Before this class, I had not thought about the representation of Asians in the American music industry; I think that with recent whitewashing movies and shows coming out, such as the “Death Note” Netflix series and Scarlett Johannson’s “Ghost in the Shell”, I’ve been more-so focused on Japanese erasure in the film industry. However, I had never thought about Filipinos in the music industry up until now. I was also very surprised when The Black Eyed Peas, which practically made up my childhood, was brought up, only to learn about the Filipino-American that was in the group who has made a couple songs that are sang in Filipino. There was one pestering thought that popped into my head upon hearing “Bebot” and “The APL song”: how come I had heard most of the Black Eyed Peas songs, but not these two? Was it because they were in a foreign language, and it wasn’t as popular as their other songs due to this? Was there a more hidden meaning behind it, or was I just digging too deep into it?

These two songs are amazing in my opinion; after we entered into our 10 minutes break, I immediately opened up my Spotify and went to add those songs to my playlist. “Bebot” is a hella bop, and I listened to it on repeat throughout the day. Makes me wish that I had heard it earlier.

Apart from the Black Eyed Peas, which is a very popular band and bound to get more attention to these types of songs, I also liked “Morning of America” by Blue Scholars (which I also have on my Spotify). It has such a unique sound, combining jazz and hip-hop to make this funky beat, and goes on to tell their story as a Filipino-American. I went to see how many views it had on YouTube to get a better idea of the general audience, and the official video had approximately 74k views, which isn’t a lot in YouTube standards (but not necessarily bad either). Good songs like this are often overlooked in the industry, which is disappointing.