APEX Express – 8.13.26 – Bayanihan in Ballhalla

Apex Express, Asian Pacific Expression. Community and cultural coverage. Music and calendar. New visions and voices. Coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express. Welcome to Apex Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee, and tonight is Baho Nihon in Balhalla. Bao Nihon is a core Filipino cultural value of community unity, and Balhalla is the home arena of the Golden State Valkyries. Apex Express was invited to join the Filipino Heritage Night at the Valkyries game. Tonight, please join me and my guest host, Mia Nakano, as we speak with the community behind this cultural celebration. That includes Al Perez, artist Venezia Martinez and Christian Kubuai, and coach Carolyn Sedeco about the history of Philippines and basketball. Join us. Today I have the honor of having my bestie with me, who's going to co-host. Welcome to Apex Mia Nakano. Hi, Miko. Thank you for having me. I was invited to a Valkyries game, and I said, oh, my gosh, I need somebody with me that can speak basketball. And so I thought of you. And here we are. And the Valkyries do put on a show. That's one of the things that makes them so great. Yeah, it was super fun. It was Filipino Heritage Night. And so we got a chance to talk with the different artists that are there. What is the night about? What's the cultural celebration? What were some of the things that stood out to you? I think that it really got to the roots of... One, what a great sports city, San Francisco, and then just the Bader Bay Area is. And two, the deep connections to the Filipino community that exists within the Bay Area. When you look at... how historically the Warriors really came up and the fan shots from when they were at Oracle Arena, the huge fan base that was there initially was the Filipino community. To see that translate in a very different way as the Valkyries are coming up in the WNBA as this incredible team second year. on their way to probably making the playoffs for the second year in a row, bringing that community back, particularly with all the connections of the artists, the activations, and even the food that they have in Chase Arena brings the full circle. Having Natalie Nakase as the coach there is so powerful and important representation for Asian Americans as well. The other thing that stood out to me was I did not know there's this history of basketball in the Philippines. And then to talk to...

the different guests on our show tonight about what that history represents, where it comes from the connection to colonization, and then also how it's really developed into its own cultural phenomena in the Philippines. I played basketball all throughout junior high and high school and was very immersed in it in Southern California. But I had no idea that basketball was the national sports, the Philippines. After we came back from the game, I did a little bit of a deep dive. And it was really wonderful to see that it actually started in the Philippines as a woman's sport. And it was making sports more accessible to folks and also very clearly connected to roots of colonization and religion. but to still have that anchor and connection there. And then this interesting juxtaposition where right now, there is still never been a Filipino player in the WNBA. There are folks who people really thought were almost going to make it. So there's still that one last phase that they need to break into this sport that is their national sport. But in the United States, they're not quite there yet in terms of representation. And talking with Coach Caroline, which people can hear later in the episode about that history and how it was intended to be this women's sport in the Philippines because it was easier. They thought they'd give it to the women to play. But the men were watching and going like, oh, this looks fun. This looks more fun than baseball. So it really just took off. I love that transition that it went and across the country. A few of our guests talked about tenement basketball courts. It's just so wildly different from this country. I think that that is contextually just how sports are played in a lot of different countries in the world where they don't have access. When you think about people playing football, like soccer in different areas where they are playing barefoot, they are playing in dirt or like fields that are not necessarily fields. I think that in the context of playing basketball differently in the Philippines versus the United States or even in European leagues, when the United States goes to play in the Olympics, even though you have the USA women's team, the USA men's teams who are supposed to be the best of the best in the world, the way that the game is played at that particular... level in arena is quite different and so they all have to adjust to the physicality to how calls are called just slightly differently. With smaller players in the WNBA, what I find really incredible, and this is what Carolyn talks about a little bit, is like the layup packages. When you get close to the rim, you don't have a Filipino who just goes up and makes a regular layup. They do it with flair, right? There's a part of that maybe is a little bit of showmanship, but also it's a part of trying to sneak your way around bigger players so that you can get the basket.

