A gift from Waway Saway

Waway Saway, musician from the Southern Philippines, spent a week in and around San Francisco in which we spent quite some time jamming and talking about the development of Filipino music.

Pictured here is a bamboo kubingthat he made himself pictured resting on one of my analog synthesizers onstage before a performance.

Waway brought his organic tribal folk sound along with his handmade katyapi and tambuleleleng string instruments and graciously participated in one of my typical musical experiments combining indigenous Filipino music with electronic instruments and live looping.

Look who’s interested in kulintang music?

Some interested music lovers at the April Fiesta at Hawaii Filipino Community Center in Waipahu.

Next live performance:
Saturday June 1st at Vallejo Pista Sa Nayon!
Vallejo Waterfront, all day, all ages, free admission.

Please follow @kulintronica because kulintang is alive and growing.

Kulintang players support super heroes

In the pit for PCN 2013 season

Sitting with the Tan family as the Haranistas de Manila, ready to lead dual National Anthems “Star Spangled Banner” (aka Oh Say Can You See?) and “Lupang Hinirang” (aka Bayan Magiliw).

The Tan family toured internationally with Bayanihan Dance Company, providing live music on the gamut of Filipino instruments including gongs, bamboo, and the rondalla Filipino guitar ensemble.

Left, is Bayani Tan, band leader, arranger, and octavina player. Center, is Ador Tan, former b-boy and current motorcycle enthusiast, flew up from Los Angeles to play banduria. Right, is Melissa Tan, who was lead vocalist and kulintang soloist with Bayanihan, here playing laud. Not pictured, playing upright bass is Celisse Tan who also plays marimba. Celisse played lead kulintang for this PCN.

I’ve been playing six string, gangsa, tong a tong, and gandingan with the Haranistas on the PCN circuit since before I could legally drink in California.

Kulintang playing as fast as you can see in Waipahu

Kulintangan Pearl City

September Kulintang Sessions

September kulintangan up and down California.

Filipino Performing Arts & Culture (FPAC20) in San Pedro, California

FPAC Kulintronica by J Bashiri

Filipino Fest at Six Flags

Kulintang and Eskrima Filipino Fest Six Flags Vallejo by M Williams

Nieto Art Gallery

Kulintang August Nights

Kulintang in Concord, CA

Time Out Bar & Grill, Concord, CA

After such a great result at last month’s Nightlife, I was eager to bring the kulintang to even more new places.  The Time Out Bar & Grill in Concord is just such a place.  The last time I brought kulintang to a Concord dive bar, an audience member very loudly exclaimed, “Let’s turn on the juke box!” in the middle of an exciting Binalig that I was playing.  Granted, my beats were not as big as they are lately, so I kept an open mind for this new audience.  I sure am glad I did, because the audience was really open to it, so open to it that they were jumping up and down with their drinks in the air!  Lots of great conversations followed, and a few Concord-ites outed themselves to me as Filipinos; and no, they had never seen kulintang before that moment.  Mission accomplished.

Pistahan 2011 (photo by Brian Snowden)

Pistahan at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, CA

It’s that time of year!  Pistahan reclaims its title as one of the largest Filipino festivals in the Bay Area!  The parade had never been so large.  I would post pictures of the parade but I was a little busy playing kulintang music accompanied by big-calibre performers such as Lendl San Jose, Kristine Sinajon, and Melissa Martinez.  With Melissa, an experienced kulintang music and dance performer, as the informal dance instructor, we had an impromptu community dance that saw indigenous Filipino dance movements coming from excited Filipinos and non-Filipinos who came to claim their seats early.  There was definitely some magic in the air.

