Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for making time to join us in this EthnoTalks – Tambayan for Ugnayan The objective of our gathering is to talk about Ugnayan as an experienced musical/ social event. We have invited people who have experience Ugnayan in 1974, those who have worked on it on later years, like it’s restaging in 2010, and potential performer for its restaging on May5.
This is a project of UPCE and UPCMu Dept of Music Ed for OICA’s Diliman Arts and Culture Festival this year. Side bar, before we start, I would like to mention that I am currently being “rebooted”. I was not in this situation when I proposed the project to Dean Verne last year. Unfortunately, here we are. My rebooting isn’t complete yet, so if I hang or blank screen sometime in the conversation, please forgive me, and ignore me, and proceed with the conversation which I am sure is very enriching. Having said this, pls allow me to continue reading through my kodigo.
2024 is the 50th anniversary of Ugnayan, which was premiered in 1974. We have decided to call it “Atmospheres”, the original title from the composer, Dr. Jose Maceda. This is crucial because, the restaging project has two objectives: First, like my earlier projects on Maceda, I go back to his writing to find inspiration and/or provocations. For this particular work, I used “On the Balance Between Intellect and Emotion” (1988) and “A Primitive and a Modern Technology in Music” (1978). Maceda wrote: It is the task of man today to look for an attitude of mind and a course of action other than that which imprisons him in his own creations.
For Maceda’s centennial in 2017, I used this quote, as the curatorial guide for the exhibit series. It had stayed with me since, like a marching order. For this project, I am borrowing his thoughts on technology, particularly, village as a software technology and adaptation of new technology (i.e. super intelligent computers) in music-making.
“This is not to say that mankind may not be ready to listen to a music of superintelligent computers, but questions come up about what the nature of human beings would become when they are sourrounded by such music. What would their emotions be when they travel beyond the speed of sound and eat food grown from non-organic elements? Where is the balance between intellect and emotion?” (1988)
Second, the project hopes to unburden the piece of the shadows of 1970s Marcos propaganda that “strains” most art produced during that era; and refocus on fostering the idea of community in performance —musicking as a communal activity that shapes the people, which is methodologically congruent with Maceda’s composition practice. This objective is in line with the theme of UP Diliman Arts and Culture Festival, which is Pamamalagi at Pamamahagi, pagsasalugar, recognising the move of UP from Manila to Diliman Campus, and establishing not only an academic institution but also a lived community– emphasizing community-building through placing/ pagsasalugar.
Auxiliary, this is also a belated response, to a conversation I had in 2007, when I started working here at UPCE. One colleague from CAL asked me, what do you make of Imelda being patron of Maceda? My response was that I have not had the opportunity to interview Lolo Pepe about this matter, this work, or any of his works, or his political orientation. I didn’t see any document in the archive that will outright show whether he supports the authoritarian regime, or he is part of the cultural program against his will. The timing was off, he died before I was old enough to be doing what I am doing now.
Armed by the documents he left behind, what I make out of his work is that with or without the Marcoses, Maceda’s creative contribution is not limited to his field of practice, nor his period, as his thoughts and innovation remains important to this day, not only in music, but also in contemporary art. Hopefully then, by focusing on how people experienced, felt, thought of the work, as an individual in a group, a community, of a people, by focusing on it being a community in performance or performing community, the unburdening can be achieved.
To start the ball rolling. I’ll read this passage from an article Lolo Pepe wrote “What is Ugnayan”: “In the broadcast of Ugnayan on January 1st, 1974, emphasis in the preparations was on the formation of groups, or multiples, of 20 radio transistors. Many groups got together in this manner in homes, buildings and plazas of towns and cities. They arranged their tran sistors in a circle semi-circle with the audience listening within these circular forma tions. Transistors were also grouped together in one spot, and listeners gathered themselves around that spot. Some groups were very well organized. Each person in the group was assigned a particular wave-length and the vol ume of each receiver was balanced against each other. Altogether, the result of this arrangement was a pleasant experience for the participants. Very many units of twenties, summing up into thousands of people had the opportunity to hear the complete music in this manner. There were also individuals and families who listened to only a few radio sets in their homes. Some people walking or driv ing in narrow streets heard the music from inside homes on both sides of the streets. Many derived a great pleasure from the new sounds. To some the music aroused a great curiosity, and to others it evoked a certain sensuality which made them want to hear the music again.” (Philippine Quarterly, March 1974).