anybody that you play against, even in a league that is familiar to you, you're going to have to change your game up and play to your strength and also just know what you can't do in the game and go to another person who has more of those strengths. One of the things that stood out to me in talking with one of the artist, Christian, who was there in the outside, in the cultural area, and he was doing pre-Philippino writing with folks, and we'll interview him later in the episode. He was saying how he does this activity in a lot of different games, but it was very different. That was the first time at the Valkyries, and he said the crowd was so different, that it felt like back in the day, it felt like community. There weren't tech bros. I feel like the audience was way more women. As someone that goes to Warriors and Valkyrie's games, do you notice a difference in the audience? The first Valkyrie's game that I had the opportunity to go to last year was their Pride Night. And that is the game that my wife and I always go to for the Warriors. It's a special feeling there. I noticed. There was a whole parking lot area for strollers on different levels. There was such great energy and people just talking about the game, people cheering or rooting for players on the other team. There was not a lot of negative energy going around when Christian mentions the tech bro energy, the people rolling around Patagonia shirts and sweatshirts. That is so true. You truly feel this family environment that's also very queer friendly. There's so many folks of color. And they're not just there because the team's winning. Because last year, we didn't know if the team was going to win or not. They were just showing up. The Valkyries have really created such a strong culture that is team-based. That's what you see with the Valkyries. But I also think that that's a testament to the coach. to the players who really trust in one another and to the community that we have in the Bay Area. I think even the players did not understand when they came here what they were stepping into. And they talk about talking to other players on opposing teams who are like, is it always like this? Is it every night? They're like every single night. This is how our fans are. And we love it. So it's in different WNBA hometowns, it's not like that? Absolutely not. The Valkyries have sold out every single game from day one. They are the first WNBA team, and I think the first woman's professional sports team to reach $100 billion in valuation. Then you see other teams like the Atlantic Dream who are playing in arenas of 3,500 or the Dallas Wings who are playing in much smaller arenas, even though they have all these franchise players like Angel Reese and Paige Beckers and Azy Fudd, the Dallas Wings are actually moving to the same arena that the Mavericks are going to play in next year. It's an interesting juxtaposition given where the context of our world is at.

Who's in office right now? The battles that we're having to fight, to keep women's rights, queer rights, trans rights in the forefront and not have them stripped away. Yet on the other side of this, we have this huge, meteoric rise of women's sports. And it's not just basketball. It's baseball. It's hockey. It's all these different leagues that are starting to emerge and have... huge band bases where you can watch women's professional sports all year round. They're nationally televised games. Thank you for the history lesson and current events of women's sports. I love it. One of the other things that was really special for this Filipino heritage night was the halftime show where they had DJ Pelo playing and then they brought onto the court. the director of Soma Filipinas, Raquel Redondias, and she runs San Francisco's Filipino Cultural Heritage District. She got her name on a Valkyrie's jersey and was announced in the halftime moment as a big show. I had a conversation with her. The work that you are doing, particularly in this moment, bringing together. The artists, the culture of Filipinos and Filipino history is so critical right now because so many of our communities, cultures and stories are getting erased that we are the culture bearers and culture keepers. And so thank you for doing that work. Somo Filipinos, for those that don't know, was established as a Filipino cultural heritage district in 2016 and was one of the first in the state designated as an arts district by California Arts Council in 2017. So they do so much great work. They host great things from the United States of Asian America Festival every year. Self-defense workshops for women. I've taken those in Kapua Gardens that were amazing. mental health services for Filipino folks and provided groceries in COVID education and Filipino language training. And then artists, as you were saying, they pulled together all these different folks for this wonderful night to introduce a sense of heritage and a sense of pride that was really powerful. It's a really lovely connection back to the Filipinos banding together with Chinese American folks in Chinatown. that really helped create the broader Asian-American movement and what that word and power even means. From the I-Hotel to today. Exactly. And all of that being really anchored and rooted in San Francisco, as well as everything that Larry Iliang did with union organizing that I think has just recently started to get recognized in the broader social justice movement. I'll put links to past shows that we've done on the I-Hotel.

on Lariat Leong. Because folks, if they don't know about either of those movement leaders and huge moments in our Asian American history, they should. And it's powerful part of our labor and housing rights history. Were there other things that stood out to you at this Valky's game? I know that this is probably not going to be a surprise to you, but the fact that we honestly just got to go behind the scenes and see the inner workings of what the Valkyries, the tunnels and getting lost and trying to figure out. It was a maze down there, by the way. It was like, which direction? Go to this press room. No, this press room, this place. It was very much kind of in theater-wise, it's like going backstage and seeing how the tech is done. The thing that was the most exciting about this unique experience was being able to see Natalie Nakase talk after the game. And the snippet in here is really incredible because it shed light into not just who she is as a coach and how she approached the game, but... her investment in people and the importance of seeing people for their full selves and the importance of the whole WNBA as a league, as a business, they have a lot of money and power. So who are we going to lift up? It's always a very intentional choice of what is happening at Chase Arena, at the Valkyries Night, these heritage nights that really uplift so many wonderful communities that are doing incredible work. We're going to get a chance to do an interview with Coach Natalie in a different episode, so stay tuned for that. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience? Go see a Valky's game. Go to Ball Hall. It will change your life. Experience ball holla. Thank you for joining me. And hopefully you'll join me back when we do an interview with Coach Natalie too. Oh, absolutely. To frame the conversation, we start with Valkyrie's coach Natalie Nakase, the first Asian-American woman to coach a WNBA team. Last year, she was named WNBA Coach of the Year. And at the post-game presser, a reporter asked her, Tonight is Filipino National Heritage Night. So can you talk a little bit about what it means for fans to be seen around the league? This is her response. Yeah, it's huge. I love the fact that we can celebrate and acknowledge different cultures. I'm really big on that. I think it gives people almost like a superpower or confidence for

