Ferdinand Marcos Jr. unplugged: Why the President needs music

'I’ve come to the conclusion that my life was lived with a soundtrack. When I hear a song, I remember when I first heard it, what I was doing, how I was feeling. Every big event in my life there was an accompanying track ongoing,' Marcos says in an interview with Gary Valenciano

AT A GLANCE

• President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has a history of music-related controversies, including using a presidential helicopter to attend a Coldplay concert, which he described as 'unmissable.'
• Marcos views music as an essential part of his life, associating significant events with specific songs and expressing admiration for the Filipino audience's enthusiasm for live performances.

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MANILA, Philippines – Back in September 2024, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had caused an uproar for hiring a band to play at his private birthday party. 

While the Philippines is known as a music-loving country, it wasn’t just any band, that Marcos hired — it was acclaimed British pop-rock outfit Duran Duran, which was flown in just for his 67th birthday celebration. 

But the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) had attested that the party, held at a Pasay City hotel, was thrown by “old friends,” and that the Duran Duran performance had merely come as a surprise to Marcos. Then-communications secretary Cesar Chavez had even told reporters in a message that the band’s appearance came “at no cost to the government.” 

This wasn’t the President’s first music-related controversy, however. 

Just a few months before that, in January 2024, the son of the former dictator had also found himself in hot water when the public caught wind of him using the presidential chopper to get to British band Coldplay’s concert at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan. 

It was “unmissable,” he had told reporters in a chance interview several days after the show. 

“It was, by the way, fantastic. Ask anybody who attended the concert. The show they performed was spectacular. I haven’t seen anything like it,” he said. 

It seems, then, that the country’s biggest music fan happens to hold the state’s highest position. And Marcos was always one to make his affinity for music known. 

Around the time of the 2022 presidential elections, an old clip of him playing the saxophone had gone viral. He had revealed in an interview with Gary Valenciano that premiered on October 5 that this, along with the flute, were instruments he had picked up in his youth. He had even gone on to join several orchestras. 

Marcos had first studied music while he was pursuing his secondary education in England in the ’70s. He was a self-confessed troublemaker then, and was sent to his housemaster to receive his punishment. 

“He said, ‘You’re here all the time. You’re always in trouble. Go find yourself a hobby so that you can occupy your time by doing something constructive,’” he recalled. 

Back then, he had been listening to a lot of music anyway, so it only seemed like the natural choice. What had served as his musical awakening, he shared, was Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” which he had heard another student play out loud while he was making his rounds before class. Aside from playing the flute and the saxophone, he would later also study music theory. 

“It’s a fascinating thing because unlike any other art form, music doesn’t exist anywhere else except in your brain. Think about it. A sculpture you can touch, a painting, you can look at and you can see the brushstrokes. All the other forms. This is just sound and it only becomes music because your brain interprets it as music. But the universality of it, everyone understands,” Marcos told Valenciano in the interview. 

The President views music as an integral part of his life — as something he cannot live without. If anyone were to take it away from him, he tells Valenciano, he wouldn’t know how to manage. 

“I just don’t know how I would get through the day,” he explained. “It’s the only thing that can change my mood. There are two things that can change my mood. Music’s one of them. The other one’s my children.” 

Even Marcos’ big life events have specific songs associated with them. He and this art form have long been intertwined. “I’ve come to the conclusion that my life was lived with a soundtrack. When I hear a song, I remember when I first heard it, what I was doing, how I was feeling. Every big event in my life there was an accompanying track ongoing.” 

But even as a big music fan, the President can’t seem to figure out why Filipinos excel so much at holding a note. He said that whenever his foreign friends would ask him why his countrymen were such good singers, he had never been able to give a proper answer. 

Apparently, what he does know, though, is that Filipinos make the best concert audiences. 

“I’ve heard it from Elton John, I’ve heard it from Sting. I’ve heard it from The Corrs. I’ve heard it from many of these artists that come. And they said, ‘The audience does all the work for me. I don’t have to sing. I don’t have to perform because the audience is singing for us,’” Marcos explained. 

Most Filipinos are lauded for always enthusiastically singing the lyrics back to the performing artist as loud as they can. It’s become a big indication of who the Filipino people are as enjoyers of music. 

In Marcos’ case, perhaps much of his repertoire as a music fan reflects in his willingness to do anything to catch his favorite bands perform live — even if it means flying a high-profile music act in for a private show or riding the presidential chopper to the Philippine Arena to beat the evening traffic, much to the ire of taxpayers. – Rappler.com