Las Piñas Bamboo Organ

My mother is my first piano teacher. She taught me piano basics like the proper positioning of the fingers on the keyboard and keys that make up each chord. As a child, I became familiar with the music of Bach, Mozart, Chopin, and Beethoven from the piano pieces she played.

This nostalgia of my mom playing classical music was roused when we visited St. Joseph Parish church to see the iconic Las Piñas Bamboo Organ.

Before getting near the bamboo organ, we had to pass through the old convent which houses the Bamboo Organ Museum. The artifacts inside the museum tell the history of the bamboo organ and its maker, and the church that houses this Philippine National Treasure.  

The Recollect friar who built both church and the organ was Fray Diego Cera dela Virgen del Carmen, an Argonese from Huesca. Cera was the first parish priest assigned to what was then undeveloped Las Piñas. By 1816, he began work on the bamboo organ which took eight years to complete. A strong typhoon in 1880 that was followed by an earthquake damaged the bamboo organ. The pipes were kept in the old sacristy until 1917. The unique instrument was fully restored in 1975 by Johann Klais Orgelbau.

Displayed inside the museum are the original parts of the organ like the keyboard and some of its first bamboo pipes.

We learned that from the 1,031 pipes, 902 are made of bamboo. Interesting features of the baroque bamboo organ are the seven short metal pipes called parajitos because when filled with water they make bird sounds, as well as three long bamboo pipes known as tambor because they imitate kettle-drum rumbling.

There is miniature version of the organ that allows visitors to view the mechanism of the bamboo organ. Labels are provided to inform visitors of certain parts such as the tiklado or keyboard, the registros or stops and the cancela or channel.

But the most exciting part of the museum tour was when we were led to climb up the choir loft. While admiring at the bammboo organ’s antiquity and grandness in scale, 12-year old Jude Aram performed Mozarts and Bachs under the 19th century pipes. Jude is a member of the internationally-acclaimed Las Piñas Boys Choir. This all-boys choir performs regularly during the annual Bamboo Organ Festival.  

-Mother’s Day 2012

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Ang Nuno Gallery

Similar with how some places in our country got their names, Angono also stems from its local legend. It is said that when a group Spanish soldiers first came to Angono they found a village ruled by Datu Biga who lived on a hilltop. The villagers referred to their datu as Ang Puno or Ang Nuno. Reporting back to their superiors, the soldiers announced that they had just been to Angono.

Perhaps inspired by this legend, a museum that is located at the 2^nd and 3^rd floors of famous local restaurant in Angono was named Ang Nuno Gallery.

A tour of this museum actually begins at the restaurant on the ground floor. Balaw-Balaw Specialty Restaurant has been featured in several food and travel shows because aside from serving sautéed ants and crickets, cow butt and testicles in sizzling plate, wood worms and frog cooked adobo style and other equally exotic dishes, it also showcases Filipino heritage through the colorful papier mache, antiques, and artworks by local artists and craftsmen.

Climbing up the spiral staircase we were led to a repository of Philippine treasures. Displayed are hundreds of paintings and wooden sculptures inspired by Filipino traditions and legends, all created by Angono folk artist Perdigon Vocalan.

Influenced by National Artist Carlos Botong Francisco, Vocalan’s artworks capture Angono’s rich cultural heritage and folklore.

Along with the artworks is an impressive collection of antiques and religious objects reflecting the eclectic taste of the artist who built this museum. It ranges from Time-honored Kitchenware like the tapayan hanging over a dining table to a huge, intricately carved wooden door.

Scattered around the museum are a collection of religious statues including a complete tableau of the Last Supper. We found interesting religious antique pieces like the Santo Entierro and heads of life-sized santos without their corpus.

In addition to being a museum, Ang Nuno Gallery also houses the workshop on the 3^rd floor where the colorful mask of the higantes and papier mache dolls are made. While the huge masks were designed for the Higantes Festival, the miniature higantes are made as perfect souvenirs to those who want to bring with them a great example of Filipino folk art.

Philippine Visual Arts Festival

They say that Filipinos are generally expressive. This expressive nature of Filipinos is celebrated in February during the commemoration of the EDSA People Power Revolution and in various activities held during the month-long National Arts Month.

In 1986, Filipinos openly expressed their common desire to overthrow years of dictatorship rule. Since then, the nation celebrates this historic event as the EDSA People Power Revolution every 25^th of February. A few years after EDSA, a presidential decree has been proclaimed making February the National Arts Month to showcase various artistic expressions of Filipino artists through music, dance, painting, sculpture, theater, and other creative forms.

