As a kid and a teenager, I held alot of anger. Nothing surprising there.
I held a lot of political anger. I was angry about environmental issues that I felt weren’t being addressed in an archipelago that has endless natural resources. I was angry about corruption that was and still is rampant in a 3rd world country.
All of these issues (along with a million other things) were bundled up in my chest full of rage, all tangled up in my head. I couldn’t articulate and express them properly.
In the end, all I had was my anger.
Until a band called Bamboo broke through the Philippine music scene. I admired them from afar for about a year but it wasn’t until I saw them live for the first time at a mall gig that I knew my life was forever altered.
A band that was made up of very opinionated artists, each incredible masters at their craft, with strong personalities that match and made music that stuck it to the man.
It was their music that untangled my thoughts and allowed me to breathe through the anger. They said the things that, at that time, my angry little self couldn’t and expressed them so fluently. Their words later became mine.
Then the band broke up.
Left a void.
Okay, in all honesty, I’ve already made peace with the fact that the band has broken up and will most probably never reunite. I had more than a few choice words about their break up years back but that was that. Heartbreaks over artists who’ve made a significant impact in who you are are always brutal. That’s fine. That’s okay. Like I said, I’ve made peace with that.
What I’m getting at is the fact that we don’t have a band like that anymore.
We haven’t got a band that’ll help today’s youth grapple with all the madness they are faced with at a local and global scale. A band that doesn’t only allow the youth to be angry (coz… There are alot of those) but gets the youth to think about and constructively act on what they can do with all that anger.
Heck, if I’m honest, I need a band like Bamboo right now to help me make sense of… Everything… That’s happening.
Here lies the social and cultural need for a rock band. A band that’ll write and sing the anthem of a generation.
From This Suok 