Mimicking the mimics: problematizing cover performance of Filipino local music on social media

Abstract

The performance of cover songs in popular music has long been a subject of critical discussion and debate due to the artistic, social, cultural, and commercial issues that covers raise. In non-Western societies, most popular songs covered by artists are Anglo-American, a situation which implicitly privileges Western music and reinforces both the “west and the rest” trope and the cultural imperialism thesis. Taking American amateur artists and their online videos performing Filipino popular music as case studies, this article examines how social media platforms facilitate and problematize center-periphery relations in popular music through a diffusion of cultural products “from the rest to the west.” Moreover, we show that more than the promise of audience reach, the phenomenon reflects how these cover artists embody cultural and social situatedness in Filipino culture. As they mimic the mimics, they also embody an identity in motion.