On one weekend in February we were back in Angono, Rizal for the Philippine Visual Arts Festival. PVAF is the visual arts component of National Arts Month. Fittingly, the town of Angono has played host for this five-day festival dubbed as the Rizal Experience.

Hailed as Art Capital of the Philippines, Angono has been popularly known as the cradle of the artistic abilities and creative expressions. For one thing, this lakeshore town has produced two National Artists; Lucio San Pedro for music and Carlos Botong Francisco for painting.

But even before Maestro San Pedro’s lullabies and Botong’s murals have gained national recognition, the unique artistic talent of a painter of religious icons known as Tandang Juancho (Juan Senson) has already made Angono famous for its artistic traditions during the 19^th century.

Predating the artworks of Tandang Juancho are the Angono Petrolgyphs. Discovered by Botong in the 1960s, these rock carvings in Layang-Layang Cave are the oldest artworks in the Philippines dating back to 3000 BC.

Angono’s long history of artistic expression inspired contemporary artists Nemi Miranda Jr., the late Perdigon Vocalan and Jose Blanco, the artists collectively known as the Angono Ateliers and the Neo-Angono Arts Collective to continue the artistic legacies of the pre-historic artists and masters like Tandang Juancho, San Perdo, and Botong.

That five-day art festival highlighted Angono as the country’s art capital. It began with the Higantes Parade at the town center.

The parade of colorful effigies made of bamboo, cloth, and papier mache, started as form of protest from the people when Angono was still dominated by a stingy landlord who prohibited merrymaking except during the feast day of the town’s patron saint.

The Higantes Festival brings to mind that even before the 1986 EDSA People Power, the town folks of Angono have already staged a political protest through nonviolent and creative means.

That February 1986 peaceful protest is captured in the Human Cordon painting of Angono artist Nemi Miranda which depicts a Filipino family in People Power protest.  One of the main events of the festival is the special handover ceremony for the Human Cordon painting to the president of the Philippines.

On the second day of the festival, music and dance were performed by the Kontemporaryong Gamelan Pilipino aka Kontra-Gapi. Led by U.P. Professor Edru Abraham, this ensemble uses indigenous Filipino instruments like the Maranao kulintang, Cordillera flat gongs called the gangsa, and a variety of wind instruments and xylophones made of bamboo to produce mesmerizing music.

So mesmerizing was their music that after the group’s performance the audience tried out each musical instrument and attempted to produce harmony.

While Kontr-Gapi sets the mood for the festival day through their music, artists-delegates from different regions in the country participated in the interaction mural painting. The inspiration of the murals coincided with the festival theme of Tradisyon at Inobasyon.

Completing the Rizal Experience, the delegates and visitors were led to museum and galleries around Angono like the Nemiranda Arthouse, Blanco Museum, Ang Nuno Gallery, 2nd Gallery, Atelier Gallery, Petroglyphs Museum, and Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo.

-25 February 2012

Sariaya

Those traveling in Quezon know that they are in Sariaya when they see the imposing twin-spired, brick roofed mansion along Maharlika Highway.

Lured by this impressive pre-war castle of Tayabas Provincial Governor Natalio Enriquez, we made an unscheduled stopover in Sariaya the first time we traveled the road on this part of Quezon province.

Curious to see what’s inside one of Sariaya’s pre-war mansions, we made arrangements to join a tour led by Tina Decal of Kulinarya Tagala in 2008. At that time, Tina led us inside the Gala-Rodriguez Mansion.

Four years after that tour with Tina, we’re back in her hometown. This time she introduced us to Eric Dedace, Sariaya’s self-appointed historical researcher and chronicler.

We met Tina and Eric under the massive acacia tree in front of the church of St. Francis of Assisi. While showing us an old picture of the church patio, Eric pointed out that much of the tree’s expansive branches have been torn down by a recent storm. The enormous tree was a good starting point of our walking tour since it has been there for centuries as a mute witness to the town’s history.

The foundation of the town of Sariaya coincides with the building of the first church along the shores of Barangay Castañas in 1599. Like with other towns at that time, the natives organized around the church within the hearing distance of the church bells. However, natural calamities and frequent Moro raids prompted the transfer of the church, farther away from the shore, towards the foot of Mount Banahaw.

In 1703, the church was transferred to Lumang Bayan. It was during this time that the Franciscan friars received a replica of the Sto. Cristo de Burgos from King Philip V. Perhaps it was the constant threats from marauding Moors that prompted the friars to request a replica of the image of the crucified Christ used by El Cid Campeador in the battle against the Moors in the 11th century.

A series of natural calamities destroyed the town of Lumang Bayan. This was then followed by a Moro invasion which burned the town to the ground. Surviving the holocaust was the unscathed image of the Santo Cristo de Burgos.

