Faculty, students, staff and other guests were left enthralled after watching a hundred performers weave through the audience in choreographed rhythmic steps, in an almost clockwork pattern while holding MP3 players at the UP Vargas Museum.
The players emanated what sounded like soft raindrops, leading to rattling bamboos, climaxing into screeching insects and other assorted sounds such as those produced by gong, clappers, shells and human voices, ending in an abrupt silence with all the performers lying prone on the floor as if lifeless or in a trance.
The avant-garde interactive performance was the restaging of National Artist for Music Dr. Jose M. Maceda鈥檚 鈥淐assettes 100.”
The gathering of 100 performers on Feb. 2 was made possible by the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, in cooperation with the UP College of Music (CMu) as part of Maceda鈥檚 centennial celebration.
Maceda, who is known for his compositions that bring together the Asian and Western music, is a composer, ethnomusicologist, pianist, philosopher, multi-awarded scholar and artist. He also pioneered ethnomusicology in the Philippines.
He was conferred the rank and title of National Artist for Music in 1997.
Cassettes 100.聽 Maceda鈥檚 groundbreaking work 鈥淐assettes 100鈥 was first performed in 1971 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) lobby with 100 participants carrying cassette tape recorders with pre-taped music and moving in a simple choreography.
鈥淐assettes 100鈥 was Maceda鈥檚 first attempt at using an electronic device in his compositions, in particular, the cassette, and 鈥渢aped natural sounds, as musical instruments, as well as dynamic configuring of sonic clouds as part of the musical realization,鈥澛 notes National Artist for Music Dr. Ramon P. Santos鈥檚 鈥淭unugan: Four Essays on Filipino Music.鈥
Santos further notes that Maceda was encouraged by the result of the experiment and that the work itself 鈥渟ymbolized the participation of local peoples in a modern technologizing world, in which the cassette tape recorder represented an easily affordable tool for ordinary 鈥榯hird world鈥 societies in gaining access to artificially reinforced forms of human communication.鈥
The concept was expanded in 鈥淯gnayan鈥 (1974) which consisted of prepared music aired in 20 radio stations where thousands of people with a radius of 100 kilometers from Manila played their transistor radios in parks and listened to meditative music from their transistors, according to music historian Dr. Corazon C. Dioquino鈥檚 article 鈥淚n Focus: Scoring for the Filipino Life and Music.鈥
Fastforward to 2017.聽 鈥淚n the 1960s when Jose Maceda pioneered a new mode of creative endeavor with compositions that utilized Asian traditional instruments and vocal sounds, he was opening a Filipino musical public otherwise entrenched in Euro-American concert and/or popular music to an unorthodox soundworld made up of gongs, bamboo and Malayo-Polynesian vocables,鈥 Dr. Jonas Baes, CMu professor, said.
He considers 鈥淐assettes 100鈥 as something that 鈥渢ranscends the consumerist intentions for the use of this gadget.鈥
Baes said, 鈥淚n Cassettes 100, the machine is transformed to represent a body: that of the person holding the gadget. More importantly, this single body does not exist only for itself but represents a single strand, which along with 99 other bodies creates a complex, yet integrated 鈥榳hole.鈥欌
Contemplating on these ironies of the digital age, Baes said they could now see that Maceda鈥檚 鈥淐assettes 100鈥 continue to teach people the valuable lessons in human connection.
鈥淭he very mode of performance ironically leads us to retract the benefits of the digital age and lead us through rigors of searching for the most appropriate gadget suitable for performance. The most advance audio equipment already available only teach us the real irony, above all ironies, is that technological development had actually disconnected us. Perhaps 鈥楥assettes 100鈥 will remind us to reconnect,鈥 he added.
Maceda.聽 Maceda, according to Dioquino, was born in Manila on Jan. 31, 1917 and received his early training in music at the Academy of Music of Manila.聽 With the help of music patrons and Asociacion Musical de Filipinas which was co-founded by his piano teacher, Victorina Lobregat, he was sent to Paris in 1937 for further studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique where he earned the Diplome de Virtuosite with distinction.聽 Dioquino鈥檚 article was published at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) website.
He also studied musicology at Queen鈥檚 College and Columbia University in New York from 1950-1952; anthropology and ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Indiana Universities (1957-1958) and obtained his PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1963.
Maceda鈥檚 education at Queen鈥檚 College and Columbia University led him to his first fieldwork and first encounter with Philippine traditional music.
Dioquino also mentioned that Maceda鈥檚 initial publications, which first appeared in 1955, 鈥渁re indicative of the trend of his musical thinking鈥擳he Music of Bukids of Mindoro, Hanunuo Music of the Philippines, Music鈥攚here east and west meet.鈥
The maestro鈥檚 compositions that were usually performed as a communal ritual, according to NCCA, were considered as 鈥渕onuments to his unflagging commitment to Philippine music鈥 were: Ugma-ugma (1963), Pagsamba (1968) and Udlot-udlot (1975).
Maceda @ 100.聽 Prior to 鈥淐assettes 100,鈥 the Center for Ethnomusicology kicked off Maceda鈥檚 100th birth anniversary celebration on Jan. 31 with the restaging of 鈥淧agsamba鈥 at the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice followed by a centennial birthday dinner at the UP Executive House.
鈥淧agsamba鈥 was first performed at the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in 1968. As described in Dioquino鈥檚 article, 鈥淧agsamba calls for a mixed group of 100 voices uttering high and low pitches in dense and thin combinations; 25 male voices grouped into fives chanting disjointed phones; 100 instrumentalists each playing on separate instruments 鈥 whistle flutes, clappers, buzzers, scrappers and sticks; and 16 gongs (eight agung, eight gandingan) which provide lower ranges as prolonged and short sound attacks.鈥
The series of events in honor of Maceda is until Jan. 31, 2018.
- Share: