Pambihirang Bakla: Ang Homoseksuwalisasyon sa Tambalang Bakla sa Bakla ng “Ang Boyfriend Kong Bading” ni Allan K.

This study is part of a project that seeks to gather Filipino, Tagalog, and English OPM songs in the last 30 years that feature the bakla as a character, as a persona, or as a performance––all in an effort to trace the development of the gay, bakla, and homosexual identities in Philippine culture. Through the close-reading of lyrics and music(ality)/arrangement coupled with a combination of cultural and gender, gay, and queer studies, the project aims to determine the features of what constitutes these non-heterosexual male identities in the country through the textual and performative interventions of music. This particular segment of the study dedicated to Allan K.’s “Ang Boyfriend Kong Bading” is a close-reading of the mentioned song through several layers of mimicry and performativity that the text is able to embody by employing the techniques of adaptation and the emulation of gender-driven voicing. Through such complexities of song and the existence of an identity that the song’s utterance achieves in its milieu, the study aims to show how wit, irony, and the assumption of bakla stereotypes are able to give way for gender to cross the borders of sexuality.