» Agimat: Profile » Datu's Tribe

Music Artist:

Datu's Tribe

Genre: Country Music

Profile:

MUSIC DOESN'T HAVE TO BE MINDLESS

"The artist cannot afford to isolate himself in the theory of art for art's sake, in the pursuit of his muse, in the pursuit of fleeting inspiration. No. Now our inspiration must come from the struggles of the people around us. More, we must be part of those struggles." - Lino Brocka

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"Overcoming the crippling handicap of a lame band name that sounds like it belongs to a race horse, these earnest young rockers somehow managed to come up with (1995’s) wittiest debut..."

Eric Caruncho gave us the above...umm, accolade when he named us Best New Group of 1995 in his year-end feature (1995 Playback: The Year in Pinoy Rock’n’Roll) for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. After twelve years, we still carry the same "lame" name, but the music, proud to say, has only gotten better and the wit is even more acid than ever. What hasn’t changed, though, is the rate of financial returns for our kind of music, but then, that was part of a naiveté we learned to discard early down the road trip.

There Was No Spoon...

Most of what we did from 1989-1992 might best be summed up as the juvenile masturbations of a fledgling band still in the process of defining itself. It wasn’t until 1993 when the initiative to record demo tracks at Audio Captain Studios (with the help of the late and legendary Jun Reyes) and submit the cut Praning to LA105.9 FM (the only radio station at the time that expressed and manifested all-out support for Pinoy Rock) finally transformed our amateur musings into deliberate professional cravings.

With the invaluable help of LA105 deejays like Mon "The Doctor" Zialcita (and here we categorically state for the record that there was absolutely no payola involved and neither was anyone in the station related to anyone in the band - they were just truly fucking sincere, I guess) Praning shot up the station’s charts and held the number one spot for six consecutive weeks. The consequent buzz paved the way for auditions at Club DREDD, where we made it to the roster of regulars after making enough of an impression on Pat Reidenbach. Things were already peachy as far as we were concerned, so we didn’t really expect that we were also going to play a part in the musical revolution that was about to take place the following year.

...Just Major Ladles

1994: The Eraserheads, Yano, and The Youth collectively rocked the corporate foundations of status quo music and chagrined the sanctimonious guardians of public morality by proving alternative Pinoy rock commercially viable (read: profitable) on an unprecedented nationwide scale. Although the major labels were initially caught off-guard, they soon launched into a frenzied corporate muscle-backed band-signing blitz after they picked up the scent of the emerging cash cow.

And that’s how we came to be with Universal Records. After the release of our debut album, Galit Kami Sa Baboy, in August 1995 (in the Year of the Pig, no less), the label’s marketing juggernaut did not disappoint us as we found ourselves getting featured nationwide on print and radio, as well as doling-out perfunctory "performances" for brain-dead noontime variety shows.

A few months later, the album was officially awarded Gold Status by PARI. By that time, we were already in the thick of touring cities and venues across the islands and became sought after performers in almost every major commercial or cause-oriented concert production in the National Capital Region. Increased market presence subsequently helped us establish a reputation for dishing out our brand of acid socio-political commentary set to gut-wrenching, ear-splitting, right-wing conservative- bashing music.

Daft Punks

But the irony of major label support soon showed its crass exploitative business side to those who rode the bandwagon as the alternative music cash cow was not only milked - it was bled to death. By 1997, there was no more point in labeling the music "alternative" as commodification had already transformed it into staple fare. The music that had threatened to revolutionize the cultural sensibilities of an entire country simply succumbed to the projected profit margins of the music industry’s next flavor-of-the-month genre. But in spite of its fall from conditional grace, what is now known as the "old school 90s" did succeed in establishing a healthier breeding ground for the next crop of dysfunctional young musicians.

As major concerts continued to dwindle, a lot of bands simply went back to playing the usual club gigs. Some, like us, ended up as major casualties. With half the band still based in UP Los Baños, the cost of playing mostly lower-paying gigs in Metro Manila became prohibitive. By mid-1998, we were already M.I.A.

Jurassic Pork

Six years passed before Delvis and I got to talk about bringing the band out of its hyper-extended sabbatical. We figured that both name and reputation were intact, so a comeback would be relatively easy to pull off despite a new millennium band scene that had since expanded from the inroads left by the "old school 90s."

In April 2005, we came out with an independently released bogus live performance EP entitled Fat Burner. One of the trippier cuts, Lakambini Bottom, revived the cult buzz and became largely responsible for getting us featured on shows like MYX, MTV, Textube, Wazzup!, Breakfast Supersize, as well as inspiring an animated short on Studio 23’s Barkada Trip; Karne, another new song (not in the EP) was tapped for 2005’s Musicians Against the WTO album; lately, we seem to have been inspiring the creation of some (unauthorized) music videos on YouTube as well.

Back to School Youth

And finally! Just last August, exactly twelve years after the release of our debut album in yet another Year of the Pig, our long overdue full-length "sophomore" effort, Whoa! Pilipinas! came out.

Work on this album actually started as far back as 1996 as half of the songs in the album trace their beginnings from the years that immediately followed our debut. Luckily, the "old" songs in this project have remained relevant. From a practical standpoint, this was a plus factor for the band as there was less pressure to come up with new material. The downside, of course, has heavier implications: the continued relevance of the old songs vis-à-vis the social and political issues they touched on simply highlight how no real meaningful social and political changes have taken place in this country over the last ten years.

So, this album should be particularly useful to those who’ve either been comatose or living as mindless exploited zombies for the past four centuries (and counting). For those in touch with the "now," not much is probably going to be new here, but we are hoping that whatever "new" this project does provide will help stir anger (since it’s more useful than despair) and inspire more Filipinos to kick the crap out of those who’ve been using power and influence to enrich themselves at the people’s expense. If not, well...hopefully we’ll be able to earn just enough to keep on bashing heads with a smile."

(From the "Whoa! Pilipinas!" album launch press release, October 2007)