For this afternoon, we’ve invited Dr. Jonas Baes, Dr. Elena Mirano, Dr. Ramon Santos, and Dr. Verne dela Peña, those who are more knowledgeable of Maceda’s work, and have experienced to share about 1974 and 2010 Ugnayan.
I turnover the floor to those who are here with us today.
Dayang MNT Yraola
Artistic Director
Atmospheres: Ugnayan@50
University of the Philippines Diliman
Message: Backround of the Project
25 April 2024, Atmospheres: Listening Tambayan
Ugnayan, also known as Atmospheres, epitomizes Jose Maceda’s love-hate affair with technology. Initially envisioned for car stereos traversing the bustling lanes of the Los Angeles freeway, Atmospheres metamorphosed into Ugnayan, reaching audiences across the archipelago via 20 radio stations.
Half a century later, we revive this masterpiece as it grapples with the contemporary realm of wifi connectivity.
Yet, amidst the evolution from car stereos to transistor radios and now smartphones, Atmospheres (Ugnayan) transcends the mere apparatus of technology; it’s a celebration of human connection, as Maceda intended it to be.
On behalf of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, I extend my warmest greetings and congratulations to Anna Patricia R. Carranza, Project Head, Dayang MNT. Yraola, Project Director, and the entire organizing team of Atmospheres. Our deepest gratitude as well goes to the UP College of Music and the UP DIliman Office of the Initiatives for Culture and the Arts without whose invaluable support Atmospheres could not have been such a success.
LaVerne David C. de la Peña, PhD
Director
Center for Ethnomusicology
University of the Philippines College of Music
3 May 2024, Atmospheres: Talk
Jose Maceda’s monumental, cutting-edge, revolutionary, controversial, contradiction-ridden and ideologically-entangled piece Ugnayan marks its 50th anniversary today, with a contemporary re-envisioning under the auspices of the Center for Ethnomusicology. The series of interdisciplinary talks that had preceded this yesterday laid the setting for this performance which shall be witnessed 50 years later in diverse atmospheres far removed in some ways from, but still reminiscent in other ways, of, the regime in the 70s that had supported this piece.
I warmly congratulate the Center for Ethnomusicology under its director Dr Verne de la Peña, its OIC Dr. Lisa Decenteceo, and the Project Leader for this event Asst Prof Ana Patricia Carranza of the Music Education Department, for mounting this project which continues the life and artistic memory of our dear National Artist Jose Maceda , whose brave and singular compositional stance in the 60s paved the way towards a radical rethinking of how we produce our art music as Asians in societies pregnant with socio-political issues and complexities. This performance, the highlight and closing event of Atmospheres, would not have been possible without the invaluable assistance of OICA and the College of Music. Through its being a featured component of the “Pamamalagi at Pamamahagi”-the UPD Arts & Culture Festival 2024, it is hoped that Ugnayan’s worth, meaning and place in our history may persist relevantly. THANK YOU!
Ma. Patricia B. Silvestre, PhD
Dean
College of Music
University of the Philippines Diliman
Welcome Message, 5 May 2024, Atmospheres: Performance
Good afternoon, university officials, members of the UP community, friends and followers of Jose Maceda.
This afternoon, we are celebrating the 50th year anniversary of the 1st performance of Ugnayan in 1974, as part of our celebration of the UP Diliman’s Arts and Culture Festival 2024, which commemorates the 75th year of the transfer of the Oblation to UP Diliman.
This work was originally named ‘Atmospheres’ by Jose Maceda. And in the course of the performance, I think we will understand why. It is very apt to the theme of our festival—Pamamalagi ang Pamamahagi—which is a way of reflecting on the state of the University as an academic institution and as a community of people from diverse backgrounds and interests coming together to be of service to the nation.
