"Ang di marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan..."

I adore Cesar Montano. Not because he is now a star, but because he is the type of guy who knows where he came from and never deny that fact just because of his present status. Montano has done many good things for Bohol and he is a proud Boholano. Way to go Cesar Montano!

This is also a note of million thanks to the Ayalas, specifically Bea Zobel Jr and the Ayala Foundation for the great things they have done to make Bohol even prouder of its cultural heritage. We salute you Ma'am for being a Boholano by heart.

Montano, Ayalas toast Bohol heritage

By Pablo Tariman

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 02:39:00 12/15/2008

THREE years ago in Bohol, actor Cesar Montano showed me the interiors of the Baclayon town church, built in 1727 by the Jesuits using coral-stone blocks from the sea and egg white and plaster to glue the blocks together.

With it gilded altars, Baroque and Classical inner façade and its retablos highlighted by images of saints, I told the award-winning actor, “What a beautiful venue for concert!” Later, I would test the acoustics and found it excellent.

Earlier, I learned that film scorer Nonong Buencamino recorded the choir music used in the Marilou Diaz-Abaya film “Muro-Ami” in this church and the award-winning film was actually shot on Bohol Bay.

Later, Montano also told me about the church’s historic pipe organ, which was installed in the choir loft in 1824 and years later found itself in a state of disrepair.

Experts say the Baclayon pipe organ has the character of Spanish Baroque organs and its parts could mimic the sound of birds through the little pajarillo pipes. It can also enhance melodies with the tinkling of the cascabeles, an ornamental stop with bells on a wheel drum and campanillas.

Through the assistance of Patricia Zobel de Ayala and the Ayala Foundation Inc., the organ’s pipes, wind chests, manual keyboard, pedal and other accessories were repaired extensively and restored to their original form.

Saturday morning last week, I saw Montano at the Tagbilaran airport and told him about the Baclayon concert, which would officially herald the coming to life of the newly restored Baclayon pipe organ.

In the evening, I found myself on the church choir loft with Montano and wife Sunshine Cruz, watching a concert featuring composer-conductor Cristobal Halffter and pianist Maria Manuela Caro on the pipe organ.

In the audience were Jaime Augusto Zobel, Sofia Zobel, Patricia Zobel and Bea Zobel Jr., who is 

behind a renewed restoration program involving Bohol’s cultural heritage.

So fragile

Pianist Maria Manuela Caro opened the concert with Antonio de Cabezon’s (1510-1566) Tiento del Primer Tono, followed by a Handel largo solo arranged by AR Parsons.

As the first two numbers unfolded, one realized the musical instrument was so fragile. It needed a focused assistant to keep it in tune and go through its complicated parts, like its ornamental stop and its tambor (big wood pipes) used to create rumbling sound similar to a drum.

Bach’s Aria and the 7th Variation of the Goldberg Variation had a fairly good reading, and I suppose this piece is better off played on the piano to preserve its original nuances.

One got to finally hear the uses of the big wood pipes and the reed stops with Juan Bautista Cabanilles’s “Batalla Imperial.”

The piece is a musical replica of a military battle and was properly the most virtuosic piece played on the program.

The evening was highlighted with Halffter playing Christmas carols from different countries. He concluded with a contemporary piece that ended with the use of the organ’s pajarillo pipes echoing the sound of birds, and we thought that was the most charming and compelling number from the concert.

The significance of this concert is that the Zobel family helped bring back to life the remaining musical symbol of the town’s cultural heritage while also assisting the town embark on a massive restoration campaign to preserve its historical, cultural and natural sites, including local traditions in craftsmanship.

Late in the night after the concert, Lani Schoof (wife of Hans Schoof, owner of Baclayon’s Peacock Garden Resort and Spa) treated Montano and company to a late-night cap.

Schoof, who is German but very Boholano (and Filipino) at heart, earlier showed us his Rizal collections in his cigar room, including furniture from Heidelberg where Rizal stayed in Germany.

