Archive - February 2001

Come February, other than celebrating the Day of the Hearts, we Filipinos also celebrate the Bamboo Organ Festival held every third and fourth week of the month.

This year the Bamboo Organ will hold its 26th International Event at the Las Piñas Church where the organ was made known by a Spanish priest Diego Cera in 1816. The festival gives honor to the bamboo organ being a unique and only one of its kind musical instrument. It is a celebration of the unique music that the bamboo organ produces and a tribute to the community spirit that has succeeded in preserving it. The concert will feature classical and contemporary music of great musicians to be played by local and internationally known world-class artists.

History:

The Bamboo Organ started as an idea by a Spanish Priest Diego Cera to come out with a musical instrument for the community of Las Piñas (St. Joseph's) Church. Father Cera' s love for music and his new assigned parish community prompted him to make use of the versatile local bamboo to come out with an organ. With the help of the locals, the Bamboo Organ was completed in 1816.

The Bamboo Organ is of typical Spanish baroque model. It is 4 meters wide and - 4 meters high. It contains 1,031 pipes of which 902 are made of bamboo. It used to manually operate but after its renovation it is now electrically operated. It has a wide range of tone despite its single manual and small pedals - a five-octave keyboard with twenty stops. Amazingly, its one tube mimics bird sound when filled with water and another that imitates the sound of a kettledrum. The Bamboo Organ suffered in time, with the numerous earthquake that shook the area, and the destructive Second World War. For a time after the war, the people had kept the instrument in silence due to lack of finances and skill in restoring it. It was until 1976, that the organ was flown to Johannes Klais Orgelbau in Germany, for extensive restoration project. Two years after it was brought back to its home in Las Piñas, its homecoming was celebrated with in festive Filipino fashion.

The Bamboo Organ is a gift to the Filipino people; it placed the Philippines in the world map of music and became a good tourist attraction. Someone said that "the bamboo organ is a sacred legacy that welds the community together and binds it to the town's history. It allows them every Sunday to connect with the Almighty". The people of Las Piñas agrees.