you know the day to be recognized like that and to be celebrated for everything that their culture brings but also i think educate people about different cultures and so i love the fact that we're super intentional about that because i think we have to do that more than not and it's exciting i think this world needs more celebration i think this world needs more love more care especially when some people are not seen as much In the very loud outdoor chase arena area, we spoke with several of the folks involved in Filipino Heritage Night at the Valkyries. Please note that the sound quality is due to the nature of being outside, a really excited fan base at the game. First off, listen in as we hear from Al Perez, who helped to curate this community celebration. Hello, my name is Al Perez. I am a community organizer. I'm serving as president of a nonprofit called the Filipino American Arts Exposition. And we partnered with the Valkyries to help curate their cultural activation for Filipino Heritage Night Tonight. Cool. And since the Valkyries are named after women warriors, is there a Filipino version of a woman warrior? Absolutely. We have one that's local. Her name is Victoria Manalo Draves. She was the first... American woman to win two Olympic goals in the Olympics in 1928. She happens to be Filipino-American. So yeah, she was born and raised here in San Francisco Bay Area. So we're very proud of her to be to represent us and be the warrior and an inspiration for all of us. Excellent. And since Valhalla or Balhalla is the space that we want to get to, what is the Filipino version of that place you want to see? Wow. For us, we have this tradition called Bayaneehan. That's when we help each other towards a common goal, no matter how Hercule and that task is. It's just coming together to help each other. So it's not necessarily a destination. It's more like an attitude of coming together as a community towards a common goal towards a cultural pride and community empowerment. Great. And tell us what you're doing here today with all these groups. Yeah, so we have an outreach table here because we're part of the... organizing committee to curate tonight's event. So we actually have an event next weekend called the Pistahan Parade and Festival. It's the largest Filipino cultural celebration in the country happening August 8 and 9 at the Yearba Buena Gardens. So please come check us out. There's a big parade down Market Street on Saturday to kick off the festival weekend. and then the festivals at the Yibuvena Gardens, 11 to 5. We're here to promote that event, as well as all our other upcoming events in the fall. We're also curating the Filipino Heritage Night with the Golden State Warriors, with the Giants, San Josei Sharks, and San Josei Earthwakes. And then, one more. October is Filipino American History Month in the country. So we also produced official...

celebration, proclamation by the mayor at City Hall. So we have a reception, we have entertainment, and we like the City Hall building with Philippine flag colors. And when folks are coming out to these Filipino nights, what should they expect? What's happening? Our goal is to be here, to be in community, to help showcase our beautiful culture, our traditions. So when these events happen, we usually have... cultural performances, either pre-game or a half-time. Tonight you're going to see Pilo, a Filipino rapper, and a hip-hop singer. Here in the plaza, we have some festival hoops because basketball is a big thing in the Philippines, a national sport. There's also salap shop is a concession inside. They have Filipino food there. Our goal is to get people a little taste of our Filipino culture, so hopefully they'll be inspired to learn more about our community and our culture. And what's your dream for the game tonight? Of course to win, right? Yeah, number one. Volcker is to win. And also, I hope that people will come and learn about our culture and appreciate it more. Maybe it will inspire them to try some Filipino food or even come to our Pistahan festival next weekend. Also, Senior Sissig is right here in the plaza. They also do fusion Filipino food. I'm hoping that by being here, people can get to be a little bit more familiar and curious about Filipino culture and community. We have such a vibrant and diverse culture. We love to be in community. Our food's delicious and entertainment is fantastic. So come check us out wherever and whenever you can. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the artists who are here in the community organizations that are here tonight. So there's several of us nonprofit organizations here. Our group is the Filipino American Arts Exposition. Our mission is more about... broadening awareness and deep in understanding of Filipino culture and traditions by doing these cultural events. There's another group here because Young Filipino Professionals Association, or YFPA. They're more about uplifting young entrepreneurs, young career-minded individuals to help them on their path to being more successful. There's also Soma Filipinas cultural district is here. There's a... relatively new neighborhood in San Francisco. You know, there's Chinatown, there's Chinatown, there's North Beach. So now we also have a Filipino community. It's called Sauma Pilipa. They're also celebrating a 10th anniversary this year as being designated as a cultural district. There's also Vinazir is a visual artist. She's doing live art, mural here, inspired by the Filipino culture and the intersection of culture and basketball.

