Pop culture production in the Philippine Cordillera

Abstract

Most of the media representations of the Igorot continue to exoticize and freeze them in an ideal, primitive past. This paper foregrounds the cultural products now being produced by the Igorot using modern ethnology and media. In these self- conscious products, where they exercise agency, what can be learned from such pop culture products? How are the Igorot representing themselves? In pop songs, they construct who they are and what they have become. In recorded songs using mostly American folk, rock and country melodies and forms, they tell stories of how they are making sense of their experiences in an unevenly globalizing, runaway world.