The Black Eyed Peas and their video for "Bebot"

Hello all,

Just to clarify any confusion. The Little Manila Foundation mentioned here is different from the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, who I ran the Maui Marathon for last year. Either way, both groups do great work for the Filipino community, so I urge you to check out the videos. The more views the video gets, the greater the chances of having it aired on TV. Kudos to my pal Dawn Mabalon for her work on this project. Enjoy!

-joanne


Little Manila Foundation
BEBOT Press Release
The Little Manila Foundation

For Immediate Release: Pop Stars the Black Eyed Peas premiere video for "Bebot," set in Stockton's Little Manila neighborhood circa 1938, online on August 4.

STOCKTON, CA - On Thursday, international pop stars the Black Eyed Peas will premiere their new video for "Bebot," set in Stockton's Little Manila Historic Site, circa 1938. The video premieres in Los Angeles and in the Philippines on Thursday August 3, and online worldwide at http://www.kidheroes.net/bebot/ on Friday, August 4.

The Little Manila Foundation, which works to preserve the Little Manila Historic Site, hopes the video will be an entertaining history lesson for a young generation of Filipino Americans and young fans of the Black Eyed Peas, and that it will bring attention to need to restore the buildings. Last year, the Foundation purchased the historic Mariposa Hotel, a three story residential hotel next to the Rizal Social Club, which had been home to hundreds of Filipino immigrants through the
decades.

They are kicking off a campaign to raise 1.5 Million to restore and revitalize the building, which will be the site of the Filipino American Cultural Center and Phase One of the Filipino American National Museum, a project of the Filipino American National Historical Society. The Foundation produced a mini companion documentary for "Bebot" at www.littlemanila.net that describes the history of the Little Manila area and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the production.

In the video, Apl.de.Ap (Allan Pineda), plays a young Filipino immigrant who visits a dance hall, the Rizal Social Club, in
Stockton's Little Manila, in 1938. There, he rocks a crowd backed up by a jazz band. In its time, the Rizal Social Club, at 138 E. Lafayette Street, was a dance hall owned by a Filipino American entrepreneur, was one of the hottest spots in downtown Stockton's vibrant Little Manila neighborhood, which was the largest Filipino neighborhood in the nation from the 1920s to the 1970s.

"It's not just about doing a video," Apl told MTV News. "Filipino culture is like a community movement, and it feels good to represent my culture and to be embraced by my people."

"Actually, it's based on true history," director Patricio Ginelsa told MTV News. "I took Apl's farmer roots and placed him in the role of a Filipino farmer," Ginelsa told MTV news. "Back then, Filipino farmers had their day jobs, but all we looked forward to, though, was getting in our best suits and going to the best clubs - looking nice, and meeting all the bebots (hot chicks)!"

Ginelsa said he first learned about the significance of the Little Manila Historic Site and early Filipino American history on an extended trip to Stockton in the summer of 2000 to promote the Filipino American independent film The Debut.

"The Little Manila Foundation struggles to kind of keep all these historic landmarks alive and (they were) making sure they weren't torn down," said Ginelsa. "As a filmmaker, this was a story that needed to be told in some way. It was really their campaign to raise awareness about Little Manila that really inspired me, and I was able to make a music video with a worldwide band."

"I think it's important to learn something about Filipino American history that you can't read in your U.S. history books," Ginelsa said. "I learned about it while living in Stockton with the community leaders and the youth. It really inspired me."

"Bebot" which is loosely translated as "hot chick," recreates the world of 1930s Stockton. Few Filipino women immigrate to the United States before World War II, and Filipinos lived in a mostly-male world. To have contact with women, Filipinos flocked to downtown Stockton and Little Manila's dance halls.

In 1938, Stockton was rigidly segregated. In the video, Apl and the Peas pass a hotel emblazoned with "Positively No Filipinos Allowed." Such signs were common in Stockton and in many California cities before the Civil Rights movement.

Last year, Little Manila Foundation helped to save the original Rizal Social Club, now shuttered, from a wrecking ball. A developer had planned to raze the entire neighborhood, but community pressure from the Foundation, and a new administration at City Hall, prevented the destruction. The Foundation argued that the building, and the block, had historic significance for all Filipinos nationwide and in the Philippines. The fact that the multi-platinum Black Eyed Peas chose Stockton as the setting for the video for "Bebot" bears this out, says Dillon Delvo, executive director of the Little Manila Foundation.

