I’d go and travel halfway round the world for my Morena girl.
The Hey Joe Show is a group of BYU students that celebrates Filipino culture
primarily in the Cebuano language.
Ok, Ok, ONWARD!
Cause I have someone just like her--my Morena girl.
My Morena... My Morena..
(Speaking in Cebuano) We are the Hey Joe Show!
We all served in the Philippines together,
we met each other on our mission.
Any time we’d say, "Hey, Good morning! How are you?"
in Cebuano, people would freak out-
and they’d be shocked that we were speaking their language.
It’s pretty unusual for Americans to know Cebuano.
Since it’s not the national language-the media was in Tagalog or English-
we thought, you know, it would be awesome if we made videos
in the language for the people there.
(Speaking in Cebuano)
When we came home from our missions,
the first video we made was really silly and simple
and we just introduced ourselves in Cebuano.
And within the first week we had like a million views.
All these different news stations reporting on five Americans speaking Cebuano.
When that happened, we realized like, wow, people really love this.
So we started making more and more videos.
Filipinos are really enthusiastic about social media.
Whenever we filmed a video, it reached the mountains of Cebu.
Hey Joe is what the little kids in the Philippines yell when there’s a foreigner that walks by.
The Hey Joe show is a comedy group.
(Speaking in Cebuano)
It’s all family-friendly, clean, positive, pro-Philippines, comedy.
Filipino!
Our main objective is to inspire pride in the Filipino people.
(Speaking in Cebuano)
We’re obsessed with the Philippines and the culture there.
The first tour was in 2015.
We scheduled five malls.
Hopefully like 20 or 50 people show up.
We get picked up in a van by some people from the mall.
They told us that they were going to drive us into the venue.
Why would they need a van to go into the mall?
Couldn’t we just walk in?
And they’re like, "Yeah, there’s no way that you guys can walk in there-
-there’s too many people."
And as soon as the van enters the mall,
people started running up and pounding on the van.
We just hear screams.
(people screaming)
Thousands of people screaming, and they had signs with our names on them.
A mob of people surrounding the stage.
It was deafening, the screams.
And that’s when it all kind of hit us, like, oh my goodness-
We’re actually famous in the Philippines.
There were times when we had a police barricade,
and there were people just attacking, grabbing on our shirts.
Holy cow! What just happened?
(Speaking in Cebuano)
When we walk down the street with the five of us in the Philippines,
immediately people recognize us.
We’d have just this huge crowd of people asking to take pictures.
I guess we’re a big deal-
-I feel so uncomfortable saying that!
We met the president of the Philippines.
We have a couple videos dancing with the President of the Philippines,
which is crazy and kind of surreal.
Our most fun videos to film were where we took over
public transportation in the Philippines.
Ok, Ok! Aloguinsan!
We were conductors for jeepneys.
The conductor hangs on to the back of the jeepney.
We drove through the city and we were saying our destination,
and people were laughing so hard.
We were street vendors.
(Speaking in Cebuano) Ten pesos, only ten pesos, water, water, water!
When there’s a lot of traffic, all these street vendors go through the cars,
and they sell water and chips.
So we would walk up and ask, who wants to buy water? Water! Water! Water!
It was just so much fun to be able to do that and highlight that little part of the culture.
One of my absolute favorite parts of the Hey Joe Show
was recording "My Morena Girl."
We were in Cebu until 3am recording,
and the next day we filmed the music video
and we got to go to all these different places in Cebu that are famous.
Crowds of people were crowding around the crew.
At one point there was this police car that stopped traffic, and they all ran out and said,
"Can we get a picture with you guys?"
I think the whole thing’s so crazy just because we’re normal college students.
We come back and we sit in a class where no one knows us.
People in the Philippines don’t always recognize that
we’re not famous when we come back to America.
We kind of live a double life in the Philippines.
It’s always a weird transition.
You know, no one is asking to take pictures with you.
The only reason that we were able to start the Hey Joe Show
was because we were all students at BYU.
So BYU is kind of the common denominator through the whole thing.
We’re in a transitioning phase of the Hey Joe Show,
where we’ll no longer be together here at BYU.
Hey Joe Show as it exists now probably won’t continue for very long.
We are moving to different places.
I’m going to medical school,
Jake is starting work at Google,
Davis is looking to go to law school.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to keep up
our connection with the Philippines.
(Singing in Cebuano)
I think the best thing about the Filipinos is that they’re kind.
They’re the kindest people in the world.
I feel really blessed that I was able to live there and serve there
and now have this connection for the rest of my life to the Philippines.
We’ve kind of tried to create this Filipino family across the world
and we’ve tried to create like a bridge between cultures.
Years down the road I’ll be able to look back and tell my kids,
"You don’t want to listen to me now, but I was once famous in the Philippines."
We love Hey Joe Show!