So it's a great way for people to kind of learn about our fine arts, our visual arts, and our heritage. Christian Kabuai is doing script writing of traditional pre-colonial Philippine script. The Chinese and Japanese have their own script writing. The Filipino community also did before we were colonized by Spain. It's kind of almost forgotten and almost wiped out. So there's a few people now that's trying to revive that old tradition of writing. It's called Baibayan. Can you talk a little bit about the history or why basketball is the national sport? Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, why is basketball the national sport? I'm not sure exactly, but I think it has to do when after the Philippines was colonized by Spain, and then in the country became a commonwealth of the United States, right? And during that time, a lot of Americans came to the Philippines to establish educational institutions and one of them is sports. It just got introduced to us and somehow it clicked. Everybody loves basketball. No matter where you are in the Philippines, in every little barrio, every little town, there's always a game happening. Are people playing in school like they start in elementary school or is it more community-based? I think it's... It's both. It's just kind of grown and grown when you're just a kid growing up in your community. It's always basketball around you, surrounded by basketball. And then, of course, in more elementary high school, it became more teams dynamic, competitions, interveral games. Even between little neighbors and little towns, they also have competitions. It's really a big deal. In fact, they love NBA. All the American basketball players are so popular. Everybody knows who they are. Al mentioned artist Venizier Martinez, and we pulled her away from the beautiful mural she was creating to talk with us. Again, this is outside, so the sound is quite loud. Venizier is a muralist and a visual anthropore. She weaves a tapestry of narratives that explore the connections between human traditions and the ever-changing landscapes that shape them. Listen as she tells us about her work and how she utilizes a symbolic red thread. I'm Benazir Martinez. I am a muralist and a visual entrepreneur. And I am invited to create a live painting for the Golden State Valkyries. What has inspired you to create this work of art? So, first and foremost, of course, women empowerment, and we have a lot of very... talented Filipino Americans who play basketball in the Philippines because I grew up in the Philippines basketball is such a huge deal everywhere in the most remote areas in the Philippines basketball is their way of enjoying themselves and just pretty much having a time of their life basketball tenements are everywhere in the most remote areas in the Philippines There's this concept of Filipino resiliency that I wanted to incorporate in my work. There are basketball hoops that is made out of wood scraps and discarded metals. I wanted to highlight that part of Philippine ingenuity. That's why I'm here as to just shed light on that beautiful...

concept of Filipino ingenuity that we have. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Can you break down what a basketball tenement is? Oh, basketball tenement. So tenement courts, these are, how do I say it? In America, there's basketball courts that is like roofed with a roof. Like in a gymnasium. In a gymnasium, yes. But in the Philippines, anywhere can be a basketball tenement court. They'll just put up a basketball hoop in a pole, like an electricity pole, and they can already play basketball in that area. So their courts just made up anywhere? Yeah. Anywhere in the community. Anywhere in the community, in the most remote areas in the Philippines. They do that all the time. I grew up in the Philippines, so it's that... really is an immersive experience of having to see basketball really change lives for young people in our community. So we're at a WNBA game and I'm wondering if there was a woman basketball player that you looked up to when you were growing up. Growing up my dad plays basketball. That's the only experience I know that remembering what basketball is like because I'm mostly in martial arts but here I am trying to experience a different, like more empowering way of sports. And it's when I came to America that I experienced this kind of really, oh, so it's kind of empowered. And since the Valkyries are women warriors, is there a Filipino equivalent of the woman warrior? First and foremost, it's the Filipino community leaders that I know of in the Bay Area. They are my women warriors. They helped me from the ground up. They meet us, the Filipino community in the Bay Area, welcome me. They're all women. Who would you say are some of those folks? Some of those women. Sonia Dellen, she wears so many hats. She's president of Filipino food movement. founder of Summer Camp in the University of the Philippines Alumni Association in San Francisco. She was the senior vice president for Bank of America Global Leasing and she welcomed her home to me and pretty much helped me establish my life here as an artist. So those are my women warriors. And when people see your beautiful work, what do you want them to walk away with feeling? I wanted to take a second look again in my work because these, my work pretty much talks about Filipino immigrants and immigration at large and pretty much our contributions and the harvested hopes that we have contributed in this cultural landscape. This show is a pop-up tonight, so where can folks find out more about your work or see your work in the community? I have a huge, huge mural, 2,500 square feet mural in Fifth and Folsom, in San Francisco, in Soma. It's called Annie, meaning to harvest. There's one in downtown Santa Cruz. There is one in Yuba City. There are multiple murals in Michigan, in New York, mostly in Queens.

