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This chapter argues that apparent similarities between Filipino and Spanish musical practices acted as points of convergence that promoted sustained “courtship” and engagement between the distinct cultures, which eventually resulted in the emergence of hybrid or syncretic musicopoetic genres. Case studies of three colonial genres are offered: the auit (awit), loa, and pasyon. Each case study considers the respective Filipino and Spanish antecedents of each genre, and examines the ways in which the two traditions were synthesized into a new, distinctively Filipino practice within the context of religious conversion or within broader patterns of transculturation. These genres relate to the concept of mestizaje (literally “mixing”), which is interpreted here as a subversive form of cultural expression in colonial contexts and as a powerful means of representing hispanized Filipino identity.

This chapter argues that the Filipino Community Center represents a “class project” that not only reveals a repertoire of Filipino identities but also an active confrontation with the group's ethnoracially assigned identity and its political, economic, and social consequences. It analyzes the grand opening ceremonies of the Filipino Community Center and suggests that as a middle class project (with the Filipino Chamber of Commerce a central stakeholder), it emphasizes self-help entrepreneurship and the elevation of business-related “ethnic heroes” as part of the never-ending pursuit of the “American Dream” in a “Land of Immigrants.” The chapter investigates several interrelated issues, namely how those in the middle class shape subjectivity in a community that has been defined and defined itself as impoverished and subaltern, and the various ways Filipinos think about and perform class (via the images, symbols, and ideologies they use) to construct competing visions of “Filipino.”

This chapter discusses the context and history of Filipino migration to Hawaiʻi. Filipinos in Hawaiʻi are the product of waves of immigration initially borne out of American colonization and the social and historical contexts that surrounded them. In addition, Filipinos are a unique blend of many diverse cultures and influences, and this discussion emphasizes the significance of regional differences and regional pride among Filipinos. After presenting the more salient features of Filipino identity, this chapter goes on to discuss the Filipino ethnocultural identity in Hawaiʻi, proposing that the Filipinos of Hawaiʻi currently represent a diverse group, with a unique ethnocultural identity that maintains significant threads of continuity with traditional Filipino ethnocultural identity and that also reflects molding by the various social and historical forces that Filipino immigrants faced in the past 104 years, including the upward social mobility that likely drove much of the immigration.

This chapter discusses theoretical issues surrounding the politics of heritage, and analyzes them in light of the various configurations of culture and power evidenced in Cotabato from the precolonial period to the present. It considers how power in Muslim Cotabato has been both enunciated by rulers and questioned by those subjected to it, and discusses the problems concerning the nature of traditional Islamic rule in Cotabato and the derivation and prevalence of a transcendent Philippine Muslim identity. The chapter also proposes an alternative approach for analyzing ordinary and extraordinary resistance based on a radically reformulated notion of hegemony as public accommodation of power.

This chapter illustrates the complexities of being an “insider anthropologist” as a Filipino man among Filipino communities in Hawai‘i. Through the author's experience, the chapter finds that the meaning of “being Filipino” is not essential or pregiven, but can shift in different geographic and cultural contexts. The interactions presented in this chapter depict ways in which individuals (and communities) align themselves according to the conditions and particularities of a historical moment, suggesting that “Filipino” identity is a fundamentally contested category. They also underscore the situations, positions, and negotiations in the identity formation process, revealing not only the mobility of identities but also their motility.