'Stiffed?
Tagalog punk, money troubles, and notes from the Filipino American indie underground, up Bindlestiff Alley.

By Stephanie Laemoa

ON A HOT early September night, I maneuver through a group of club kids at Arrow bar and sidestep a man passed out in front of a liquor store as I make my way down Sixth Street, avoiding eye contact with the homeless people, who seem to call out more urgently here. I'm looking for Bindlestiff Alley, the temporary home of Bindlestiff Studio, the widely regarded Bay Area center for Filipino American performing arts and the only one of its kind in the country. The volunteer artists of the Bindlestiff community have been educating the public about Filipino American culture and history through visual art, spoken word, film, theater, and musical performances at their original space at 185 Sixth St. since 1988.

I'm here because I'm searching the city's Filipino American indie music scene – after all, the Bay Area is the home of such influential artists as the Invisibl Skratch Piklz and Versus's and Whysall Lane's Richard Baluyut, not to mention the influential late punk venue Mabuhay Gardens. Growing up as a Filipino American in the relatively unpoliticized melting pot of Hawaii, I found no such center, no community venue for Filipino American arts and culture, let alone punk, indie rock, or hip-hop.

But I find it here at the 'Stiff's interim venue at 505 Natoma St., where punks with spiked hair, hipsters in striped jackets, and street kids in baggy shirts spill out into the alley, smoking and chatting on the sidewalk. The doorperson says hi with a smile, and the regulars hug each other. Inside, a mostly college-age Asian American crowd mills about, with even a few young couples with small kids in the mix. I know then this will not be a typical Friday night out.

Braindrops, a duo from Vallejo, open. The men rap poignantly, from a woman's perspective, about a young Pinay's experience as a prostitute. By the third act the crowd has doubled in size, and nearly 100 people squeeze in to see Los Angeles MC Kiwi perform. His hardcore hip-hop deals with political issues such as the anger of World War II-era Filipino guerrilla fighters who were promised and then denied American citizenship by the U.S. government. At his most passionate, Kiwi switches from English to the Filipino dialect of Tagalog, remaining in his native tongue at length. And in that instance, Kiwi does what so many tonight want to do: he bridges two worlds, Filipino and American.

Raising hell

Braindrops' and Kiwi's first-generation and immigrant tales bleed with political anguish and cultural consciousness. Rapped in a mixture of Tagalog and English, the combination is electrifying, even for non-Tagalog speakers such as myself. Yet I'm really struck by hardcore punk Fil Am bands like Eskapo who have frequently played at venues like Bindlestiff, 924 Gilman, and Libertatia and explicitly rail against the history of colonialism in the Philippines. This year the band put out their self-released debut, Kalayaan (Freedom), which includes "Bataan Death March." Clocking in at 28 seconds, the track is packed with fast-paced drumbeats, wrenching high-pitched guitar, and anguished, all-Tagalog lyrics.

Later I learn from Eskapo vocalist Rubert Estanislao that the lyrics are about his grandparents' life under the Imperial Japanese forces during World War II. In 1942, 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were forced by Japanese captors to march 55 miles from Mariveles in southern Bataan to San Fernando, where many died from exhaustion or were killed. Estanislao translates the lyrics for me: "In the hands of the foreigner, in the claws of the Japanese, their hands bled, but they still walked. My country did not surrender."

Eskapo's music pounds with the know-how of old-school punk. The band thrash their instruments with such intensity that it's easy to visualize the mosh pit. Estanislao's voice has a scratchy quality that gives his political lyrics an added force, especially on songs such as "Mamamatay Ang Mundo": he first reports a piece of disturbing news over a steady drum beat, and then he screams in English about U.S. military policy in the Philippines as the entire band joins in.

Not all of Eskapo's songs are heavy-handed. The group show a sense of humor, singing, "I drink too much every day" on "Drunkards Ball," and the song's pop-punk melodicism can be traced to bands like Green Day. Still, it's apparent Estanislao turns to Tagalog for more impact. For Estanislao, singing in his native language "comes from a personal place."