It's pretty much everywhere, but if you follow the red thread, which is my signature, my artist's signature, you'll know that it's my work. Thank you so much. Thank you so very much. I appreciate you taking the time. Another artist presenting their work was Christian Kubayi, working on pre-Philippines calligraphy. His line was so long that we ended up interviewing him separately. Christian is an artist, entrepreneur, futurist, who specializes in endangered writing systems and tattoos from the Philippines. Hello and welcome to Apex Express. Can you tell me your name, your background, and what you are doing at the Valkyries Filipino Heritage Night? Yeah, my name is Christian Kabuai. I'm a cultural practitioner specializing in our old pre-colonial, I say pre-Philippine writing system and tattooing traditions. I was at the Valkyrie's Filipino Heritage Night to interact with the community. I've done a lot of work with the warriors, you know, going back to Oracle. for these cultural nights, the giants as well. So most of the teams in the Bay Area, but it was my first time with the Balkans. And it was quite different. How was it different? The vibe was, I'm telling everybody that the vibe, it was my first Valkyries game too. So the vibe was different. It reminds me of the old Oracle. It wasn't full of like tech money that are, you know, Patagonia vests watching the game. It felt very homegrown and it just brought me back to those days in old Oakland A's and when the Warriors were in Oracle. What does that evoke for you? What is that feeling like? It gives me a stronger sense of community. And the audience is different. The demographics is different. There isn't that toxic male energy. I have to worry about someone being drunk and going off. And it was very homey and welcoming. It brings back as a kid when I used to watch A's games in the bleachers, watching an Oracle, the community. And not everyone was there to be seen. They were really there for the team. Oh, I love that. I actually do feel like it's such a we're together community vibe. Yeah. They even had the wave. I know some snooty teams, they don't have the wave. That wave went on for a long time too. Exactly. I've been to a lot of games. Oh, I don't want to look stupid or whatever. So that's a big part of my childhood. So I was going to try and talk with you at the game like I did the other artist, but you had a huge line waiting to see you and talk to you. Talk with me a little bit more about your art form and this pre-colonization form of writing.

Yeah, most civilizations had a writing system. It was prior to the land alphabet when the Spanish came in colonized the Philippines in the 1500s. We have this writing. There's only one ethno-linguistic group left in the Philippines that writes it. I come from a background of calligraphy, graffiti, and abstract art. When I started to practice it, I incorporated those things. Later, I found that I had to become an educator than starting to do the cultural festivals. Then you make your parents proud. It wasn't until I started to interact with the community that there was this... responsibility. I didn't come from a highly academic background, but I was being invited to Stanford and Berkeley to give talks about this. So, you know, that imposter syndrome kicked in. Because of the efforts that I've started in 2010's, the idea of education around this specific writing system, my service isn't really needed. It's out there. Wikipedia, even AI can do it now. And there's a lot of influencers on TikTok that are building on the stuff that I did 10 years ago. It goes in line with my idea of putting myself out of business. Because if it's a cultural practice, then you shouldn't be this gatekeeper, this apex of this knowledge or this practice. It needs to be spread. What is the writing system called? A couple names. One of the popular names is bye-bye and that literally means to spell. It's an adverb, but then it became a noun. So there's many different names depending on the languages in the Philippines. And you said that there's a village of folks that still utilize it. Have you been there? Yeah, I was there in 2016 with a research trip. I stayed with them for a few days to learn a bit more about the culture and to donate some time and volunteer because there's the Mangyan Heritage Foundation. I did some technology work with them, but then also meet with the elders that were there. The village elder did an interview for a film project that I'm doing, but also met the heirs, the daughters and the family that ultimately inherited this practice. And so they know that you're teaching this cultural practice around the world and what is their opinion of that? What do they think? They like it because it's a different perspective and a lot of questions. When I go home, they go, oh, why are you interested in this? It's a totally different perspective because out here we have our identity, the diaspora issues, but back home because of circumstances, colonization, etc., then the priority is to eat, to live, not to preserve these cultural practices. I've had some indigenous elders tell me that when...