According to one folk story, the image was said to have been wrapped in white linen and then carried by men in search of a place to build the new church. After resting under a tree, the men found the image to be extremely heavy and cannot be lifted even with the help from other men. Taking as a sign, the town folks built the stone church on the site. Built in 1748, the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi survived the test of time. Behind its intricately carved retablo is the miraculous image referred to as the Ang Mahal na Señor Sto. Cristo de Burgos.

One of the miracles of Sariaya’s beloved icon has to do with the Pacific War. It is said that when American air raid bombers hovered Sariaya, the town was said to be shrouded in clouds. The town folks believed that the Sto. Cristo made the clouds from Mount Banahaw rolled down Sariaya, concealing their town from the American bombers. Surviving the war are Sariaya’s grand houses.

The imposing architecture in Sariaya is attributed to the wealth brought by the coconut boom in the 1900s. At the onset of World War I, the Philippines rank fourth as the world’s supplier of copra. This was because aside from the rise of the soap and margarine production abroad, coconut oil became in demand for its high glycerin content, which is essential ingredient for the manufacturing of explosives!

Owners of coconut plantations in Southern Luzon, including Sariaya have benefited so much from the coconut boom that they afforded to remodel their houses following the architectural trend of the that period. These houses built in the 1930’s Art Deco and Art Nouveau fashion were designed by young and talented architects Juan Arellano, Juan Nakpil, and Andres Luna de San Pedro.

Eric showed us a picture of the old Municipio, which like most government buildings at that time looked like an over-sized bahay-na-bato. That has been replaced in the 1931 with an Art Deco structure designed by Juan Arellano.

 The focal point of Sariaya’s Municipio is the central towering projection topped by a receding lantern. Flanking all sides are busts of Grecian women. Decorative enhancements like the zigzag and wave like moldings plastered all throughout the building were the typical Art Deco motif seen worldwide while the banana leaf gives the structure a local flavor.

Fronting the Municipo and the church is the town park with a monument dedicated to Jose Rizal and the Glorita. Unveiled on December 30, 1924, the Jose Rizal Monument shows the national hero with a feather plume.

Although the Rizal statue is similar with what we see throughout the country, the one in the Sariaya town plaza has a tableau of a mother and child. Tina explained that this mother and child sculpture is a representation how much Sariaya values education.

Also built around that same time with the Rizal Monument was the glorita. The elevated structure that looks like a bandstand has eight Grecian maiden dressed in Filipiniana. Each statue holds a torch bringing to mind the Statue of Liberty. The torches used to have customized flame-shaped glass bulbs fitted with electrical wirings.

Similar with how towns were laid out during Colonial times, the rich and influential members of the society built they’re housse around a plaza near the church and town hall. Eric explained that in Sariaya, the landed gentry lived in the vicinity of the church park. They are called the taga gitna. Those who lived farther away from the periphery of the town were called the taga tabi, the ordinary people who own little or no property. Furthermore, the people were divided into the urbane taga bayan and those from the barrios or linang.

Tayabas Provincial Governor Natalio Enriquez built a Beaux Art castle next to the church. Designed by Andres Luna de San Pedro, the son of master painter Juan Luna in 1931, the Natalio Enriquez house was a venue of luxurious events in pre-war Sariaya, including the 1938 wedding of Alicia Enriquez to Manuel Gala where Philippine Commonwealth First Lady Aurora Aragon Quezon was principal sponsor.

Aside from being one of the three houses in Sariaya to be  declared as a heritage house by the National Historical Commission, the Natalio Enriquez mansion has been opened to visitors. The interior is furnished with American and European decor. Most of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture were also designed by Architect San Pedro.

Occupying an entire block near the church park is the Catalino and Luisa Rodriguez Ancestral House. Don Catalino Rodriguez was Sariaya’s town Presidente (equivalent of mayor during the American occupation period) from 1908-1909.

Historical account claimed that the house served as a venue of important political events, including the victory party in honor of President Manuel Quezon and Don Claro M. Recto.

Compared to the Art Deco Gala-Rodriguez Mansion and the Beaux Arts Natalio Enriquez Castle, this ancestral house maintains a Colonial Bahay-na-bato style with huge colorful stained-glass windows, high celing, art nouveau wall paintings, and intricately-carved lattices on the celing. 

Renovated  in 1922, carpenters and artisans from Pampanga and Batangas used the best hardwood in constructing this massive bahay na bato.

Good news is that this house has been opened to the public as Villa Sariaya, a lifestyle museum where visitors dress-up in full Filipiniana regalia and experience walking around the spacious living room and grand dining hall, under the florid lattice work, reliving the genteel days when coconut barons ruled Sariaya with aristocratic grace and fervor.