Fete de la Musique begins 30th year in the Philippines on high note

 

Fete de la Musique begins 30th year in the Philippines on high note

Kristofer Purnell - Philstar.com

June 22, 2024 | 12:12pm

MANILA, Philippines — Fluctuating weather did not stop Filipinos from enjoying the kick-off of Fete de la Musique Philippines 2024 on Friday, the event's 30th anniversary of marking World Music Day.

Fete de la Musique first began in France in 1982, and it eventually found its way to Philippine shores 12 years later.

In its early years in the Philippines, the event was held in Remedios Circle with just three bands and around 40 attendees. Over the years, it moved to Malate and then grew in popularity when it was held in El Pueblo in Ortigas. 

The event has found a home at the iconic Greenbelt 3 Park, where the main stage returned yesterday, June 21, the exact date when World Music Day is celebrated globally.

Following a 30-minute delay because of a sudden downpour — a canopy was set after a similar mishap occured last year — the main stage began with performances by Shanni and Jason Dhakal, the latter backed by Lustbass.

Band Sinosikat supported jazz singer Jose Miguel for three of his songs before completing a set on their own, then they were followed by Bicolana singer-songwriter Dwta.

Deputy Chief of Mission of the French Embassy to the Philippines Rémy Tirouttouvarayane and Fete de la Musique 2024 project managers Sana Schifferer, Noe Fuentes and Ziera de Veyra thanked the crowd for their attendance to this year's event. 

After a quick photo op and an invitation to more than 40 free nationwide pocket stages on June 28, the Jewelmer Jazz Band — composed of student musicians — took over the stage.

The Greenbelt 3 Park crowd grew with an upbeat hour-long set by French DJ duo Pfel & Greem of C2C, who have done Fete de la Musique in their home country.

The energy of the crowd was sustained as Autotelic, Morobeats, and Dilaw performed in succession.

The crowd sang along to Autotelic hits like "Languyin" and "Laro," then participated in Morobeats' many hip-hop tracks that further hyped the entire area.

Dilaw was the clear highlight for many in attendance with its energetic vocalist, Leonard "Dilaw" Obrero, dancing onstage, wading into the audience, and endlessly quipping throughout the band's set.

Capping off the performances was Any Name’s Okay, the band's first time on the Fete de la Musique main stage after doing numerous pocket stages the past seven years.

Most of the pocket stages are in Makati's Poblacion area and will coincide with the district's fiesta celebrations.

This year, there are also 70 destination stages, the most in Fete de la Musique to date, across Luzon (El Nido, Naga, Baguio, Pampanga, Puerto Galera, Baler, Los Banos, Albay, Zambales, Laguna, Masbate, Cavite); Visayas (Cebu, Siquijor) and Mindanao (Siargao, South Cotobato, Davao, Cagayan de Oro).

October 30 is now the Philippines' National Day of Charity

 A homeless woman sleeps inside her two-wheel push cart serving as her house on wheels, as she and other homeless wait for food distribution at a catholic missionary feeding center in Manila on September 22, 2022.

AFP / Ted Aljibe

Kristine Daguno-Bersamina - Philstar.com

June 22, 2024 | 11:02am

The Presidential Communications Office on Saturday announced that October 30 will be commemorated every year as the National Day of Charity as part of the government's commitment to promoting and uplifting the lives of Filipinos under a “Bagong Pilipinas.”

“Bagong Pilipinas, as the overarching theme of the Administration’s brand of governance and leadership, calls for deep and fundamental transformations in all sectors of society and government, and visions to emphasize compassion, solidarity and social responsibility among Filipinos,” the proclamation reads.

Proclamation No. 598, a two-page document signed by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin on June 13, directs the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to lead, coordinate and supervise the commemoration.

According to the PCO, the PCSO “has shown its dedication to fulfil its mandate through the provision of medical services, the conduct of free medical and dental services, the establishment of an out-patient clinic, and its partnerships with qualified government and non-government welfare institutions/agencies that promote the well-being of the marginalized sectors of society.”

The proclamation calls on all government agencies and instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations, state universities and colleges, to observe National Day of Charity. 

Local government units, non-government organizations and the private sector are also encouraged to participate.

In issuing the proclamation, Marcos cited Section 9, Article II of the Constitution, which mandates the promotion of a just and dynamic social order to ensure national prosperity and independence. 

Did Spain demand that Filipinos adopt Spanish surnames when the Philippines became a colony?

Norman Owen

Honorary Professor at The University of Hong Kong

There’s a lot of misinformation about this topic, to judge by other answers, so let me clear up what I can.