People come over there to do their dissertation and they need to figure out their paper to get their PhD. They ask them, what are you doing to preserve this? It's kind of extractive or like information gathering. Honestly, it really is, you strip it down. It is survival, food, clothing, and shelter. When people who are standing in line for you at the actual Valky's game, what were they asking you to write? Would they ask you to write notes or their name or what was their request? Yeah, the line. I was telling people, I've never had a line that long when I've done the warriors. So it's kind of different. That's interesting. Yes. I was writing mainly people's names and some words. Maybe a good. Third were non-Philippino. Somewhere they're just curious and asking and cultural sharing. Someone knows a Filipino and they're, oh, can you write Mahakita? Like, I love you. And so we pick up things just here in the Bay Area. I have conversations with people want to hear a family name that I never heard about. I say, whoa, where's your family from? Kids learn the stories on how they combine names and some of the origins. It's always interesting when I do this with folks. I love that. And you're also a tattoo artist. Do you use some of this writing in your tattoo artistry? Yeah, I do. And that's where the separation between the art and the cultural practice is, where the writing wasn't tattooed traditionally, but that's where I kind of balance the art. And I separate those two where art is my expression, my personal expression on paper or maybe even on a body. But a cultural practice is more about them. and their lineage. So I have to be clear to make those two distinctions. So a question I've asked all the different people that have been involved in this night is that the Valkyries are based on women warriors. And I wonder if there's a Filipina woman warrior that comes to mind to you. Yeah, there is. There's one that part of the lore, where my dad's from, in his area called Pangasina, the land of the salt. There's a princess warrior named Princess Orduha that he was thought of as a great warrior. This specific Princess Orduha has that Valkyrie's spirit. All the artwork that you see and academics will say, oh, it's you're romanticizing and things like that. But you know what? We need a little romance in our lives, right? And romance leads to action. Ah, we certainly do. I'm wondering with all those people, the long line that stood waiting for you and you're having these conversations, what would you like them to walk away with after interacting with you? Yeah, that's why there was a sign, and I took a picture of it. It doesn't say Philippine writing, it says pre-Philippine calligraphy. I made that term up in 2007 as a way to jolt someone's idea of what pre-Hispanic, pre-colonial is, because those things kind of just fly overhead. But if I said pre-Philippines, people, they take a step back. And they say, what's that mean? Or...

They try to have a smart comeback. Well, what were we before then? And my question is always then, well, Anna, let's talk about it. That gray area that being uncomfortable leads to more curiosity. And ultimately, that's what I want folks to go ahead. And, you know, oh, I have this banana leaf. I ran out of index cards. I brought a hundred of them. I had these banana leaves that I just meant to decorate the table. I said, you know what? Let me write on these banana leaves like how our ancestors did. People are asking, oh, what did we wrote on banana leaves? I'm all, yeah, we wrote on organic materials. So this thing. is probably going to wilt away in a few weeks or a month or so. But that's how it is. So it's a metaphor for our physical selves, but then also the message. Maybe they can go ahead and learn how to write it themselves or until we reconnect again. That's beautiful. And how can our audience find out more about you and your work? Yeah, you can just search for me online. My last name's K-A-B-U-A-Y. First name's Christian, both with a K, all over the internets and the socials. Pretty easy to find. Thank you. And we'll put links to your website in our show notes. So thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thanks, Miko. I honestly didn't know that basketball was such a revered sport in the Philippines. So wanting to find out more, I reached out to a bunch of community folks and multiple people said, reach out to coach Carolyn Sodeco. She's the one. She's in the know. So talking to me from her vacation spot halfway around the world is coaching Koppwa's Carolyn Sodeco. Welcome Carolyn Sedeco to Apex Express. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for having me. Can you first start by telling me who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? Oh my gosh. My people are collectively folks who identify as Filipinics, Filipino, Filipino, and American. and migratory, and those who claim blood relation and those who I'm still looking for. I live in San Francisco, California, Oloni land, and also in the land of Choctaw Palbancha, which is New Orleans, Louisiana. Those are the two places I reside. Can you share about your work with Coaching Capua? Coaching Coppua is what I love to do, and my background professionally, is as a certified athletic administrator. I'm a physical educator at the high school level by profession, by certification, by training. But really what I love to do, and so what I do in my consultancy is I explore and I examine and I think about and learn about.

