team before recording took place at Radio Veritas, Quezon City. For this composition, Maceda used indigenous instruments such as kolitong (zithers), bungbung (bamboo blowing horns), ongiyung (bamboo flutes), bangibang (yoked- shaped wooden bars with beaters), balingbing (bamboo buzzers), agung (wide-rimmed bossed gongs); Chinese cymbals and gongs; and vocals. For each of the twenty tracks, Madeca conducted five musicians through the meticulously notated score. Nonetheless, these seemingly traditional elements were highly augmented and abstracted with Maceda’s unconventional approach in adopting both Filipino musicality and European avant-garde techniques. Artistically, methodologically, and conceptually cutting-edge, and keen on the fusion of ancient and modern, Ugnayan is a culmination of Maceda’s wide array of experimentation such as spatialization, mass structure, attention to timbre, and use of modern technology for sound diffusion. Composer Ramón Pagayon Santos, who was Maceda’s former colleague at the University of the Philippines and witnessed the ‘74 New Years event, wrote: “Ugnayan could have scored unquestionable success in advancing a concept of music making and musical experience in which audience, performers, participants, space, and sounds play equal roles in both the compositional, experiential and recreative processes. While such holism may not be new to expressive cultures outside the west and may have in fact stimulated Maceda’s creative imagination, Ugnayan served as its avatar in the highly compartmentalized contemporary art fields.” (1)
However, the public's response to Ugnayan was almost apathetic. The composition was overly idealistic and alien for a listenership that did not have prior knowledge of the musical avant-garde. Additionally, due to centuries of Spanish colonization, general knowledge of traditional Filipino indigenous music was diminished. The Filipino journalist and music critic Rosalinda Orosa described the event as: “Mrs. Marcos was launching, full-scale, a project that was too eclectic, too esoteric in approach and, therefore, not likely to capture common tao’s [peoples’] imagination. But without taking the risk, she would have allowed Ugnayan to remain nothing more than 20 sheets of paper stashed away in a drawer, doubtless to mold in obscurity.” (2)
The risk wasn’t limited to the work itself as the broadcast could have been harmful for the Marcos regime—a reminder of The People Power Revolution in 1986, in which the protesters ousted President Marcos ending with the ruler, his family, and their supporters fleeing to exile to Hawaii.
The Marcoses were big supporters of the arts. Imelda, who was especially fond of lavish cultural projects, built a network of national art centers, and even had a good understanding of experimental arts. Perhaps the reality is far more complex than it seems. Maceda worked extensively with the CCP through the 1970s and premiered his compositions such as Cassette 100 and Udlot-Udlot. However, according to Santos, this support for Maceda’s work was indebted to the CPP’s president Lucrecia Kasilag, who was a composer in her own right. Only at the time of Ugnayan did Imelda Marcos jump in and co-opt the work as one of her grand nation- building cultural projects. The Marcos regime fueled a political climate that made it difficult to express one’s political opinions openly, yet they simultaneously backed such progressive artists and composers.
So, the question is: how does one navigate the contradictions of an authoritarian regime being responsible for a substantial part of Filipino cultural production?
It’s undeniable that part of Maceda’s ideas, such as adopting indigenous culture and the collective making of his music, were aligned with the regime’s agendas. Even so, Maceda wasn’t interested in any ethnic nationalism as he explored music traditions that transcended political borders. He advocated for “Asian musics” throughout his career as an ethnomusicologist and composer, which contradicted the propaganda of the regime. Maceda’s former colleagues at the University of the Philippines, including Director of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology LaVerne C. de la Peña, voiced that Maceda was apolitical and always avoided talking about politics. They believed that he just wanted to present his works and did not care enough about the political implications attached to them. Later, Maceda felt remorse about working with the regime, which was known for their human rights violations and corruption, but acknowledged that it was the only way to make his dream project happen.
It’s ironic that the political collusion with the regime stained Maceda’s masterpiece Ugnayan and added extra layers of confusion, but the work could only be achieved with their support. Even today, these are tricky subjects among Maceda’s scholars, and there won’t be an easy answer. It has been a half-century since the grandiose Ugnayan project was launched, but the extra-musical rationale and sociopolitical agendas of these artistic experimentations haven't been fully evaluated since Maceda’s work has been forgotten for some decades. The music itself was probably still too far ahead of its time, and the future might tell us how it would sound.
(1) Ramón Pagayon Santos, “UGNAYAN – Society and Power as Music Composition,” (lecture, RECTO Lecture Series, January 26, 2007).
(2) Rosalinda Orosa, “A World Happening in Music – Ugnayan.” Philippines Quarterly, March, 1974.
Photo published by Times Journal on January 4, 1974. Courtesy of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology