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Many people within the Fil-Am group can vividly recall the instances we have seen a rondalla group onstage with their ensemble of plucked-string, wooden-body devices of various sizes — together with the bandurria, laud, octavina, guitar and double bass. And as they carried out, the beloved, multilayered refrain of strings mesmerized us with every chord development, expressing the sounds of the Philippines via such shifting ballads as “Dungawin Mo, Hirang” (“Take a look at me, my love”) and fast-paced, crowd-pleasing people dance songs as “Maglalatik.” Watching the musicians’ fingers strumming along with precision, tremolo selecting in full impact, heightens the drama and poignancy of the music, rousing these in attendance to sing alongside, cheer, smile, applause and, for some, shed tears. That is the ability of Philippine rondalla.
Right here in Southern California, probably the most well-known and revered ensemble is the Rondalla Membership of Los Angeles (RCLA), which has 10 members, and infrequently seated on the middle of the motion is the main determine of rondalla within the nation, maestro Tagumpay Mendoza De Leon — affectionately referred to as “Uncle Pi” by buddies, college students and colleagues alike — enjoying as if he was born with a stringed instrument in hand. (It is value noting tagumpay means victory within the Filipino language.) He has carried out rondalla music for greater than six a long time, throughout Metro Manila as a youngster, on the Hollywood Bowl and at festivals in Marseilles, France to call a couple of. For his longtime dedication to performing, educating and preserving the artwork kind, De Leon was acknowledged as a 2021 Nationwide Endowment for the Arts Nationwide Heritage Fellow, the best type of recognition for a practitioner of the standard and people arts to obtain in america. Just one different Fil-Am musician, kulitang participant Danongan Sibay Kalunduyan, has been acknowledged with the glory.
The historical past of rondalla within the Philippines dates again greater than a century, when plucked string devices have been launched to the nation throughout Spanish occupation. Over time, Filipinos indigenized the devices, making them their very own, by utilizing native versus imported wooden to supply the hole our bodies and modifying the 12-string devices of the colonizers to 14 strings to broaden their vary and create a extra resonant sound. As a substitute of enjoying European songs, they performed Filipino songs.
De Leon considers rondalla a communal artwork kind for the lots — gamers come from each stroll of life, each technology. Within the Philippines, rondalla teams are a staple of joyful occasions. They usually seem at city fiestas and household celebrations. They accompany people dance troupes or serenade one’s beloved. Bigger orchestrated rondalla ensembles play at instructional establishments and famend efficiency venues. “It makes you need to be shut to one another . . . It isn’t aloof. Like should you had an orchestra, you are listening, however you do not really feel such as you belong to them. However when you’ve got rondalla, it makes you are feeling that you simply’re a part of the household of rondalla, as a result of the music is delicate to your emotions,” says De Leon, who immigrated to the States in 1971 and is now in his late 70s. “Particularly in the event that they play your favourite Filipino songs, the extra you recognize the sound. For me, I really like the strings as a result of they’re very nostalgic…particularly for older individuals who have been right here for a very long time [to hear], they really feel like they’re house.”
The distinguished NEA honor follows different awards De Leon has acquired over the course of his profession, together with being chosen as a grasp artist by the Alliance for California Conventional Arts Apprentice Program with apprentice Patrick Tanega, who has performed in RCLA since 1994 and credit De Leon for serving to “to form the L.A. rondalla panorama.” Versus having every instrument (thus participant) have an outlined function and set components in a track, as most modern rondalla teams do, “Uncle Pi would create the template for the tunes we would play —he’d merely set up solely the essential melody and chords,” explains Tanega. “We have been all given inventive freedom to fill within the areas, making our personal traces, setting up distinctive harmonies and, because of this, I developed my very own particular person fashion.”
The De Leon household isn’t any stranger to high-caliber music. Within the Philippines, his mother, Illuminada Mendoza, was a live performance pianist, and his father, Philippine Nationwide Artist honoree Felipe Padilla De Leon, was a well-known bandleader and composer whose songs are nonetheless common at this time, together with “Sapagka’t Mahal Kita” (As a result of I Love You) and the vacation songs “Noche Bueno” (Christmas Eve) and “Payapang Daigdig” (Peaceable World). His older brother Bayani Mendoza De Leon, an completed composer and educator, was posthumously given a Presidential Award for his personal musical contributions within the Philippines and america.