everything related to sports cultures and how the culture of sports and all its various ways affect our societies. Specifically, I geek out over learning about my own Filipino-American histories and other peoples, learning that through the concept or the constructs of culture and how sports really is, for me, the funnest way. to investigate who I am and who we are to each other. I call myself a sports relationship coach. I am a sports culture's consultant. I also like to identify as a sports liberator. Ooh, can you break down what a sports liberator is? Miko, I took that from a friend of mine. Donya Cabello, also from the East Bay, played at Cal, played professionally. And when I first met her years ago, she identified as such. And I said, that is exactly. the kind of person that I want to be like in sports. I wanted sports to be a way that I could share with people who we are to one another. I wanted to teach young people that they can express themselves in a way that helps make them feel free. With my background in sports administration, I was feeling like... The sports industrial complex was really the antithesis of that and what a lot of people in my profession were striving for. was this success that was not defined in the same way that I was defining what my liberation was and what I felt through sports. So I adopted that. I asked Donya, can I call myself a sports liberator too? And she said, girl, you call yourself whatever you want. So that's what I go by. Oh, thank you for sharing. That's so interesting in the midst of our kind of capitalization of sports, how corporate it has become. Interesting. Thanks. I also wanted to thank you for sharing with me, Rafe Bartholomew's Hoop Nation and Bill Cassidy Hubbard's Hoops Paradise. So those, along with your YouTube's, really gave me a grounding in the connection between basketball and the Philippines. I'll put a link to those in the show notes for other people that like to do deep dives like me. But can you just give our audience? a sense of why basketball is so popular in the Philippines? I learned about the history of basketball and Filipino culture in the Philippines through...

various people, Rafe Bartholomew, one of them, and his book Pacific Rims, a friend of mine here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kevin Santos, was doing his master's thesis on the history of basketball in the Philippines and putting an ethnic studies frame on it. So he was the one who actually practiced his thesis and presentation with me. And I learned a lot through him and through other people as I was learning about this myself. And how basketball, when it was initially, or as we, the modern game of basketball was invented by Dr. Naismith in Massachusetts with the peach tree basket, most of us are familiar with that history. But also that was around the time of the Philippine-American War. And U.S. colonization was at its beginning. And so what did the United States export was its culture, and a lot of that was through sports, mainly baseball, because baseball was already the national pastime. Basketball was relatively new, and basketball was taught in the Philippines, also like in conjunction with the American education system. by teachers, by the Thomasites, and by others who were using that form of colonization. They gave basketball to the women and the girls because it was the lesser sport. It was a newer sport. So it was a lesser sport. They gave it to the women. The men were supposed to play baseball. The Philippines is a collective society. Baseball is a spread out sport. And people aren't close to one another. You're out on a field. It's hella hot. And it's boring. I agree. Totally agree. It's easy to make this assumption that these people playing baseball were watching the girls and women play basketball. And it's faster, close to one another. It's easy to make a space. So they started playing basketball. Also, you don't need all the things. You need a ball. Exactly. In the early days, you didn't even need shoes. So it took off in that way because basketball already itself was an activity that Filipino people kind of took hold of already. And they made it their own. Trained teams started forming. And the Philippines had national teams that were already very successful in... Asian contexts. So in Asian tournaments, they were dominating. In 1975, the Philippine Basketball Association became the first men's basketball league in Asia and the first after the NBA in America. So the Philippines has had a long history of relationship with the sport of basketball. But because it's been so long, the sport itself was formed in response to all the cultural aspects that were already existing, right? A lot of town squares had basketball courts because it was so easy to put there. So the same plazas, meeting spaces where people would have their town gatherings, social places were also courts.

