About hijacked lyrics

Of course there are advantages to using songs for one’s campaign infomercials. This practice helps ensure that a candidate’s projected image will stick in the minds of the electorate, thanks to that phenomenon called “Last Song Syndrome”. It is difficult to forget the faces that come to mind when humming a certain jingle, “Nakaligo ka na ba….” It’s all the more endearing (in its own strange way) if the tune is something thoroughly original, something that can be directly and solely associated with the candidate concerned.

However, “endearing” is not the attribute I would dare use for the practice of using already familiar songs in campaigning for a person. Just yesterday, my siblings left the television on. From where I was working, I could hear the familiar strains of a song “Pilipinas Kong Mahal.”, originally by Francisco Santiago That sound brought back great memories of the “Sandaan” compilation of historically significant ballads, as well as flag retreat back in my alma mater. This idyll was shattered though when my sister shouted, “Hey! Guess who used this song?!” Imagine my disappointment when I rushed to the TV and found the overly familiar face of a candidate juxtaposed with the song.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a perfectly good, patriotic song ruined by a personal agenda. I can’t even listen to “Posible” anymore without recalling the face of another candidate, and the furor caused by the song’s original creator for the unauthorized use of it. I can only wonder how many anthems will go the same way in the next few months. Sure, it seems like common sense to use uplifting, stirring lyrics that can raise national consciousness towards lofty ideals, as some of our music is wont to do. It’s not that there’s anything illegal or morally wrong with it. However it does seem like a quite selfish, almost presumptuous thing to take a well-loved, otherwise uplifting work and reinterpret it for political purposes.

For one thing, this practice smacks of laziness; it would be just as profitable for candidates to commission good songwriters to create a wholly new jingle for their purposes, instead of borrowing already existing lyrics. One needs to pay songwriters for the rights to even use the song; surely paying a little extra for a completely original work would not be a problem for some of our future leaders. It’s been done. And it works.

Another problem with “politicizing” idealistic lyrics is in matching the spirit of the songs to the image of the person borrowing them. This wouldn’t be such an issue if our candidates all had good track records and unstained characters, or if they were all as patriotic as the songs make then out to be. However there just seems to be something ironic, if not wrong with using such positive lyrics to describe a candidate who leaves so much to be desired, or who has no intention of espousing these ideals once in office. It is a serious musical, if not literary injustice.

A third issue I have with suddenly “hijacked” music is the guilty by association factor. Before a song gets tagged by a candidate, it is the people’s property, something to be enjoyed by the multitude barring only differences in genre. Once a song gets used for campaigns, suddenly it becomes difficult for a few months (or worse, for a few years) to sing a suddenly politicized song in public, lest one be mistaken as supporting a politician’s campaign or agenda. Sure, one can say, “I just like the song, okay?” but the damage has already been done. Good music cannot carry a message for everyone anymore; it has to be sold by someone. Whatever happened to ideas for ideas’ sake? Why do we need faces to market our principles?

Oh yes, that’s politics for you.

I earnestly pray and hope that our candidates will stop hijacking our already abused musical repertoire in order to win a few more votes. If they must give us Last Song Syndrome, let it be with something created specifically for that purpose. If this is done, our good music can be left in peace while candidates can stop forcing badly rhyming achievements and twisted meters into our eardrums. We can stop deleting songs from our playlists, and we can freely teach these lyrics to our children without them getting too politicized. We want to create citizens of the Philippines, not citizens for ___(insert name of candidate here). After all, there is a reason why “Noypi” was touted as a “second national anthem” for some time, and not as the anthem of so-and-so.