It was an uncanny coincidence Montano had played Rizal in Abaya’s “Rizal.”

Montano remarked before the night cap ended: “It would be nice to hear Cecile Licad play in Bohol next year after this historic pipe organ concert in our historic town.”

Pic of Montano and fellow Boholano Rebecca Lusterio (Panaghoy sa Suba) grabbed from getinvolved.wordpress.com

Pride of Place: Finally a Bohol heritage-style book by Augusto Villalon

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:08:00 03/24/2008

MANILA, Philippines - To be launched in Tagbilaran on April 15, “Sukaran: The Domestic Architecture of the Towns of Loay and Loboc in Bohol,” published by the Ayala Foundation, is a book that takes, as it states, the “first step to meet the need for references that document the stylistic and architectural vocabulary of Bohol.”

Authored by the respected resident historian of Bohol, Marianito Luspo, and cultural worker Ino Manalo, the book celebrates the Boholano’s built heritage—the traditional homes of Bohol, ensembles of rural, straightforward architecture humbly constructed without the ostentation and frills seen in the plantation homes and mansions of wealthier regions in the Philippines.

Steering clear of the misconception that heritage must be grand, this delightful book highlights the often overlooked heritage of the everyday.

This richly illustrated publication pictures the ordinary homes of ordinary people in what formerly was a forgotten province until its recent rediscovery as a heritage showcase.

Bohol is a primary example in the Philippines that heritage, if properly tapped and managed, is a resource for income-generation. And because of that, Bohol is rapidly changing.

Sukaran attempts to regulate the rapid changes that Bohol is facing as a result of tourism and modernism.

Noting the existing predisposition of locals, architects and developers for generic Western-style developments that do not reflect the local culture and appropriateness of traditional Boholano architecture in contemporary design, the publication rightly attempts to focus interest back on local craftsmanship and design traditions.

A folio of photographs documents the parts of traditional homes, from roofs to façades, doors and windows. The folio even takes an unprecedented look at unappreciated vernacular gardens.

More interesting are the patterns from calado fretwork, the embroidery-like cutwork on wooden walls that allows air to circulate throughout houses. There are patterns of amakan (sawali, woven bamboo walling) ranging from the checkerboard to the herringbone and elegant diamond shapes.

“A conscious effort was made to confine the survey to architectural structures that used mainly traditional methods of construction, and, more importantly, materials from Bohol such as stone, wood, bamboo, nipa, cogon and capiz,” the authors write.

“Our aim is to privilege architecture that relates to Bohol’s environment, not only in design but also in use of materials.”

Foreign elements

The exhaustive survey is a result of “the observation of many visitors that Bohol’s tourism infrastructure is hardly reflective of its culture,” the authors say.

“Resorts that display foreign design elements have recently sprouted in Bohol. The island of Panglao, for example, is now home to Mediterranean villas, Balinese hideaways, Swiss chalets and American country restaurants.”

To refocus the globalized, generic look of new architecture back to its roots, the book records the Bohol vernacular and presents a veritable album of architectural details. It becomes a source book to redirect the vision of professionals, developers and aficionados who typically turn to the latest Western magazine for ideas to graft directly into whatever they might be building.

But the book, reference material that it definitely is, does not pretend to give all of the answers to reorient architecture into looking at modern adaptations from the traditional.

There is really no substitute to experiencing the real thing, going to the houses, feeling the space, understanding how light and air are modulated within the space, and finding out that decoration is not simply appliqued into the structure but is something integral to it.

In other words, the book is not something to just copy ideas from, it is something that tries to make people understand why these ideas not only give us our special Philippine pride of place, an identity shared by no other people on this planet.

But for those bent on just copying out of this book, at least they would be copying authentic details that they might take some pride from.

Whether this book finally reins in those individuals still dreaming of constructing more Swiss chalets, Italian trulli or Disney castles on Bohol shores, that remains to be seen.

But this is a good start.

Call Filipinas Heritage Library at services @fillib.org.ph