"We are so honored that one of the biggest music groups right now chose to set their newest video in Stockton's Little Manila Historic Site," said Delvo, who was a consultant to the video. Delvo and members of the Little Manila Foundation traveled to L.A., where they assisted in the production. "We taught the band and extras how to cut asparagus, and talked with them about what life was like in the 1930s for Filipinos in Stockton."

Delvo said that filming the entire video in Stockton was too cost prohibitive with a large cast and crew, so they filmed interiors in another significant site - Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles. The crew filmed exteriors in the Little Manila Historic Site. The video features cameos from Filipino American celebrities such as American Idol finalist Jasmine Trias and local Stocktonians.

The video project, produced and directed by Filipino American independent filmmaker Patricio Ginelsa and singlehandedly funded by the Peas' Filipino American member, Apl.de.Ap, was a labor of love for all involved. The Peas' record company had little interest in promoting the all-Tagalog single, but the group and the production company felt that it was important to bring an aspect of Filipino American history to the group's fans and to the larger community in general. It is unknown whether the video will receive airplay on MTV and VH-1. Online distribution, community viewings, and film festivals will bring the video to wide audiences.

The song's lyrics, all in Tagalog, describe Pineda's childhood in the Philippines, and his experiences as an immigrant in the United States. In the song, he expresses thanks to his Filipino American fans for their support. In the video, Apl plays a young Filipino immigrant who works in the fields cutting asparagus in the San Joaquin Delta all day, then dresses up to dance and perform at a jazz and dance club at night.

"Apl's real-life experiences as a Filipino immigrant in the United States who leaves a life of poverty in the rural Philippines, misses home, and struggles against racism to make a life in America, mirrors the experiences of early Filipino immigrants who came to Stockton in the 1920s and 1930s, so the song is actually very fitting to depict how these early Pinoy pioneers saw themselves," said Dawn B. Mabalon, a co-founder of the Little Manila Foundation, and a professor of history at San Francisco State University. Along with Delvo, she provided background research and historic photographs for the production.

Mabalon says the video is a good historical interpretation of life in Stockton's Little Manila in 1938. The video shows the Peas working in asparagus, and then getting dressed up at night to go out to the dance halls in downtown. "Filipinos came to the Central Valley and performed backbreaking work in the agricultural fields, particularly in asparagus, but at night, they had a reputation for being the sharpest dressers in Macintosh and zoot suits, the slickest dancers, the best jazz musicians," she said. "The video depicts all of that hardship and all of the fun that must have been life for Filipinos Depression-era Stockton. Because of the sex ratio imbalance of very few Filipino women and a lot of young, single Filipino men, the multiracial dance halls were like magnets to Filipinos."

Stockton was the party central for Filipinos in the United States, she said, an aspect of history depicted in the "Bebot" video.
"Stockton in the 1930s was a wide-open town - gambling, dance halls, pool halls, saloons. To turn a blind eye, police were paid off handsomely - and so these young bachelors flocked from all over the nation to Stockton for fun," she said. Stockton in the 1930s, according to oldtimers, was even more fun than downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco, Mabalon said.

Historic photographs of Ernie Hernandez's 1930s jazz band from the 1930s, San Joaquin County asparagus crews, and photographs of young Filipinos dressed in snazzy suits taken on El Dorado Street in the 1930s were used as inspiration for the production design, down to some painstaking detail. The crew, for example, tracked down a similar guitar to the one used in the Hernandez jazz band photograph.

The Little Manila Foundation works to preserve and revitalize the last remaining buildings of the Little Manila neighborhood, which was ravaged by urban redevelopment in recent decades. Since 1999, the Little Manila Foundation has fought developers and demolition-happy politicians to save the remaining buildings, among them, the original Rizal Social Club. In 2002, the city designated four blocks of downtown Stockton as the Little Manila Historic Site. In 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Little Manila Historic Site to their annual list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in the nation.

Since then, the Foundation has successfully saved the neighborhood from imminent destruction, and works to educate the public about the need for Filipino American cultural and historic preservation in Stockton. They hope to restore and open the Mariposa Hotel in 2007.

"Our struggle continues as we begin the process of remodeling and refurbishing the Mariposa Hotel to help remind us of our past struggles but also to celebrate the contributions and our participation in building this country," said Rico Reyes, co-chair of the Little Manila Foundation. "The community's financial commitment is crucial to preserving and revitalizing the neighborhood known as Little Manila." Tax-deductible gifts can be sent to the Little Manila Foundation, PO Box 1356, Stockton, CA 95201.

Starting August 4, the Black Eyed Peas video "Bebot" can be viewed at http://www.kidheroes.net/bebot/index.html. The Little Manila Foundation has produced a short companion documentary to the video, which can be viewed at www.littlemanila.net.