The youngsters have been raised enjoying piano at an early age, with De Leon beginning on the keys at age six. It was not till he was 12 that he’d be launched to rondalla. His father and different members of the Manila Lions Membership organized for his or her youngsters to be taught the devices to occupy their time whereas the adults had their conferences. On the time, De Leon selected to play the most important instrument. “I believed the [upright] bass can be simpler to study as a result of there are solely 4 strings,” he remembers. “I used to be intimidated by the bandurria, which is 14 strings.” (He is now expert at enjoying each instrument.) Collectively, the 5 siblings would kind the De Leon Household Rondalla, with their father generally conducting them at performances. Regardless of their lineage and coaching, De Leon’s dad and mom discouraged him and his siblings from pursuing music full-time; It is onerous to help a household as musicians, his dad and mom reasoned. On the similar time, his dad and mom needed their kids to embrace their heritage, whether or not via music or different means. “My father all the time mentioned, ‘Should you do not promote your tradition, who else will do this for you?’ So we all the time hold that in thoughts behind our minds.”
Many years later and 1000’s of miles away in Southern California, the place he immigrated to with the intention to assist help his household within the Philippines, rondalla remained near his coronary heart whereas working as an engineer. De Leon began performing with rondalla teams right here within the late Nineteen Seventies, accompanying the Pamanlahi Dance Group and singing within the Philippine Live performance Choir, in addition to educating rondalla to the choir members’ youngsters, consistent with Filipinos’ emphasis on intergenerational cultural change. In 1985, he joined the Fil-Am Cultural Household Group as its assistant director, which is how he met Nitoy Gonzales, its musical director and former rondalla maestro of the famend Bayanihan Philippine Nationwide People Dance Firm.
The Rondalla of the Fil-Am Cultural Household Group was requested to carry out at UCLA’s Pilipino Cultural Evening (PCN) in 1988, and phrase unfold quick about them. Having a stay rondalla group wasn’t as commonplace again then: devices wanted to be secured from the Philippines and there weren’t sufficient grasp gamers to show it. Requests for the Fil-Am Rondalla to carry out at different PCNs got here from all around the state, from UC Berkeley to UC San Diego and UC Riverside, prompting De Leon, Gonzalez and Leonilo “Boy” Angus — one other former Bayanihan musician and cofounder of Philippine performing people arts group Kayamanan Ng Lahi — to kind Rondalla Membership of Los Angeles in 1991. “We realized that we would have liked to recruit extra members,” says De Leon. “With a corporation like RCLA, we might most likely appeal to different members to discover ways to play, have them for PCNs,” and proceed to popularize the craft.
Years later, in 1998, De Leon, together with different rondalla gamers, would be a part of his pal Joel Jacinto, one other cofounder of a Kayamanan Ng Lahi and a frequent RCLA collaborator for a rondalla demonstration in a world music class on the College of California, Riverside (UCR). This led to De Leon educating a Rondalla Ensemble course on the college, a place that has lasted for greater than 20 years, influencing a whole lot of younger musicians.
The addition of the course in 2001 was half of a bigger effort by the college, particularly UCR ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong, PhD, and colleague Rene Lysloff, to “set up non-western ensembles that addressed Asian American cultural dynamism,” beginning with taiko and rondalla courses, shares Wong. “Rondalla is a perfect sort of community-based music because it actually creates a musical house that may contain many individuals.”
De Leon remembers his first day of educating at UCR nicely: “I had 28 college students, principally Filipinos, and we solely had 12 devices.” He used educating strategies that his brother Bayani had developed whereas educating and establishing rondalla teams in San Diego. He began by utilizing numbers to show college students what strings to play versus studying notes. (De Leon nonetheless makes use of his brother’s guide at this time.) The yearlong Rondalla Ensemble elective proved to be common, but the veteran teacher admits “educating was not likely a part of my targets in life. I used to be a trainer within the Philippines, however engineering, not music.” After a long time of serving to younger youngsters to college college students study the craft, educating clearly is one in all his items, and he’s completely happy to see how his UCR college students now embody these of Filipino, Chinese language, Mexican and European descent. “Once I was searching for graduate colleges to check ethnomusicology, few colleges supplied an opportunity to take part in a Filipinx music ensemble,” shared Neal Matherne, PhD, who took De Leon’s class beginning in 2001. (Wong and Matherne wrote the nomination letter to the NEA for De Leon to obtain the Nationwide Heritage Fellowship.) “I loved the tales of his musical household within the U.S. and the Philippines. His courses usually started with him sharing tales to our class earlier than we performed. Uncle Pi’s class — histories, his optimism, and his heat, mild demeanor — are a very shiny spot in college students’ reminiscences of school life.”
