When you think of Filipino or Filipino American musicians, what comes to mind? Julie Plug? Eraserheads? Joey Ayala? DJ QBert? A kulintang ensemble, or a rondalla orchestra? How about Filipinos playing banjo and slide guitar in a traveling tent show in Iowa, circa 1920? Filipino musicians performed in the Redpath Chautauqua traveling tent circuit in the American Midwest dating back at least as far as 1917.
The Chautauqua might be considered a mobile relative of both the St. Louis Exposition (and other expositions of that type), and the early 19th century Lyceum movement developed in New England by Josiah Holbrook. But unlike the urban "White City" paradigm of the grand expositions with their "palaces" and exhibition halls, or the lyceums with their upper-class New England audiences, the Chautauqua shows played to primarily rural and small-town working and middle-class families in the early 20th.
Read more of my essay—which summarizes some of my initial research on "Filipinos in the Midwestern Chautauqua Circuit"— in the July 2004 issue of Our Own Voice: http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2004b-1.shtml