February 2006 view the full calendar |
|
Diliman Month | |
Main Event Here’s your ticket to the best and the freshest events on campus! What’s UP? brings you the schedule of the latest happenings—the concerts, exhibitions, theater and dance performances and festivals galore. What’s more, What’s UP? gives you access to our erstwhile exclusive venues for academic discourse —the lectures, symposia, workshops and conferences—all in pursuit of our primary business to generate, impart and propagate new knowledge.
|
Campus Artists KONTRA-GAPI
The late columnist Doreen Fernandez captured KONTRA-GAPI’s exotic appeal: “When the mouth harps, zither drums, kulintang and voices start—in series, in unison, in counterpoint, in dialogue—the audience, old fans, or first-timers, realize that although this music is different from that of everyday, it is music to respond to; it is music that sets the blood racing, the veins throbbing, the shoulders moving, the heads nodding—because it is demonstrably Asian, verifiably Filipino.” In every KONTRA-GAPI performance, music is dance heard even as dance is music seen. Every performance is an event where the artists in turn sing, dance, mime and play as many as 10 instruments each. This total-theater approach reimagines the audience not as a captive crowd but as an essential participant in the creative process, transforming the occasion into a unity—a tribe in primeval ritual. The gamelan is the quintessential orchestra of South East Asia. Africa may lay claim to massed polyrhythmic drums, Europe the symphony orchestra, and the United States, the jazz and rock bands. Yet, no musical ensemble typifies this part of the world—its mysticism, timelessness, grandeur, beauty and feeling of community the way the gamelan does. While the tradition may be shared by many cultures, each one has evolved a style, a sense of aesthetics and a manner of presentation unique to itself—a mirror of its people, ecology, history and lore, psychology and values. KONTRA-GAPI draws inspiration from this ancient and profound source nurtured and sustained by the depth, wealth and cultural diversity of the Philippines and her Asian roots. The ensemble strives to express music and kindred arts from indigenous wellsprings, reaping from the people and giving back to them in new form “as magical as the moonlight and constantly changing as water.” “Gamelan” derives from the Javanese “gamel” which means “to hammer.” A gamelan usually consists of percussion instruments such as gongs and drums of graduated sizes, wood and metal xylophones of varied timbre, flutes and whistles, assorted bamboo, wooden and metal percussion and voices for singing and for expressive vocables. KONTRA-GAPI uses ideophones such as the kulintang, gangsa, tongatong and kalutang; chordophones like the hegalong, kulibet, gitgit and kuritang; aerophones such as the diwdiw-as, esmi, tonggali and suling; and membranophones like the debakan, solibaw, along with Cordilleran drums of varying sizes and shapes.
|
The Kontemporaryong Gamelan Pilipino (KONTRA-GAPI) is founding director Edru Abraham’s challenge (kontra) to the shackle (gapi) of Western musical preferences. Their performance is a total audio visual experience in itself—with gongs, drums, singing, chanting, dancing, and clapping. It has enticed audiences both here and abroad for its distinctly Southeast Asian touch.