Watch out, Evita...Here comes 'Imelda'
February 2007
“Here Lies Love,” a soap opera/musical on the life of the Philippines' former first lady, premieres at Carnegie Hall in New York City
By Eric Gamalinda
The bizarre, legendary life of Imelda Marcos has always been a soap opera/musical waiting to be told. It wouldn’t have surprised anyone if Tim Rice decided to write an entire musical around her, a la Evita, whose life she emulated.
What’s surprising is that it was David Byrne who decided to pick up the story. And in that sense, one can say Imelda has been done a great honor.
Byrne, avant-garde frontrunner of the boundary-smashing Talking Heads, performed the sold-out US premiere of “Here Lies Love,” his 23-song take on the life of the Philippines former first lady, at Carnegie Hall in New York City last February 3. He himself performed most of the sings, accompanied on stage by Filipina singer Joan Almedilla, who sang the parts of Imelda, Ganda Suthivarakom as her maid, a rock band and a small orchestra.
Described by Byrne as “a disco opera” -- he said he drew inspiration from Imelda’s love for disco music and the disco-era New York club Studio 54 -- rather than a possible Broadway musical, “Here Lies Love” features songs co-written with British Deejay Norman Cook, known as Fatboy Slim. The narrative spans the life of Imelda, her youth, her time as a beauty queen, meeting and marrying Ferdinand Marcos, living at the height of power, and later in exile after People Power kicked them out of the Philippines in 1986.
Byrne describes the music as “house, techno, vaguely Latin.” The musical was designed to be taken on the road, although Byrne recently told Time Out magazine he would like to see the show put on at Studio 54 itself. The club has been made over into a theatre.
The project is not, said Byrne, “artistic license” nor “reportage,” referring to the Marcos couple as the “Jackie and Jack in the Philippines at the time” when the Marcoses were popular in the country.
The multimedia project took Byrne to the Philippines in late 2005, where he talked to practically everybody who had anything to say about Imelda, and which he recorded in his web site (http://journal.davidbyrne.com/). The show, still in development, was performed as a song cycle in Australia last year. Two comparative unknowns played the key roles: Dana Diaz-Tutaan as Imelda, and Ganda Suthivarakom (who also performed at Carnegie) as Estrella.
Byrne explained that the title song, “Here Lies Love,” was taken from what Mrs. Marcos wanted quoted on her tombstone. The story is largely told through the eyes of Estrella, her yaya for many years.
To his credit, Byrne didn’t fall into the trap of the Imelda stereotype. There’s no number here, for instance, about shoes. “In this case, as the material is all thematic, and it tells a story — of Imelda Marcos and Estrella, the woman who raised her — I might be excused for not playing the familiar favorites,” he wrote in his blog.
“It’s easy to fall into categories,” he said. The Imelda in “Here Lies Love” is a complex, human character, not the caricature that media had been fond of portraying (and, it might be added, that Imelda herself is fond of exploiting). He explained that the shoes were discovered after the Marcos family had fled the Philippines, which was not the period covered in his work.
“Of course things got out of hand,” he added. “But it’s not as simple, whatever, as people might think. Her story is the timeless story of power, politics, and psychological needs.”
According to the British paper The Guardian, who had been given a peek at Byrne’s private journal, the musical was conceived on May 12, 2005, when he wrote: “May 12 - Write opera about Imelda Marcos! Call Fatboy Slim.”
He told the paper: “Some years ago I read some books about the courts of people in power. They behave in an artificial, theatrical manner. They have rules that have nothing to do with the real world. Then I read about Imelda Marcos and her going to Studio 54, and converting the roof of the palace in Manila to a disco. I thought, ‘Maybe this is a way in for me, maybe that music is an expression of what having that kind of power feels like.’ Not that people in a club after a few hours of dancing go, ‘Off with his head!’ But there is this heady feeling, and there may be some connections there.”
Byrne spent weeks in 2005 cycling around Manila on his fold-up bicycle, interviewing both people who suffered under the Marcoses as well as ardent loyalists. Already, of course, “Here Lies Love” has met some criticism, mainly for its refusal to address the human rights abuses and murders committed by the conjugal dictatorship, and of course the absence of those notorious shoes.
