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My First Music: “Padanggo Sa Ilaw”, Another Tricky Filipino Dance

I’m not going to talk about the Tinikling here as it brings back unpleasant memories of having my ankles banged with bamboo poles, but I will mention the Pandanggo (from the Spanish word “fandango”). This is very elegant dance where dancers wear not the formal Maria Clara, which is hard to get around in, but the patadyong, which is a simple cotton dress with butterfly sleeves. My aunt Wilhelmina looked very nice doing this dance, with the candles on the backs of her hands and the candle on her head. You try balancing that. I almost started a fire.

Pandanggo Sa Ilaw (Marty McCorkle, 2016)Above “Pandanggo Sa Ilaw” by Visayan resident Marty McCorkle (2016) the title dance to this posting, performed by Juan Silos Jr and his orchestra.

Pandanggo traditionally is danced to rondalla music, which is a sort of serenade played by an ensemble of guitars and mandolins and other stringed instruments. It originated in Spain during the Middle Ages. You can also hear the rondalla sound in Mexican and Central and South American music, which should show that Filipinos are more cultural kin to the Hispanic world than the mainland Asian. But we claim both.

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My First Music: “Magtanim Ay Di Biro” (“Planting Rice”) Sung by The Dawn

The first song ever taught to me I think when I was five. My mother sang it to me in English, just once, and I pretty much got it. Here’s the Mabuhay Singers doing the somewhat tedious all-English version I remember growing up, and below is the fantastic Filipino post-punk rock group The Dawn doing it in Tagalog.

Amorsolo Planting Rice.jpgFernando Amorsolo y Cueto (1892 – 1972) was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. This is one of his many, many depictions of rice planting and it’s the one I think hung in our house when I was little, next to the shield of bolo knives, the oversized mahogany fork and spoon set, and the pictures of Pope John XXIII and John F Kennedy. If you’re an American-born pinoy, you’ll know what I mean.

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Directed by My Old Boss, Rouben Mamoulian: Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Young in Queen Christina (Paramount, 1933) Share a Birthday Kiss Just for My Dear Roanne

4 August 2018. See you soon, my angel.

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Pinoy Alert: The Gold at Olympics 2021 + A Film Trailer You as a Filipino Have Got to See

The Philippines have never won the gold in 97 years until now—consequently, we get to hear The Philippine National Anthem (Julián Felipe-José Palma, 1899; lyrics below) played at the Olympics for the very first time. So I went over to YT to find a good version of the national anthem (which I once used to be able to sing not only in English but Tagalog learned phonetically) and I found THIS on YT and it’s—it’s—well, it’ll make you want to swell with pride if you’re a true Pinoy. Really. It’ll knock your socks off. For all you others: This is a very tuneful, very singable national anthem entitled “Lupang Hinirang” and it’s placed very dramatically and effectively in this short produced by the big broadcast company in the PI.

Yes, that’s Lapu-Lapu beheading Magellan at 00:20. You have to understand, we are a romantic but fierce people
Bayang magiliw
Perlas ng silanganan
Alab ng puso
Sa dibdib mo’y buhay

Lupang Hinirang
Duyan ka nang magiting
Sa manlulupig
Di ka pasisiil

Sa Dagat at bundok sa simoy
At sa langit mo’y bughaw
May dilag ang tula
At awit sa paglayang minamahal
Ang kislap ng watawat mo’y tagumpay na nagniningning
Ang bituin at araw niya’y kailanpama’y di magdidilim

Lupa ng araw ng luwalhati’t pagsinta
Buhay ay langit sa piling mo
Aming ligaya nang pag
May mang-aapi

* Battle of Mactan 1521
* GomBurZa 1872
* Revolution of 1896
* Jose Rizal 1861-1896
* First Republic 1898
* Declaration of Independence 1898
* War With America 1898-1913
* Battle of Manila 1899
* Commonwealth 1935
* War With Japan 1941-1945
* EDSA 1986


Here’s the audio of the short above

EXTRA! My Filipiniana on YouTube

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Bernard Herrmann at the Royal Albert Hall, Doris Day Screams

This is what the greatest film composer of the 20th century looks like conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall (2:24). From Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (Paramount, 1956). This is a chorale entitled “The Storm Clouds Cantata” arranged by Herrmann and composed by Australian Arthur Benjamin specifically for the movie.

bernard-herrmann

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My First Music: Catholics Surrounded by Lutherans and Some Conducting by John Wilson, BBC Proms 2013

On this day, 25 May, 2018—what would have been my dad’s 113th birthday—I’d like to remember one of the few times he and I actually went to the movies together. This time we went to see, first-run, the warrior epic Taras Bulba (United Artists, 1962; screenplay by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt) on the recommendation of my girlfriend Tamara’s mother, who emigrated from Lviv after the war and was a booster for All Things Ukrainian. (A survivor of Axis bombings—she had that in common with my mom.) Our Minneapolis neighborhood was made up mostly of first- and second-generation Ukrainians, Italians, Guatemalans, Poles, Irish, and of course Filipinos, Catholics all. Of course the Lutherans surrounded us but being mostly Swedes, they had their own heritage too. And at Christmas, all that pepparkakor…num.