And why do you think or just surmise that basketball has taken off more than football or American term soccer, which has developed so much in other countries, which is also a little bit more communal? My opinion is that American colonization. And the United States dictated, much more the United States cannot dictate because football or soccer is a more global sport. And the U.S. didn't have as much stake in guiding that as a colonization tool as they did basketball. Interesting. Speaking of the colonization and politics, I'm wondering about the connection between baseball and politics. In Bill Cassidy's podcast, they were talking about a politician who released their own basketball shoe, which is wild to me. So I'm wondering if there's other connections between basketball or politics and if that's generally somebody who's more on the colonizer's viewpoint or more conservative viewpoint. Interesting. I go back and forth with this a lot, Miko, the colonizing tool that is sports, especially the capitalistic sort of extraction of sports, right, of its players who I like to think of as workers. They're also workers, right? The professional. Philippine Basketball Association is not much different than even professional sports in America with the way they're set up, right? You have owning groups or companies. And so you have these ways that exploitation and that workers' rights are, how do I say it? Because it's at the professional level, these concepts are very much at play. Excuse the pun. The Philippines also has a governmental arm. related to sports. So sports in and of itself is recognized, right? It doesn't have as much of this sort of altruistic thing as we say in the United States. Like the sports is like the good of mankind, like that sort of thing. The kind of Olympic idea of unity, it brings us all together. Right, like those conceptual sorts of virtues. Yeah. So in the Philippines, I think. It's so much more practical because it's fun and you could get in a game anywhere and it's accessible. It's accessible to all strata, economic strata, right? You see basketball courts everywhere in rural areas, in cities, everywhere you'll see basketball course. The Philippines itself as a country. I think that relationship to sports is something different than the American relationship to professional sports. Where dominance and winning.

and beating others and making as much money as possible in that is at the forefront in the United States, even with youth sports now. I do some consulting work, especially in youth sports spaces, and the privatization and the extraction of the youth sports space is, we could go on all day about that. I think this is obviously from a Filipino-American perspective. I've never lived in the Philippines. I was born in the Philippines. But my relationship to the Philippines is also being mitigated by how I experience American sports. Right. So when I think about how I've experienced basketball when I've gone to the Philippines, and it's the same as any aspect of that culture. Right? It's warm. It's welcoming. It's friendly. And those are the cultural aspects that kind of supersede the fact that basketball has its place, but it's in service to the cultural needs, right? To the need to be social, to participate in a town gathering. It's so sociopolitical. And because it is still a colonizing tool, right? But it's still mitigated in a way that I think just like Filipino basketball players are so like quick. They're known for quickness, agility, and finesse and like drama, right? I used to joke around like, you could always tell where Filipino basketball player is in the United States because no Filipino... who has Filipino blood in them, can do a regular layup. Like, they have to make it all fancy. I think that those sorts of aspects that are not tangible, that bring to light the way a culture of people affect the sport. It enables a culture to push out through the boundaries of that sport, what was given to them. What was given to them is this is how you play. These are the roles and all that kind of stuff. And that's great. But Filipino history of basketball is always like, how do you integrate all the really cool things about your culture? It's something that's very different and it emerges as something that's not quite American. Thank you so much. I'm wondering how our audience can find out more about you and your work. They can follow me on Instagram at coaching Kapua, K-A-P-W-A. Kapua is the Filipino word for the concept of interrelationship, interconnectedness. And so everything I learned about being, being a person really is through being a good teammate. And sports is the funnest way, like I've said before, to practice being a good teammate. Thank you so much, Coach, for sharing with me about sports liberation and your work. And I'll put links to all that in our show notes. And I thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express. Thank you, Miko.

Please check out our website, KPFA.org, backslash program, backslash Apex Express, to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting. Keep organizing. Keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame King Lee, Anujvaida, Cheryl Trong, Isabel Lee, Jalina Keen Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preeti Magalajakar, and Swati Ryasang. Tonight's show was produced by me, Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame King Lee. Have a great night. I'm Susan Young, chair of the Pacifica Foundation Board of Directors. One of the exciting things happening across Pacifica is our National News Service. Every weekday, we're bringing together stories and reporting from across our network, giving listeners and broader perspective of what's happening around the country and the world. It's another way Pacifica fulfills its mission of providing independent journalism and thoughtful coverage of the issues that matter most to our communities. We get to hear from Longshoremen in Oakland. A nurse in the Bronx, a farm worker in Rio Dosa, a screenwriter in L.A. and a schoolteacher in Washington, D.C. We can hear their own lives reflected back with dignity and depth. Base command. All systems go. We are Go for launch. This is when KPFA music takes over. Raw. Ecclectic, real. No playlist algorithms, no corporate formatting. Just sound that moves, shifts, and surprises. Jazz, bleeding into cumbia. Folk crashing into noise. The underground rising to the surface. No two nights are ever the same on KPFA. Throttle up. This night has no ceiling. Find your groove at 94.1 FM, KPFA.org.

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