“For me, the darker side of the excesses are, for the most part, a matter of record,” Byrne told the Guardian. “A lot of the audience are going to come with that knowledge already. What’s more of a challenge is to get inside the head of the person who was behind all of that, and understand what made them tick.”
Of his impressions of the Philippines, he wrote in his blog: “I hope to catch and absorb some whiff of the Philippine ethos, sensibility and awareness -- by osmosis -- and by conversation, too. I believe that politics is an expression of the landscape -- the streets, eroticism and hum-drum lives -- as much it is of backrooms, ideologies and legislature. Geography, religion, sex, weather, music, food -- these all contribute to a national policy and how it functions.”
Byrne, a critic of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, also compares the Marcos myth-machinery to that of the current US President: “Though the Marcoses’ conflation of national mythology with their own lives and political strivings was blatant, it’s also pretty obvious in the staged contrivances and the managed press of the Bush administration, among others. The ‘story’ of the inevitable triumph of democracy the good (and messianic Christianity too) is a potent one for a certain audience, a grand story that the media goes along with, at least until recently. Manifest destiny, the march of progress, of civilization. Once a ‘story’ is ‘in place’, believed in, accepted, one need only supply the appropriate images and little anecdotes to make it seem self-fulfilling and real. Living ‘in’ a story is more satisfying than not.”
“Here Lies Love” is part of a series of avant-garde concerts Byrne is curating for Carnegie Hall. Byrne has received the Grammy and Golden Globe for his score for The Last Emperor, written with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su. He has collaborated with Brian Eno, their album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts being one of the seminal, trend-setting new music collaborations which first used sampling. He also created The Catherine Wheel with choreographer Twyla Tharp and The Knee Plays with theatre director Robert Wilson.
Eric Gamalinda is the author of My Sad Republic, the novel that won the Philippine Centennial award in 1998. His latest collection of poetry, Amigo Warfare, is due for release in Spring 2007. His web site can be found at http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeslrlq/gamalinda.
“Here Lies Love,” a soap opera/musical on the life of the Philippines' former first lady, premieres at Carnegie Hall in New York City
By Eric Gamalinda
The bizarre, legendary life of Imelda Marcos has always been a soap opera/musical waiting to be told. It wouldn’t have surprised anyone if Tim Rice decided to write an entire musical around her, a la Evita, whose life she emulated.
What’s surprising is that it was David Byrne who decided to pick up the story. And in that sense, one can say Imelda has been done a great honor.
Byrne, avant-garde frontrunner of the boundary-smashing Talking Heads, performed the sold-out US premiere of “Here Lies Love,” his 23-song take on the life of the Philippines former first lady, at Carnegie Hall in New York City last February 3. He himself performed most of the sings, accompanied on stage by Filipina singer Joan Almedilla, who sang the parts of Imelda, Ganda Suthivarakom as her maid, a rock band and a small orchestra.
Described by Byrne as “a disco opera” -- he said he drew inspiration from Imelda’s love for disco music and the disco-era New York club Studio 54 -- rather than a possible Broadway musical, “Here Lies Love” features songs co-written with British Deejay Norman Cook, known as Fatboy Slim. The narrative spans the life of Imelda, her youth, her time as a beauty queen, meeting and marrying Ferdinand Marcos, living at the height of power, and later in exile after People Power kicked them out of the Philippines in 1986.
Byrne describes the music as “house, techno, vaguely Latin.” The musical was designed to be taken on the road, although Byrne recently told Time Out magazine he would like to see the show put on at Studio 54 itself. The club has been made over into a theatre.
The project is not, said Byrne, “artistic license” nor “reportage,” referring to the Marcos couple as the “Jackie and Jack in the Philippines at the time” when the Marcoses were popular in the country.
The multimedia project took Byrne to the Philippines in late 2005, where he talked to practically everybody who had anything to say about Imelda, and which he recorded in his web site (http://journal.davidbyrne.com/). The show, still in development, was performed as a song cycle in Australia last year. Two comparative unknowns played the key roles: Dana Diaz-Tutaan as Imelda, and Ganda Suthivarakom (who also performed at Carnegie) as Estrella.
