TO PINOY K-Pop fans, you young people who astonish us by memorizing K-Pop lyrics but still flunk in math subjects, we need your help.
Fifty-one containers of garbage from South Korea were shipped and parked at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Misamis Oriental. Since you speak Korean, please tell the Korean government that we love K-Pop, Koreanovelas and Samsung phones, but not their junk.
Your K-Pop fandom depends on this so please do your best. Then you may realize the difference between disposable fun things like K-Pop and the disposable ugliness of our country being a dumping ground of everything imported, including junk.
And it’s another thing when DepEd decides that Filipino language will not be taught in high school and Ched offers Korean Language. We’re not just losing our mother tongue, we’re losing our sense of being Pinoys.
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My wife overheard a family conversation on the other side of the restaurant. Teenage children were singing Bohemian Rhapsody, perhaps enjoying that Queen biopic last week. Then the father just bombed the mood.
“Why are you singing that song? Don’t you know this singer died of Aids?” Silence.
Ouch. How I wish I could talk to this dad, and tell him: I know you’re a dad who’s worried about many bad influences in the world, and we think rock stars are the worst models for the youth.
But think about this. You never thought Grammy winner James Taylor who sings folksy feel good You Got a Friend was into drugs in the 1970s. Or that pop and soul superstar Whitney Houston would die from drug overdose.
And about HIV, do we have to look at it like a scourge or a gay disease like it is still 1990? Think about this again: When Freddie came out that he had HIV in 1991, superstar Magic Johnson came out that year too. Their stories shocked us, but they had the courage to come out and break the stigma on HIV-Aids.
We’re nearing 2020, and HIV is affecting straight, gay, young people, babies from mothers with infection. It’s not rock and roll influencing this to our young people. Heard of twerking, club drugs, sexting? They assault us more.
Sometimes in the craziness of these things, the old songs still comfort us. Celebrate that young people are learning the songs of your times because of that movie. Songs that open our hearts and minds. So let’s enjoy music, the guitar, three chords and the truth.