 in Puerto Princesa City was a classroom with a crash course, generally in music,){kind=link}
THE 2025 PALAWAN International Choral Festival (PICF) in Puerto Princesa City was a classroom with a crash course, generally in music, specifically choral singing.
Prior to the event, though, I was at the UP College of Music Department of Ethnomusicology to have an audience with one of its Professors Emeritus, National Artist for Music Ramon P. Santos who teaches Composition and Theory in the college.
The interview turned out to be a lecture, however, in a nutshell, as well on ethnic influences in Philippine music.
NA Santos was the keynote speaker at the 2025 PICF but he had already shared a bird’s eye view of his speech during our one-on-one session at his office.
‘In choral singing, the octogenarian artist set its dynamics that it unites and analyzes the evolution of society akin to the chanting of the barangay residents of yore in beseeching rain for planting or supplicating mercy in burying the dead or a babaylan moaning and invoking healing for the sick.’
SOCIO-CULTURAL DISCOVERIES
Here’s man who has researched intensively and extensively not only on different indigenous musical instruments such as kulintang, kutiyapi, agung, flute, etc.
He has also visited personally tribes in their ancestral domains or Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the hinderlands and Filipinos of all origins in the far-flung areas throughout the country to map out in detailed accounts the sources of native music that could help, figure out and shape up, however gradual and conflicting, a national identity.
Lofty ideals as they are presumably tension-filled in the realm of multigenerational penchant for Western music and pop culture OPM exudes versus the
These socio-cultural discoveries alongside identified artifacts and historical data have motivated him to write books on music literature.
He even went beyond the Philippine archipelago to trace the traditions, influences and likelihood of Southeast Asian tunes to the ancient and contemporary Filipino hymns.
In choral singing, the octogenarian artist set its dynamics that it unites and analyzes the evolution of society akin to the chanting of the barangay residents of yore in beseeching rain for planting or supplicating mercy in burying the dead or a babaylan moaning and invoking healing for the sick.
A UNIFIED WHOLE
All the contestants in the Grand Prix, five out of the sixteen choirs that qualified as well in the exhibition and non-competitive levels were Imusicapella, Woodrose Chorale, Surigao Luminary Voices, Barcelona National Comprehensive High School (NCHS), and Palawan Chorus Mixtus.
They were reminiscences (except for the glamourized get-up, embellished Filipiniana attire and modernized if not colonial sense of appreciation and performances) of the pre-Hispanic gathering of voices no matter eclectic the pieces — from the classics, to Latin, to folk, to pop — a unified whole.
Imusicapella won the Grand Prix with a cash prize of P300,000 donated by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
As I was watching and listening to the choirs in their contest songs, I realized I still have a lot of things to learn from the veterans, the masters and DIYs. Not only that. From the choir members themselves who studied and who continue to study the rudiments of choir singing not only on the notes they pick its lows, its highs and all the decibels in between and the rhythm that produces nuances, sounds, thoughts, feelings, etc. in a song.
Such is empathy.
All along during the four-day stint of the festival, I got an instant music education courtesy of erudite and experiential music mentors, some of them sat in the jury like Dr. Joel Navarro or Dr. Bien Constantino, Jr. for the historical/biblical values of choir art; Dr. Beverly Cheng and Dr. Ed Manguiat for the utilitarian use of choral singing; German Dr. Markus Detterbeck, Polish Kamil Gojowy, and Ukrainian musician working in China Prof. Viktoriya Vakulishnya for the catholicity of music, etc.