Byrne explained that the title song, “Here Lies Love,” was taken from what Mrs. Marcos wanted quoted on her tombstone. The story is largely told through the eyes of Estrella, her yaya for many years.
To his credit, Byrne didn’t fall into the trap of the Imelda stereotype. There’s no number here, for instance, about shoes. “In this case, as the material is all thematic, and it tells a story — of Imelda Marcos and Estrella, the woman who raised her — I might be excused for not playing the familiar favorites,” he wrote in his blog.
“It’s easy to fall into categories,” he said. The Imelda in “Here Lies Love” is a complex, human character, not the caricature that media had been fond of portraying (and, it might be added, that Imelda herself is fond of exploiting). He explained that the shoes were discovered after the Marcos family had fled the Philippines, which was not the period covered in his work.
“Of course things got out of hand,” he added. “But it’s not as simple, whatever, as people might think. Her story is the timeless story of power, politics, and psychological needs.”
According to the British paper The Guardian, who had been given a peek at Byrne’s private journal, the musical was conceived on May 12, 2005, when he wrote: “May 12 - Write opera about Imelda Marcos! Call Fatboy Slim.”
He told the paper: “Some years ago I read some books about the courts of people in power. They behave in an artificial, theatrical manner. They have rules that have nothing to do with the real world. Then I read about Imelda Marcos and her going to Studio 54, and converting the roof of the palace in Manila to a disco. I thought, ‘Maybe this is a way in for me, maybe that music is an expression of what having that kind of power feels like.’ Not that people in a club after a few hours of dancing go, ‘Off with his head!’ But there is this heady feeling, and there may be some connections there.”
Byrne spent weeks in 2005 cycling around Manila on his fold-up bicycle, interviewing both people who suffered under the Marcoses as well as ardent loyalists. Already, of course, “Here Lies Love” has met some criticism, mainly for its refusal to address the human rights abuses and murders committed by the conjugal dictatorship, and of course the absence of those notorious shoes.
“For me, the darker side of the excesses are, for the most part, a matter of record,” Byrne told the Guardian. “A lot of the audience are going to come with that knowledge already. What’s more of a challenge is to get inside the head of the person who was behind all of that, and understand what made them tick.”
Of his impressions of the Philippines, he wrote in his blog: “I hope to catch and absorb some whiff of the Philippine ethos, sensibility and awareness -- by osmosis -- and by conversation, too. I believe that politics is an expression of the landscape -- the streets, eroticism and hum-drum lives -- as much it is of backrooms, ideologies and legislature. Geography, religion, sex, weather, music, food -- these all contribute to a national policy and how it functions.”
Byrne, a critic of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, also compares the Marcos myth-machinery to that of the current US President: “Though the Marcoses’ conflation of national mythology with their own lives and political strivings was blatant, it’s also pretty obvious in the staged contrivances and the managed press of the Bush administration, among others. The ‘story’ of the inevitable triumph of democracy the good (and messianic Christianity too) is a potent one for a certain audience, a grand story that the media goes along with, at least until recently. Manifest destiny, the march of progress, of civilization. Once a ‘story’ is ‘in place’, believed in, accepted, one need only supply the appropriate images and little anecdotes to make it seem self-fulfilling and real. Living ‘in’ a story is more satisfying than not.”
“Here Lies Love” is part of a series of avant-garde concerts Byrne is curating for Carnegie Hall. Byrne has received the Grammy and Golden Globe for his score for The Last Emperor, written with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su. He has collaborated with Brian Eno, their album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts being one of the seminal, trend-setting new music collaborations which first used sampling. He also created The Catherine Wheel with choreographer Twyla Tharp and The Knee Plays with theatre director Robert Wilson.
Eric Gamalinda is the author of My Sad Republic, the novel that won the Philippine Centennial award in 1998. His latest collection of poetry, Amigo Warfare, is due for release in Spring 2007. His web site can be found at http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeslrlq/gamalinda.
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