I can understand being a bad dresser or having a bad attitude, arrogance or assholism, but bad taste in music? Isn’t music preference a personal thing?

(slang) conservative, uncool, unfashionable, in poor taste, mismatched (clothes) or without refinement in style or class. Baduy daw ang magsalita ng Tagalog. (They say it’s not hip to speak Tagalog).

This, according to Wiktionary; and herein lies the mystery of the origin of baduy. Negative connotations notwithstanding, little is given to its actual word origin aside from its basic definition and usage as evinced above. Baduy manamit (bad dresser), baduy ng ugali (bad attitude), baduy ng music (bad taste in music). Waitaminnit, I can understand being a bad dresser or having a bad attitude, arrogance or assholism, but bad taste in music? Isn’t music preference a personal thing? How can someone’s musical preference be baduy? Is this based on society’s norm? Based on the dictates of tastemakers and critics and popular charts?

Since time immemorial, we’ve come to label our music into two categories… cool and baduy. Where did this come from? When did this start and where do we stand? You? Me? Could this be rooted in our colonial mentality of old? There was a time when we mired ourselves in the mindset that foreign was supreme and local was inferior — with our clothing choices, shoe brands, food, even our music.

As I recall in the 70s, this is where OPM (Original Pilipino Music) took a toehold in the local music scene, trying to give our very own talents equal footing with their far more popular foreign counterparts. If memory serves, the OPM thing began around the time of the 1st Metro Pop Music Festival and Hajji’s “Kay Ganda Ng Ating Musika.”

Local music took a backseat to foreign releases back in the day, but thankfully the playing field has been leveled now.

Somehow though, we still cling to that psyche of cool versus baduy to this day. Although I did mention about the leveled playing field today, that mentality persists still, and we still see (or hear) our music in terms of what’s cool and what’s baduy. Case in point: tuning into the local FM band, and it’s splattered with stations playing worn out Air Supply and Michael Learns To Rock ballads between local hip hop tunes deemed too low brow for others into more uppity forms of music that upscale (there’s that word) stations play. So, right there, upscale and masa stations. Cool and baduy again. It’s the prevalence we find so hard to kick because it’s so ingrained into our thinking and in society itself.

It reminds me of the movie High Fidelity, based on the Nick Hornby novel about a young male record store owner, there’s a scene where our hero Rob hangs in the store with his cohorts Barry, Dick and Louis (a cool regular) shooting the breeze about music, when a young nerdy college type asks about an album, which Barry fetches but refuses to sell to him; dejectedly leaving, Louis offers to buy it, which they willingly hand over to him. Louis then asks, “Now why would you sell it to me, and not to him?” Barry then says, “Coz you’re not a geek, Louis.”

“You guys are snobs. Seriously, you’re totally elitist. You feel like the unappreciated scholars so shit on the people who know less than you.”

I remember I had a convo with a radio colleague once. At the time, he was spearheading this newly reformatted station, and while talking shop with him, he mentioned that in the US, there is no such thing as baduy. Over there, you would hear the latest from this artist followed by Barry Manilow (deemed kinda baduy here) followed by Michael Jackson, then a Kenny Rogers song.

He said, “Dito lang naman natin kina-categorize ang music into what’s baduy and what’s not baduy.” Which, of course, is all well and good…over there. But, the US is a very big country, and what’s popular in one state (say, Alabama) may not be as big in another (say, Michigan) etc. Even in a city alone, the scene is so localized it’s the very same thing in a more microscopic environ. But, I said, “That’s there, but we’re here.”

There’s much to celebrate now since our local artists compete equally with the foreign. There are moments though where it turns disparate, especially with visiting foreign acts raking in the local market while local events turn dismal numbers. Like I said, it’s deeply ingrained in us all. Perhaps we can find solace in the fact that though this mentality still exists, our local talents have proven their global worth and that we’re just as good, at times even better, than them.

Methinks doing away with the labels would perhaps do (us) good, maybe better. The argument of better quality this and better made or produced that always comes into play, not just with music, but with products like, as earlier mentioned, shoes, bags, clothing and whatnot. Yes, even our music. People who can’t afford the real thing and go for the cheap knock off is considered baduy. Buying clothes at the ukay as opposed to signature brands in the mall is baduy. Listening to Michael Learns To Rock is baduy. I say, and this is just me (so shoot me) to each his own.

If you can rock clothing items purchased at an ukay, then why not? They’re originals, too, not just brand new, they’re pre-owned but half the time you can hardly tell. The sneaker knock offs are so near accurate you can hardly tell, either. Same goes for our music. If masa based music makes them happy, fine. If your musical tastes run the gamut of the more esoteric variety, fine as well. To each his own. Live and let live.