As for Franz Waxman’s “Ride of the Cossacks”, there’s a rather thrilling ostinato toward the end.

A pretty inspired choice for your Proms, John. It isn’t played too often (there’s more Ben Hur out there than Taras Bulba); my guess is because most conductors just can’t hear the “kinetic” qualities in this piece of music or they interpret it as more “memetic”, and so what comes out when they conduct sounds just awful, artificial… But you, my bonny lad, got it right. I’m starting to recognize your ear more and more, and it’s a wondrous thing.

John Wilson Taras BulbaWishing you two clean and ready handkerchiefs every concert day, John.

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“Quand Tu Dors Près De Moi” from the Film Aimez-Vous Brahms? Sung by Tony Perkins

Straight, gay, sexually messed up by his mother, I still had a major crush on Anthony Perkins when I was a girl; no time more than when he was cast as the fumbling young lover of soignee Parisienne Ingrid Bergman in Goodbye Again (United Artists, 1961) the film version of Francoise Sagan’s novel Aimez-vous Brahms? (Though that he turned her down in real life just kills me.)

quand-tu-dors-precc80s-de-moi (1)

“Quand Tu Dors” is, of course, taken from the 3rd movement of Johannes Brahms’s Third Symphony, and you’ll recognize it when you hear it. That’s Herbert Von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.

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Antoni Mendezona Sings “Awit ng Gabi ni Sisa” from the Opera Noli Me Tangere

Music by Felipe de Leon, libretto by Guillermo Tolentino. Noli Me Tangere is based on Dr. Jose Rizal’s 1887 classic novel of the same name. It follows the story of Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin, who returns home to the Philippines after pursuing scholarly studies in Europe. He plans to open a school and marry his sweetheart, Maria Clara (where we get the name of the dress I’d love to make and wear again), but Padre Damaso, arch-enemy of the Ibarras, sets out to thwart Crisostomo’s plans, creating the dramatic—and very operatic—storyline of forbidden love, betrayal, and revenge. “Awit ng Gabi ni Sisa” is one of the great soprano mad scenes in opera.

Awit ng Gabi ni Sisa from Noli Me Tangere (Felipe De Leon)

From the 2011 University of the Philippines production. Info on Cebuana coloratura Mendezona can be found at her website here.

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My First Music: “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” by Steve Allen

A popular song by Steve Allen published in 1956, “This Could Be the Start of Something Big“. Originally, the song was written as part of the score of The Bachelor, a 1954 television musical production notable for the early appearances of legendary dancer Carol Haney and Jayne Mansfield (Mariska “SVU” Hargitay’s mom). In 1956 “This Could Be the Start” replaced the original opening theme to Allen’s NBC talk show, Tonight Starring Steve Allen, until Allen left the show in 1957 to be replaced by Jack Paar (and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses“). It became something of a personal theme song for him, being used as the opening to his other talk/variety shows, as well as during the opening of both the CBS and syndicated versions of I’ve Got a Secret during his time as host.

Steve Lawrence, Steve Allen and Eydie Gorme on The Tonight Show (NBC, 1956-60) in one incredible tracking shot at the Burbank Studios. Available here on my YT channel.

EXTRA! Bobby Darin, a cool cat as ever there was, sings “This Could Be the Start” on his own TV show circa 1973; audio here

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My First Music: “Donkey Serenade” Sung by Allan Jones in The Firefly (MGM, 1937)

Another MGM musical, pre-Freed Unit. Music by Bob Wright, Chet Forrest and Herbert Stothart (adapted from “Chanson” by Rudolf Friml); lyrics by Bob Wright and Chet Forrest, who would go on to adapt the music of Rimsky-Korsakov for the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet.

Two years earlier Allan Jones made a big splash as Kitty Carlisle‘s tenor squeeze in the Marx Brothers romp A Night At the Opera. Here he is in a clip on my YT channel movie-romancing a reluctant Jeanette MacDonald, who was smack in the middle of a fraught but passionate affair with a baritone with a thrilling voice and a black temper—Nelson Eddy, who, upon learning that Jones was putting the real-life moves on MacDonald, crashed the cast party of Firefly, collared Jones and beat him to a bloody pulp. Now that’s love.

Donkey Serenade.jpegPlayed the violin part in this in my junior high school orchestra. Liked it more than Bach. Above: “Donkey Serenade” by Oscar-winning MGM musical director, Herbert Stothart. Stothart, recently deceased, was paid tribute to by incoming MGM musical director Johnny Green in his 1954 MGM Jubilee Overture, the signature tune of my beloved John Wilson and his Orchestra.

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