BANGKOK, 12 July 2019 – Booming drums, sonorous tinkles, clapping, stomping, shrieks, shouts, and soaring vocalise, shook the typically quiet halls of the Philippine Embassy in Bangkok on Tuesday, 9 July, when the University of the Philippines (UP) Kontra-GaPi, under the leadership of founder and artistic director Professor Pedro “Edru” Abraham Jr, offered Embassy personnel and their families, members of the Filipino community and other Thai guests, a rare and exuberant Filipino ethnic treat.
The twenty-member group, garbed in colorful costumes and wielding a gamut of native Philippine musical instruments, unleashed a cornucopia of music, dance, movement and song, to a delighted audience who were also enjoined to participate in rhythmic improvisation. Home-schooled children of Embassy personnel, in particular, listened with amazement to the virtuosity of Professor Abraham with the mouth harp, also known as kuribaw in his native Ibanag.
As the 72-year old professor summed up, “Music is dance and movement heard, while dance is music seen.”
After the group’s joyous performance, Professor Abraham proceeded to deliver a lecture-demonstration entitled, “Song & Nationalistic Fervor: The Philippine Experience to the Present,” which traced the evolution of Philippine protest music from the 1890’s until the EDSA years. The sampling of songs was taken from a Philippine Centennial recording of Inang Laya (Mother Freedom) – composed of former duo (the late) Karina Constantino-David and the professor’s wife Becky Demetillo-Abraham.
The unexpected Kontra-GaPi detour to the Philippine Embassy was made at the margins of their cultural exchange visit with the Ang Thong College of Dramatic Arts, on the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between the Philippines and Thailand, through the generous sponsorship of the Royal Thai Embassy in Manila.#