I will not go into the history of this piece, or speak about its significance to Philippine music or social history. I would like to beg your indulgence and take this opportunity to speak about what Jose Maceda means to me, and I think to many of us here. Aside from Jose Maceda, the National Artist, pianist, composer and ethnomusicologist, Jose Maceda to many of us, was ‘Lolo Maceda’. He was the first “Lolo” that I knew, even before I remember meeting one of my ‘real’ Lolos, who was also named Jose.
So I grew up with 3 branches of kin. My mother’s side, my father’s side, and the family that Lolo Maceda built. This ‘kin group’ gathered together every year at his home, at Christmastime right before the school would go on break. And when my father would go away, Lolo Maceda and Madeleine sometimes became our remote babysitters. And it was in that ping-pong table at his house that I learned how to play ping-pong, enough to bring me a gold medal at our elementary school intramurals when I was in 4th grade.
I mention this here to highlight the Jose Maceda who was a community-builder, imagined or otherwise. For me, this part of him is deeply ingrained in his works and in the legacy he left behind at the UP Center of Ethnomusicology. It took me a while to realize that many of those now working at the Center have never met Lolo Maceda, perhaps because when I am there, it feels like I am in the company of cousins and
pamangkins, an extended family who has inherited the responsibility of safeguarding his legacy.
I had the opportunity to play in a few of Maceda’s pieces. I thought, “kaya ko naman siguro to hit a bamboo instrument with a stick”. And if you’ve seen Maceda’s scores, you kinda just need to know how to count (irregularly) to be able to perform in his pieces, or maybe move around carrying a cassette or MP3 player, know how to take direction from the conductor or from a set of instructions, and performer ka na! Tapos sometimes no rehearsals pa. And in 2020, a bunch of friends and I produced Udlot-Udlot online. It was an open call to anyone who was interested in participating as a singer or as a musician. We were all in our own little worlds, in our homes, isolated because of the pandemic. But with Maceda’s Udlot-Udlot, we came together from different parts of the world, to participate in this venture. And this, to me, is what Maceda’s music is about—it is inclusive, it makes you aware of others, it makes you aware that you are part of something bigger than yourself. More than being ‘Asian’, his works teach us how it is to be human.
Thank you to all the organizers of this event, especially my pinsan-in-Maceda, Dayang Yraola, for making this happen.
Good afternoon.
Monica Fides Amada W. Santos
Director
Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts
University of the Philippines Diliman
Message, 5 May 2024, Atmospheres: Performance
Magandang hapon po sa lahat. Thank you for making time this Sunday afternoon.
Restaging Maceda’s work in various forms—whether as presentation, workshop, performance, or exhibition, had been my curatorial pre-occupation since I started working on the Maceda Collection in 2007. I have known Maceda much much earlier, and knew of his reputation in the music world, in research, and in the academia, but it was only when I started digging up the archives, I realised for myself and understood, the potential for his work and thoughts as inspiration and provocation for contemporary art—not only music, but also fine arts, performance art, media art and everything in between. I have restaged Ugnayan, as an installation in 2018 for the project “What has it got to do with coconuts and rice?” organised by SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. The thought of restaging it as a performance, came to me last year, when I returned to the place where the installation was held.
OICA’s call for activities for the Diliman Arts and Culture Festival this year was an opportune time for the restaging. And I can’t thank the UPCE and the Department of Music Education enough for trusting me with this project. We had two pre-events prior to the performance—on Apr 25, we had a tambayan, where those who have memories of the 1974 staging, such as National Artist Dr. Ramon Santos, Dr. Elena Mirano, Dr. Jonas Baes and Dr. Verne dela Peña, shared their experience. On May3, we looked at Ugnayan from various disciplinal perspectives– Dr. Elizabeth Enriquez presented the historical condition of broadcasting at the time of Ugnayan; Prof. Felipe de Leon Jr, revisited the stature and influence of Maceda as a composer and a scholar; and Ms. Feliz Macahiz, a young composer, traced her creative lineage to Maceda.