First, Spain did not require anyone to take Spanish (or any other) surnames when they acquired the Philippines in the 16th century. It was almost three centuries later when they first required surnames (see below), and even then most of the names on offer were Filipino, not Spanish.

So how did many Filipinos get their Spanish surnames? For centuries, the primary process would have been through baptism in the Roman Catholic Church, at which time those baptized (or their parents) would often choose (Spanish) Christian names: Cruz, Reyes, Santos, Santo Tomas, Santa Maria, etc. These might or might not be passed down from generation to generation; some families, or perhaps some parishes, were pretty consistent with “family” names, while others seem to have allowed each individual to have a “surname” of his or her own, which might or might not be the same as his/her parents or siblings. Some Filipinos held on to local (Filipino) names, especially if they reflected pre-Hispanic “nobility,” such as Lacandola, but again this was inconsistent.

My sense from much research in the archives is that at the local level most Filipinos didn’t even bother with surnames, because everyone knew who everyone was, and identified them by their given name or nickname. Only when it came to baptism, marriage, burial, or (rare) dealings with official bureaucracy would a surname even be asked for, and I suspect some people could barely remember theirs, in the same way that some of us can barely remember the ID or passwords we’re supposed to use on various computer applications. (I was able to identify one Filipina who was known by 14 different names in around twenty years!)

In the 19th century, the Spanish, trying to rationalize the administration of the Philippines (once the tail-end of their empire; now, with the loss of the Americas, the jewel in the Spanish crown), got tired of this chaos. In 1849, Governor General Narciso Claveria issued a decree that everyone should get a proper surname, selected from a Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos [Alphabetical Catalogue of Surnames] sent out to each province. These surnames were to be given to the entire family, so that fathers and children would all have the same names all the time, and proper records would be kept by churches, schools, and local officials, etc.

The ostensible purpose of this decree was to avoid “confusion,” including the hypothetical possibility of people marrying others to whom they were too closely related (because they lacked surnames to tell them this!). Clearly the main reason was to sort out and simplify tax collection and other administrative tasks.

Contrary to the belief of many Filipinos, the Catalogo was NOT a list of exclusively Spanish names. In 1973 the National Archives published a phostatic copy of the Catalogo, unfortunately with a poor quality of reproduction. I was the ghostwriter for the Introduction (by Domingo Abella) to this reprint and have a copy of it in my possession. Those who claim it was a directory of Spanish names have clearly not looked into it, e.g., on p33 we find, among many others, the names coppocopy, copcop, copang, copit, copcopin, copag, copari, copada, etc. (These are randomly selected from literally hundreds more on the same page; there are tens of thousands in the whole volume.) In fact the decree specifically says that Filipinos ought not to choose names like “de la Cruz, de los Santos, and some others which are so numerous that they would continue producing confusion.”

But although the decree itself is clear, and the background to it fairly evident, we know very little about its implementation. It clearly varied from province to province, presumably according to the (Spanish) governors’ choices. In Albay, for example, there is a remarkable clustering of surnames by first letter, so that in the coast from Tabaco to Tiwi most names begin with the letters B & C; in Sorsogon, from E to L; in the Iraya valley M to S, etc. The town of Oas, dominated by last names beginning with the letter “R,” was said later (jokingly) to have claimed everyone with such last names, including Rizal and Roosevelt! Yet in the neighboring province of Ambos Camarines, no such clustering occurs; the new surnames for each parish come from anywhere in the alphabet. One guess as to this discrepancy - and it is only a guess - is that in Camarines someone took the whole Catalogo around from parish to parish, whereas in Albay they tore out the pages and sent different pages to different towns.

What is obvious is that there was enormous inconsistency in the implementation of this decree. Some Filipinos managed to retain old “family” names, although they were only supposed to be able to do this if they could prove that they had used them for four generations (and even then, not “de la Cruz, de los Santos,” etc.) Some Filipinos clearly chose Hispanic names; others apparently chose from the Filipino terms included in the Catalogo. We have no idea how much the parish priests (whether Spanish or Filipino) or even parish clerks (Filipinos) influenced these choices; it is entirely possible that they, rather than the families themselves, assigned surnames to many people. It is likely that a substantial number of people just missed out on the decree entirely - colonial administration was extremely haphazard in those days - though over time, as the colonial state grew and expanded its reach, it would have become harder and harder not to have a “proper” surname.

In the end, it is likely that most Spanish surnames in the Philippines today proceed from this 1849 decree and its (imperfect) implementation. We might guess that most Filipinos (or whoever made the decisions on their behalf) thought Spanish names were better than the Filipino alternatives offered in the Catalogo, but that, again, is just a guess. But we also know that many of these surnames antedate the 1849 decree, and presumably arose from earlier baptismal choices.