Many former college students in an internet occasion hosted by UCR celebrating his fellowship, echoed this sentiment. Drea Castillo, who took De Leon’s class from 2009 to 2011, shared, “I miss enjoying Filipino people tunes you organized that I bear in mind from my childhood.” She additionally thanked him for “educating pakikisama, or learn how to get together with one another, a core Filipino worth that you simply instilled into each class effortlessly.” One other former pupil for 4 years, Jenny Cortier, added, “Rondalla was positively the spotlight of each week for me, I look again at these instances because the prime of my life,” telling De Leon, “It is an honor to know you.”
Upon listening to he was chosen as a fellow, De Leon was shocked at first. “Then I noticed I have been doing this my entire life in America,” he says smiling. “It is also a testomony to what my household has been striving for. Selling our tradition is a part of our Filipino identification. So which means being acknowledged for that, then it is an honor for my household, too.”
Tagumpay Mendoza De Leon: NEA Nationwide Heritage Fellows Tribute Video
Earlier this yr, on January 29, latest and previous college students, fellow performers and quite a few household and buddies gathered at a theater in Historic Filipinotown for a particular night celebration honoring De Leon’s “Life in Rondalla,” hosted by FilAm Arts. Many took to the stage to share their favourite Uncle Pi tales and carry out songs and dances in his honor, nearly bringing him to tears. Among the many most shifting experiences for the viewers was seeing video of three generations of De Leons performing “Pilipinas Kong Mahal” (“My Beloved Philippines”) collectively. Simply as his father launched rondalla to his kids, De Leon taught his three youngsters and grandkids. NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson was amongst those that spoke on the occasion and shares by e mail that “Uncle Pi exemplifies the essence of the NEA Nationwide Heritage Fellowships by conserving stunning, significant, inventive traditions alive throughout generations.” (Watch the NEA’s tribute video to De Leon.) She provides, “By means of his educating and management, Filipino Individuals really feel linked to 1 one other whereas studying about themselves and their Filipino tradition. In doing so, Uncle Pi has additionally contributed drastically to our wealthy and numerous American cultural tapestry.”
And De Leon’s affect would not cease Stateside. Whereas he was coincidentally visiting a producer of rondalla devices within the Philippines in 2011, he by accident met a younger rondalla group: “There was a bandurria, guitar and bass, three of them have been enjoying ‘Spanish Eyes.’ And I mentioned, ‘We’re from America. We all know that track. We do not need to hear that track anymore. We need to hear native songs. We need to hear ‘Bahay Kubo [a popular Filipino children’s song].'” They responded, “Hindi ho namin alam yun.” (“We do not know that track.”). Their admission shocked De Leon, telling them, “You do not know that music, you are Filipinos…”
All the time the trainer, he proceeded to dictate the chords to them, additionally taking one in all their devices to guide them within the track. “After which all these individuals gathered round, even vacationers, they usually began throwing cash on the ground and swiftly there was this heap of money, some {dollars} and pesos,” De Leon remembers, laughing. “‘You retain all of it,’ I informed them. I feel they collected about 7,000 pesos on the time. They mentioned, ‘That is our entire earnings for the yr, po [an expression of respect in the Filipino language]! We’ll begin studying people songs now.'”
And simply as Filipinos did a century in the past when first the Philippine rondalla first developed, De Leon introduced the devices again to the individuals. He impressed upon the trio his perception that enjoying Western music defeats the aim of rondalla. “That is the one manner we are able to instill on this, particularly within the youthful technology, that they’ve their very own tradition. They need to recognize it.”
Expertise the sounds of rondalla when De Leon performs with RCLA at Pilipino Cultural Nights throughout Southern California, beginning Might 21 at UCLA.
Observe them on Instagram at @rondallaclubla.
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