Pop, rock, junk, love
To Pinoy K-Pop fans, you young people who astonish us by memorizing K-Pop lyrics but still flunk in math subjects, we need your help. Fifty-one containers of garbage from South Korea were shipped and are parked at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Misamis Oriental. Since you speak Korean, please tell the Korean government that we love K-Pop, Koreanovelas and Samsung phones, but not their junk.
Your K-Pop fandom depends on this so please do your best. Then you may realize the difference between disposable fun things like K-Pop and the ugliness of our country being a dumping ground of everything imported, including junk.
And it’s another thing when the Department of Education (DepEd) decides that Filipino language will not be taught in high school and the Commission on Higher Education (Ched) offers Korean Language. We’re not just losing our mother tongue, we’re losing our sense of being Pinoys.
My wife overheard a family conversation on the other side of the restaurant. Teenage children were singing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” perhaps enjoying that Queen biopic last week. Then the father just bombed the mood.
“Why are you singing that song? Don’t you know this singer died of Aids?” Silence.
Ouch. How I wish I could talk to this dad, and tell him: I know you’re a dad who’s worried about many bad influences in the world, and we think rock stars are the worst models for the youth. But think about this. You never thought Grammy winner James Taylor, who sings the folksy feel good song “You Got a Friend” was into drugs in the 1970s. Or that pop and soul superstar Whitney Houston would die from drug overdose.
And about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes the acquired Immune deficiency syndrome (Aids) disease, do we still have to look at it like a scourge or a gay disease like we are in the 1990s? Think about this again: When Freddie Mercury came out to tell the public that he had HIV in 1991, superstar Magic Johnson came out that year, too, admitting he was also afflicted. Their stories shocked us, but they had the courage to come out and break the stigma on HIV-Aids.
We’re nearing 2020, and HIV is affecting straight, gay and young people, even babies from mothers with infection. It’s not rock and roll that is influencing bad behavior to our young people. Heard of twerking, club drugs, sexting? They assault us more.
Sometimes, in the craziness of these things, the old songs still comfort us. Celebrate that young people are learning the songs from your time because of that movie. Songs that open our hearts and minds. So let’s enjoy music, the guitar, three chords and the truth.--from SunStar Davao