Have talent, will travel
In his 1970 article, “The Ruling Money” written for the Philippines Free Press, Nick Joaquin (using his pseudonym Quijano de Manila) wrote about the prevailing economic situation, detailing how lopsided it was in favor of a few families. “So, in a country where 50 percent of the households live in poverty and 30 percent in utter misery, one percent of Filipino families live in affluence and a fraction of them live in super affluence,” he writes. “Do these happy few constitute, as in the United States, an oligarchy?”
But it’s the National Artist’s writing at the conclusion of the piece that particularly resounds:
“In Havana, there are similar relics from the days of the ruling money: elegant villages, a yacht club, a polo club, exclusive beaches. Again, the tycoons, both native and foreign, of Batista days didn’t know for whom they gilted a ceiling or marbled a floor. They couldn’t take it with them — and the people have taken over,” writes Joaquin, “On the beaches once exclusive to those who had the color of money now swim every shade of sepia, every kind of black. The polo club has been turned into a boarding school for young talent and on the grounds where the jet set gamboled teenage Cubans paint, sculpt, dance, compose music, stage dramas, put on concerts — and all as wards of the State, which scouts for talent.”
That idyllic image is what comes to mind listening to the title track of Archipelago’s debut recording “Travel Advisory.” The lyrics certainly bear this out with lines like “I got a compact car/And it’ll take us very far/To where the communists chill out/and offer slim cigars” and “Rebels like to surf/But they’ll let you share the turf/They may take your GPS/But you’ll be their favorite guest…” More than the words, though, it’s the music itself that evokes that feeling of bonhomie and camaraderie — in the sound of that beachside acoustic seemingly played on some faraway beach, or those snatches of piano notes that waft in like fugitive melodies from a nearby watering hole or even frontman Yan Yuzon’s vocals, which have the quality of a pirate radio broadcast. All of that and only barely past the first minute mark.
Archipelago’s music does what pop should be doing and what most rock these days has forgotten. That is, to provide an experience, to convey a feeling, to evoke emotion but to suggest things other than just itself. (In these narcissistic and banal times, the former has indeed eaten itself and been left constipated as a result while the latter is in a position in between self-fellatio and the vomit-choked deaths of Bon Scott and John Bonham — but with no satisfaction and a lot less talent.) These songs take flight.
It’s apt given that the predominant lyrical metaphor is travel or transport. Aside from the album title itself, songs such as Black Box, Travel Advisory or Meteor contain obvious references even in the names of the tracks while Baguio, Gaan or Eternal are more introspective voyages of places, events and people both in the past and looked forward in the future.
There’s a deliberate dislocation in these songs (i.e., the voice indicating at the beginning of the track “1 of 3” that “This is August 26, 1978.”) as well as an assortment of musical reference points in them from Pink Floyd to Elvis to Britpop especially (Blur’s “Think Tank”). But they only serve to allow the listener’s imagination walk the rest of the way. If anything, “Travel Advisory” is just a map, a psychogeographical guidebook to our times. With these songs as a traveling companion, it’s a trip worth taking.