When I ask how Tagalog lyrics are generally received by mostly English-speaking audiences here, Estanislao tells me that when Eskapo first played in northern California in the late '90s, at a small bar in Vacaville, they immediately were insulted by yells of "What's up with the Shaolin Temple?"

It wasn't until seeing Filipino nonracist-skinhead punk group Signal 3 from L.A., at the first piNoisepop Music Festival at Bindlestiff in 1998, that Estanislao first felt encouraged to sing in Tagalog. "They unabashedly sang Tagalog songs, and their lyrics in Tagalog were so poetic about the working-class plight, about the immigrant diasporas, that it prompted a lot of bands in their area and in the Bay Area to form bands of more extreme music, who openly sang in their native tongue," he says.

It's no secret that events like the biannual piNoisepop are important to the Fil Am community as a way to regularly reconnect. Organized by brothers Jesse and Ogie Gonzales, the event brings together Fil Am bands from all over the nation, like N.Y.'s Kadena and L.A.'s Lost in Amerika, to perform their own brand of underground hip-hop, punk, indie rock, and folk alongside Bay Area groups like Skyflakes and Charmin. But that came to a temporary end when piNoisepop went on hiatus last year, interrupting a four-year run and leaving Bindlestiff Studio, which itself has spawned labels such as Full Blown Soul, as one of the few permanent centers for Fil Am music. And its familial atmosphere can't be underestimated, Estanislao says. "The Bindlestiff community has nurtured us, encouraged us to sing in our mother tongue, even more so after playing there, and we have supported its cause ever since."

Raising the cash

Now the Bindlestiff community needs that support more than ever. The artists may lose their original space on Sixth Street if $800,000 isn't raised by September 2005. In 2000 the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency bought the building that housed Bindlestiff Studios to build 100 units of affordable housing above the art space, and last year the group moved to its temporary Natoma location with the promise that the old space would be returned – with new theater facilities – if certain fundraising goals were met.

This summer the Bindlestiff directors hired Mary Schmidt, a capital campaign consultant, to come up with a fundraising plan. She writes me in an e-mail, "The Board of Directors of Bindlestiff Studio is working on developing 'Plan B,' the course of action Bindlestiff will take if it turns out that we can't raise the money quick enough. We're not sure what the best scenario for an interim solution would be, but we are actively exploring a range of collaborative and creative financing opportunities."

While the death of an art space might seem unfortunate but ordinary in San Francisco, Bindlestiff's loss, when viewed from a wider perspective, would be devastating. As Baluyut, who moved here from N.Y. three years ago, says, "There is no such thing in New York. Some people happen to be Filipino and played in bands, but there was no organization. There was nothing like Bindlestiff."

For someone like myself who only recently discovered Bindlestiff and its community, the possibility of losing the art space isn't unlike making a new friend who moves around a bit and threatens to slip out of your sight lines. Bindlestiff's loss would mean looking harder for Fil Am performance. And would I? Sure. But as with a friend who moves a lot, connections get lost and eventually dissolve. Without a permanent residence, it's harder to sustain interest.

Brian Bruce, Ninja Academy, Hijack the Disco, and Parting Glance play in celebration of Filipino American History Month, Sat/2, 7:15 p.m., Galeria de la Raza, 2857 24th St., S.F. $5. www.locusarts.org. Eskapo play with Exit Wounds and Static Thought Thurs/30, 7 p.m., Balazo Gallery, 2811 Mission, S.F. $5. (415) 550.1108. Eskapo, Utter Bastard, Lost in Amerika, and Myth of Progress play at a Kulturang Ugnayan ng Makabayang Sining Anakpawis (Cultural Linkage of Patriotic Arts of the Toiling Masses) benefit Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m., Bindlestiff Alley, 505 Natoma, S.F. $5. (415) 255-0440, www.bindlestiffstudio.org. Whysall Lane play Sun/3, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $8.(415) 474-0365.