Virtual Implosion (2022): Reflexivity, the ‘Everyday’ and a Music of Philippine Reality (for Ensemble Mosaik)

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Published: May 31, 2023

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Jonas Baes
University of the Philippines

Abstract




This paper attempts to present new perspectives on the nexus between art and everyday reality in the Philippine context. With Hegel’s dialectical principle of sublation as its conceptual backdrop, I will explore how a theoretical framework can be formulated from reflexivity by foregrounding the processes of creation and production in my musical work “virtual implosion” (2022), which allude to the nature of composition and performance within the enclaves of late capitalist modernity and its impact on the Philippine social milieu. The trajectories of this paper are the discourses on music composition and production, as well as Philippine modernity.




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Vol. 4 No. 1 (2023): May 2023
Section
Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Jonas Baes, University of the Philippines

Jonas Baes, is a composer, ethnomusicologist and cultural activist who studied with Jose Maceda at the University of the Philippines and with Mathias Spahlinger at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany. His research work on the Iraya-Mangyan of Mindoro and the Dumagat of Rizal Province and the Bagobo of Mindanao in the Philippines are published in numerous international peer-refereed journals; articles of which are bent towards cultural politics and the sociology of loss in music. His recent book with the title Maceda, Spahlinger and the Dialectics of a “New Music” Praxis in Southeast Asian Modernity is published by the University of the Philippines Press (2022). His most important composition, PATANGIS-BUWAYA is scored for four wind instruments from any culture, and since its premiere in 2003 has been performed annually in various parts of the world and under various socio-political conditions, making it symbolic of a socio- political statement for indigenous peoples and their living spaces in the rainforest, in perennial threat from “development aggression”. In 2009, Baes founded the Manila Composers Lab, an international platform aimed at organizing annual workshops for young composers especially in Southeast Asia and inviting international experts and ensembles of contemporary music. In 2015, Baes founded the Ripieno Ensemble PH whose aims are the development of a local-modernity in Philippine music. Baes has been invited as guest professor in Germany, Japan and Malaysia. He is currently professor of composition at the University of the Philippines.