BEFORE the year ended, several media companies ran Filipino-American year ender stories to give importance to people and events that made the year an interesting one.
From the usual political stories like the Sentosa 27 case, GabNet and some entertainment stories such as Lea Salonga’s return to Les Miz and the phenomenon that is Happy Slip, it is shocking to see how much coverage Filipino American bands and local artists get from this big media companies.

How many Fil Am music stories were in most year ender features? The Answer:
Nil. Zero. Nada. Wala.

Indeed, it had been a struggle to get coverage from TV, radio and newspapers in 2007. Could it be that they were not aware of the great things that were happening in the scene last year?

No, we made it sure that they were since we sent them invites. They just did not show up.

Television

ABS-CBN’/TFC’s Speak Out was one of two FilAm Cable TV shows that gave air time to local Fil Am acts in 2007, the other being the music video channel Myx, also from the same company.
The whole Fil Am music scene is grateful to these shows for giving the spotlight to great hardworking bands in the scene.
But just recently we learned that the seminal Speak Out had been cancelled.

Print

Only a handful of newspapers covered the Fil Am music scene in 2007: the Filipino Express , The Asian Journal, and Weekend Balita in LA.
It is discouraging to know that there were more Fil Am music scene stories in Manila-based papers than in the local FilAm press. Except for the three publications mentioned above, most FilAm papers didn’t give a damn about the Fil Am music scene.
These Fil Am papers cared more about Filipino-based celebrities than homegrown Fil Am acts.

Radio

Zero.

World Wide Web

In the cyber world, there were only two websites that actively covered the FilAm music scene: www.poptimesmagazine.com and its West Coast counterpart– www.Fil-Ammusic.com .

These sites were relentless in bringing the gospel of FilAm music to the world. We just hope that these sites continue in spite of adversaries and low revenues.

In August 2007, the biggest gathering of Fil Am artists happened in New York City. So big was the event it had to be split into two nights.
August 31 and September 1, 2008 marked the monumental event that saw 19 bands, from all over the US and Canada to celebrate the first anniversary of Poptimes Magazine.

Months before the scheduled event, invites were sent to media companies to ask them to cover the historic event. Not even one responded.

The event pushed through anyway and it lived up to expectations- it was indeed historic. Days after, several Asian and Manila-based websites and publications ran stories about it. www.poptimesmagazine .com and the Filipino Express immortalized the event by their coverage. However, the others local newspapers ran stories about ‘Pokwang’ instead.

How could most of the media ignore the FilAm scene?
What is with Pokwang that Fil Am artists don’t have.

Fil Am artists are not insignificant.
We are here. We are important.

This summer, the biggest compilation album of Fil Am artists- Rock in the Box 2 will be launched. Once again, we will invite them.