Today, May5, we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the composition, Ugnayan, at the same time commemorating its creator, National Artist for Music Dr. Jose Maceda’s 20th death anniversary, through Atmospheres: Ugnayan @50. The restaging attempts to unburden Atmospheres aka Ugnayan of being known as an Imelda Marcos art project. We are not revising history. We acknowledge that the 1974 Ugnayan happened, using the state’s facilities; that in fact, the title “Ugnayan” was chosen by Mrs. Marcos as it fits the propaganda’s motto of building a new society—Bagong Lipunan.
But how, how do we intend for this unburdening to happen? What we are doing in this restaging is replacing the circumstances of production. This performance is not a memo from the national government, passed on to the barangay—so it has to be done. What we are emphasizing now is the essence of the work, as it was intended by the composer. Maceda said, “We as Filipinos, our atmospheres, our milieu, our determined presence as human beings and as citizens, the recreation and re-awareness of what we are, of our aspirations—these and more is Ugnayan music”.
Atmospheres is a composition recorded in 20 tapes that has to be broadcasted in at least 20 radio stations and listened-to by people gathered in groups in various public and private locations. The communal tuning-in and listening, would create the musical atmosphere.
Atmospheres is perhaps one of the few Filipino music works that makes listening, the performance. Foremost sound studies scholar Dr. Brandon LaBelle proposes through the platform Listening Biennial, which UP hosted last year, curated by yours truly, the discursiveness of listening, that listening in itself can be a political act; that it has the capacity to form and shape communities. In Atmospheres, the audience and the performers, are one and the same —they are the listeners, and they are listening together—a community-in-performance to create the musical atmosphere.
Maceda, himself consistently gave emphasis to listening—he was quoted saying “if you wish to honor me, listen to my music.” Additionally, for this work, he pointed out that in performing this piece, we listen with two kinds of ears—one for the music and the other for the chatter…and that our behaviour will be conditioned by how the music affects us.
Maraming salamat po sa pakikinig. I now pass you on to the Tech Team, Ben Velasco and James Gazmin, to jumpstart our performance.
Dayang MNT Yraola
Artistic Director
Atmospheres: Ugnayan@50
University of the Philippines Diliman
Message: Backround of the Project
5 May 2024, Atmospheres: Performance
To our esteemed guests, Dr. Ramon Pagayon Santos, National Artist for Music and former director of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, Asst. Prof. Monica FAW Santos, Director of UP Diliman Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, friends in music and the various arts, family, good afternoon to all of you. I am quite happy to say that I actually see a lot of new faces in the crowd – same as during the talk on Maceda: Music, Media, and Education during the Martial Law held last May 3 – a good sign that New Music in the Philippines is actually reaching a bigger audience. Thank you for being here.
It might be puzzling to some that the Department of Music Education spearheads the organization of this project. Why not Composition? Jose Maceda is a renowned Filipino composer. Why not Musicology? Jose Maceda has contributed a lot to the research on indigenous musics all over the Philippines. Well, in the 1970’s, Maceda’s Udlot-Udlot was performed by 800 performers, a handful of which were high school students from the University of the Philippines. That’s the short answer. But the long answer is that the magic of Jose Maceda’s music and research lies not in the trickling of sounds here and there that suddenly transform into sound masses, not in the unorthodox sound vocabulary he introduced to New Music in the Philippines, and not even in the choreography of the performers, both orchestrated or spontaneous. Not to get me wrong – these are all magical, sometimes hypnotic and trance-like as the music starts building up – but maybe, the real highlight Lolo Pepe made was making the community as the source of musical knowledge and sound. He made music that could be read and understood without musical expertise (in the Western classical tradition). He brought out other ways of thinking about music apart from being performed on stage, with the audience being proactive instead of just consuming the experience in front of them. Evolving outside the norm, evoking more questions than answers, espousing for inclusion – those are hallmarks of lifelong learning. Maceda was a student of life, a teacher to generations.
I hope that our experience of the activities under Atmospheres: Ugnayan @ 50 make us students of life, and hopefully, a teacher, even just to one other person, just like how Lolo Pepe was.
Magandang hapon po sa ating lahat.
Anna Patricia “Pat” R. Carranza, LPT, MM
Project Leader
Atmospheres: Ugnayan@50
Chairperson
Music Education Department
University of the Philippines College of Music
Closing Message
5 May 2024, Atmospheres: Performance