Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2391-9789
Abstract
In 1976, the Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP), a revolutionary organization of Filipino-Americans in the United States, in collaboration with the communist-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), released the album Philippines: Bangon! Arise! Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle under Paredon Records. The joint project took years before completion after being shelved temporarily due to the imposition of martial law by Ferdinand Marcos in 1972. Composed of nineteen tracks, the album exposes Spanish colonial oppression, American imperialist exploitation, and state repression of the US-backed Marcos dictatorship. In this article, I selected ten revolutionary songs from the album and analyzed them from the ideas of Walter Benjamin on redemption and Fredric Jameson on utopia. The songs upon close listening appear to exhibit themes of redemption of the Filipino people’s revolutionary past and a utopian impulse amid Marcos’s propagation of his “New Society.” As a historico-cultural artifact, Bangon! represented how the revolutionary struggle of the Communist of the Philippines (CPP) was an attempt to redeem and reenact the unfinished Revolution of 1896. The struggle in turn was a disruption to the determinisms of the dictatorship in the context of Cold War Asia. As a Messianic, the CPP’s struggle was a contribution to the long and rich Philippine revolutionary tradition.
Recommended Citation
Briones, Jervy C.
(2026)
"Bangon! A Critical Analysis of Selected Songs of the Philippine Revolutionary Struggle,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
50, Article 11.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2283
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss50/11
