Musician examines Filipino history
In a rap — a deviation from his usually classical singing — Dominic Gregorio sums up a prevailing viewpoint in his ancestral homeland, the Philippines.
“I had a friend say, ‘Sorry my skin is so black.’
He continued and said, “But my last name is Guzman, and I have blood of the Spanish, as if to impress me; instead it depressed me.”
Gregorio speaks the rhyme in his office at the University of Regina, where he’s an associate professor of music.
“People say these things all the time,” Gregorio reiterated.
“Oh, I have some Spanish blood in me, so that makes me more white and I have something to be proud of. ”
He is exploring the subject in a new musical project, Balikbayan: Returning Home and Back Again, which he’ll perform Friday afternoon at the U of R.
Gregorio grew up in Guelph, Ont., where his parents emigrated from the Philippines, a country whose Spanish colonization began in 1521.
Unlike Canada, which is having front-and-centre discussions about its colonial history spurred by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Philippines remains in a colonial mindset.
A growing Canadian conversation about Truth and Reconciliation, and working with Indigenous artists in Regina, got Gregorio thinking more about the history of the Philippines, which endured a “brutal colonization.”
The Babaylans — women knowledge-keepers, medicine keepers and spiritual leaders — were slaughtered, because the Spanish saw the threat they posed to colonial success.
“They fed them to crocodiles; they beheaded them and stuck their heads on pikes as an example to the people. And without the guidance of these powerful women spiritual leaders, the religion and the colonial project was able to flourish,” said Gregorio.
“So hundreds and hundreds of years have gone by and very few Filipinos have examined this part of our history and culture.”
The conversation is slow to catch on for several reasons, said Gregorio: It’s challenging to spread an idea across a country of 7,500 islands; the education system is “quite basic;” and there is widespread poverty.
“With people being on survivallevel existence, makes people not very apt to be thinking about concepts like ‘examining my past,’” said Gregorio.
The same can be said for Filipino immigrants, whose population is growing in Saskatchewan. Per the 2016 census, 1.9 per cent of the province’s population are native Tagalog speakers (a common dialect in the Philippines).
“Many Filipinos, certainly in Regina, are at a survival level of their experience, working the lowestpaid jobs and just trying to survive here,” said Gregorio.
“And so that’s why most Filipinos can’t really look at this decolonizing and Indigenization because it’s such an esoteric, faraway subject for them who are just trying to get by.” Further, “these ideas of introspection, analyzing ourselves and our cultures and our relationship to that are distinctly western analysis ideas.”
Like many immigrants, Gregorio’s parents, José and Ella, tried to assimilate after moving to Canada in the 1970s.
“I grew up and my parents didn’t teach us their language, which is Visayan,” said Dominic Gregorio.
“(We) were encouraged just to learn English and just to embrace the new culture.”
Gregorio’s childhood music lessons focused on classical music — “the western, white, royalty, aristocratic, religious music of Europe.” He has learned five western languages, but can barely speak Visayan.
While living a year in the Philippines in 2010-11, Gregorio began learning about Indigenous spirituality, which has traditions that are “exactly the same” among First Nations in Canada.
“There’s a concept called kapwa … which is about understanding that we are all connected together,” said Gregorio, “… practices which connect one with the earth, which connect one with oneself, which connect one to the community.”
He has applied the word to the new Filipino choir he is launching with a grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board.
Gregorio performs Balikbayan: Returning Home and Back Again on Friday, 3:30 p.m. in the Riddell Centre Shu-Box Theatre.
Taking a cue from the faculty of Media, Art and Performance’s focus on creative technologies, he uses an “electronic voice” and a looper to combine melody and rhythm with rapped lyrics, singing and beatboxing.