With 22 Grammy nominations between them, Filipino American artists with West Coast roots like H.E.R. are 'becoming the people we wanted to see growing up.'
“It’s been so amazing to hear, especially from young girls, that they see someone like them out there,” said Olivia Rodrigo.
The history of the Philippines and the U.S. has been long and fraught since the colonial era. Control of the Southeast Asian archipelago, formerly a Spanish colony, was contested after the Spanish-American War, and after first declaring independence, the Philippine-American War brought the country under U.S. colonial governance in 1902. At the end of World War II, the Philippines became independent in 1946, though the U.S.
Los Angeles has the most Filipino Americans of any U.S. city, with an estimated half-million according to the Pew Research Center. H.E.R. agreed that growing up in California shaped the sense that Black American music had a unique resonance within her Filipino culture too. “I should be careful here, but Filipinos are kind of like the Black people of Asia,” says H.E.R. “I love all our commonalities.”
“She must have been in her 60s, but she’d fly from San Francisco to Columbus and fly me back for the weekend, it was such dedication of love,” King said. “My Filipino family is deeply rooted in being together. Every house has karaoke, they’re so warm and friendly and don’t care how much of me was Filipina: ‘She’s one of us!’”The L.A.
While the country’s distinct culinary excellence has flourished in L.A., Zarsadiaz thinks it’s a more complicated path for overtly “Filipino” music to rise here in the way K-Pop did.“K-pop grounded itself as trendy, because there was an aesthetic and fashion and fandom tied to that presentation,” he said. “Filipino Americans, often if they grew up here, were told to embrace an American identity, to assimilate, and part of that was embracing the English language more.