Unsettling “Salidummay:” A Historico

Unsettling “Salidummay:” A Historico-Ethnography of a Music Category
MICHIYO YONENO-REYES
PhD Philippine Studies (2011)
This dissertation is a historic-ethnography of a musical category called “salidummay,” a
cohort of folk songs that have been performed widely, although not evenly, in the northern
Luzon highlands as well as outside the region. This study asks how the musical category
“salidummay” has been shaped, and how the villagers of northern Luzon highlands have been
engaged with the notion of salidummay’s traditionality. In so doing, et examines: “Who
performs salidummay?;” “Under what conditions?;” “For what purpose?;” and “With what
results?”
Some forms of indigenous practices of sung-debates and story-telling are the possible
precursors of the salidummay. Soldiers during World War II from northern Luzon sand and
spread new types of tunes in playing the sung-debates or in singing ballads with their fellow
soldiers. In the post-World War II decades, these tunes gained popularity in northern Luzon at
large. “Salidummays” have been performed in various musical texts and contexts, with various
lyrics, by various actors. “Salidummay” used to be named and spelled variously, too, from
“salidomay,” “salidumay,” etc. to “dongdong-ay” and “elalay.” Generally speaking, duple meter,
focused pitches (often in anhemitonic pentatonic), simple rhythm structure, and refrain phrases
characterize some dozens of tunes identified as those of salidummay in the locality. Owing to
such musical features, which facilitate group singing, performances of the salidummay in the
post-war era gradually shifted from sung-debates and story-telling to homophonic singing of
more specific messages. This shift diminished improvisation in salidummay performances.
Instead, prepared and fixed performances have become common.
Since the 1970s, salidummay tunes have been adapted in churches in promoting the
indigenization of the liturgy. In the 1980s, the salidummay as the New People Army’s ballads
shifted to protest songs, through the advocacy of an autonomous Cordillera. Consequently,
“saludummay” became a signifier of the “Cordillera,” and the essentialization of salidummay
began. Thus, finally and only recently that the “salidummay” became established as a musical
category. Since the 1990s, “salidummay” has been traditionalized in the official and popular
discourses of national culture building at large. Such appropriation led to the commodification of
salidummay.
My informants from different communities of the northern Luzon highlands have shown
inconsistent and ambivalent attitudes toward salidummay, while producing enormous variations
of the salidummay. By modifying the notion of duality and agency by Sherry Ortner, which
consists of “agency of power” and “agency of cultural project,” I propose that the northern
Luzon highlanders possess multiple “agencies of power” and multiple “Agencies of cultural
projects,” as they constantly engage with layered and multi-directional web powers formally and
informally, at the periphery of a post-colonial nation. Prevailing critiques tend to accuse cultural
appropriation as an exploitation of the disempowered. However, I argue that northern Luzon
highlanders’ doing and undoing, embracing and negating, or remaining indifferent to the
indigenization, traditionalization and commodification of salidummay is their strategy. While
aspects of exploitation by cultural appropriation must not be overlooked, it must not be
underestimated that northern Luzon highlanders tactically engage with it. They obtain an extra
agency though re-appropriation. The Additional agency serves as an extra card in their fight of
“serious games.”