Narda released a new song today, the somewhat misleadingly titled “Juskopo”. And the first thing that I thought was “this is dark”—music, lyrics, the accompanying lyric video. Like Discotillion-dark, minus the neon pink and disco. Though it couldn’t be darker than the last four years. If anything, it’s just a piece of broken glass reflecting what has been and what is still happening around us. Like an exasperated fuck you drowned in the noise of celebration of “the triumph of ordinary people over the oligarchy”, the pandemic clusterfuck, online propaganda and fake news, the song is inciting us to be angry and stick it to the man.
Putting the song in the context of recent re-issues of Narda’s earlier EPs online, the contrast couldn’t be more jarring. It seems that this song comes from a world where things that inspired the bright and jangly indie pop on either Burador or Suwerte had ceased to exist.
And while we’re at it — it being songs that incite anger — I would like to suggest a few more songs to push your anger deeper. You might have heard already of Friends of Alternatrip’s “Ngayon ang Panahon”, a song written by Ang Bandang Shirley’s Ean Aguila and performed in collaboration with more than a dozen other artists from bands like We Are Imaginary, The Strange Creatures, and The General Strike. And speaking of The General Strike, you might want to check their Facebook page for their covers of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” and Jess Santiago’s “Pagsapit ng Dilim”.
I would also like to add The Purplechickens’ “Dayami” and “Ang Landas ng Walang Kapatawaran“. And then I’d pick Narda’s “Molotov” to top it off, with its imagery of anarchy spilling out of the bigscreens, of kontrabidas finally getting their comeuppance, of people lining up to the movies and then lining up on the streets joining political rallies.
The current pandemic, which keeps most of us indoors, gives a new shade of meaning to Rob Jara’s Tila (Monsoons). In real life, we are faced with a virus that’s killed hundreds of thousands all over the world and made us rethink our whole lives over. In the movie, Rob Jara locates his story (maybe) not in a distant future but in an alternate yet familiar present: a Philippines where it’s always raining, where our dry and wet seasons had been reduced to an unending rainy days with varying levels of rainfall throughout the year.