Nick’s Lounge in Berkeley, CA

Kulintang Happy Hour in Berkeley (photo by Esperanza Catubig)

Here is a picture where I am once again joined by Filipino-musician-extraordinaire Lendl San Jose.  This particular dive bar is Nick’s Lounge in Berkeley, where a group of Filipino film enthusiasts gathered at the invitation from actress Esperanza Catubig in support of her new independent film (where Catubig also get’s a Producer’s credit) called Nico’s Sampaguita.  The film, about a Filipino-American family set against the jazz music backdrop set in the Fillmore district of San Francisco.  There is a lot of excitement around this project; so much that an unexpected guest arrived: fellow kulintang player Judith Ferrer!  She did not expect to see a kulintang at the event, and I certainly did not expect another kulintang player to come in and drop two beautiful kulintang songs from memory.  Ang galing!

Judith is a fellow local kulintang player

Summer Kulintang Stories

Mix & Match kulintang sets

Searching for Instruments

Here is a picture of a mix & match kulintang set from one of the largest collections of Filipino instruments in the Bay Area.  Notice the different stages of oxidation the gongs have.

I took this picture while visiting the collector (who is also a very good kulintang player) so that I could borrow a set of gandingan for an upcoming July performance.

The design of the kulintang is the best clue as to who manufactured the gong.  Artisans tend to stick to a favorite design.  This kulintang set is of the no-nonsense style; no ornamental carvings or visible weldings, just a large set of gongs with a thick casting of metal alloys to give it that serious “I am a musical instrument” look.

The Dabakan is the Drum in the Kulintang Ensemble

Pictured here are two dabakan likely made by the same artist.  The drum is fashioned into a goblet shape from a single piece of hardwood, preferably the base of the tree right above the root ball.  Traditionally a bayawak (Filipino monitor lizard) hide would form the drum skin, but goat drum heads are the common material nowadays.  The okkir (Southern Filipino design motif) is intricate and flashy, leading the educated collector to assume that the drums are Maranao in origin.

Matching Dabakans

One of these two drums was the main touring dabakan for the Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, the group directed by my kulintang teacher, Master Artist Danongan Kalanduyan, and it has been the instrument by which kulintang music was brought to places such as Juneau, Honolulu, Seattle, San Diego, Albuquerque, Houston, Washington D.C., Richmond (VA), Boston, New York, and even Toronto, and Acapulco.  After many years of touring, this drum was finally retired from the PKE instrument list because of an accumulation of wear and tear from the road.

SF Pinoy Jazz Fest at Birdland in Berkeley

The gandingan (talking gongs) that I mentioned in the first picture that I needed to borrow was so that I could sit in with John Calloway at the SF Pinoy Jazz Fest.  I sat in with John Calloway during his appearance at the 2010 Jazz Fest that was held at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts right in the middle of that year’s Pistahan.  I appeared on the song he wrote for John Santos, “Itim,” meaning “black,” a song about being Afro-Filipino.  This was my crash course for mixing kulintang with jazz music.

For this year’s performance, we were set to perform at this local venue that had quite a buzz around it.  The Birdland Jazzista Social Club is located across the street from North Berkeley BART, inside of a garage converted into a legitimate jazz venue complete with stage, seating, mood lighting, and a community of music lovers.  The venue had already appeared in FastCompany and Forbes, and the ambitious three-day lineup that SF Pinoy Jazz had lined up for a weekend in July was to be its biggest event to date; a virtual roll-call of Filipino musicians in the Bay Area jazz community.

I was so excited to bring my new gongs that would give me the flexibility required to sit in with serious jazz musicians.  I had prepared an accompanying part for Calloway’s original tune “Diaspora.”  When you listen to Diaspora, you can hear the influence of kulintang music on the main melody.  The arc and movement of the main melody is really of the character of kulintang playing, with a few bars of latin jazz at the turnaround incorporated for a truly dynamic chart meant for live performance.

Unfortunately, none of it was to be.

Promptly, right at the three-day festivals kickoff downbeat, at 6:00pm exact, the event was cancelled after a visit by Berkeley Police Department.  All of the music prepared by the many musicians including myself, was not allowed to be played.  As this issue plays out in the realm of Berkeley politics, music at Birdland is indefinitely suspended, but it seems to me that the owner is intent on re-opening this young venue, so I will update this story as it develops.

Lineup for the Filipino Jazz Fest of 2011