James Dan Gazmin looks back at the days when he and his two friends formed a chapter of Paggawisan Tako Am-in at the University of the Philippines Diliman (Pagta-UPD) in October 2024.

They passionately wanted to present the beauty and history of Cordilleran culture and traditions through music shows in the urban centers but they had insufficient resources and musical instruments, even members, to begin with.

Pagta, a sociocultural student organization based in Baguio City, holds performances and events to promote the Cordillera’s rich heritage. Although originally composed of students from indigenous communities, it welcomed non-indigenous members in 2007. “Until now, Pagta still has a stronghold in Baguio,” Gazmin says.

When the group set up its chapter in UP Diliman, it was immediately swamped with invitations to public performances, including an event attended by National Artist for Cinema Eric de Guia aka Kidlat Tahimik.

But Pagta-UPD struggled to keep its footing. With little resources, it had to borrow musical instruments from certain facilities until it found a significant ally in the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE) at the university’s College of Music.

Bridging the past and the present, the UPCE is a research institution devoted to the music of indigenous communities in the Philippines. It was established in June 1997 under the UP Diliman Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development from its former appellation UP Ethnomusicology Archives.

Cultural purity

The center holds a wealth of books, studies, instruments, archives, and everything else related to music and ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. It is where music and history are celebrated, their cultural purity recognized beyond any foreign occupation.

Before Pagta-UPD acquired its own “gangsa,” it borrowed the set of small flat gongs from the UPCE. “The center is the only one with a complete set. The set in the College of Music was broken,” Gazmin says.

The group also took the “patangguk,” or the quill-shaped bamboo tubes native to Kalinga, from the center.

Instruments kept in the UPCE are conditioned to be displayed and played, unlike in the college’s Museum of Instruments, says Gazmin, who serves as the junior library aide assigned to the center’s instrumentarium.

At the core is the collection of Dr. Jose Maceda, ethnomusicologist, educator, and the CE’s founding director. His trove, designated as the “Ethnomusicological Survey of the Philippines,” consists of more than 2,500 hours of field recordings, hundreds of instruments, books, field notes, and published and unpublished scores.

The collection was inscribed in Unesco’s “Memory of the World” in 2007 as items of “documentary heritage of exceptional value.”

Also found at the UPCE are the “Hinilawod Epic Chant Recordings,” a collection of epics in the Visayas by Filipino anthropologist Felipe Landa Jocano, which was cited in Unesco’s “Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific” in 2024, and the ethnomusicological collection of National Artist Ramon Santos, the country’s foremost exponent of contemporary Filipino music.

The UPCE is “very important because it is the only center in the country that is heavily focused on ethnomusicological research,” Gazmin says, adding:

“The center promotes traditional music and dance. It raises public awareness about the collections that promote the culture and identity of Filipinos.”

Simple goal

The UPCE’s goal is simple: to make Filipinos appreciate indigenous traditions, according to LaVerne de la Peña, a professor and former executive director of the center. It is for everyone’s use, he said, although most of its clients are scholars at UP, specifically at the College of Music.

As a research institution, the center produces music-focused studies accessible to readers from all walks of life, both in writing and distribution. “We made sure that [studies] were written so that ordinary readers can understand and appreciate them. Mainly, the focus is on schools and school teachers,” says De la Peña.

The UPCE frequently conducts tours for students from kindergarten to high school, providing an overview of its four facilities—the library, archives, instrumentarium, and audio conservation laboratory.

In the library are music scores, books, audiovisual materials, theses and dissertations written in Filipino, English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and other languages. The massive collection of resources on musicology comes from the global research of its founding director Maceda.

The instrumentarium is a haven for more than 3,700 assorted indigenous instruments from the Philippines, Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia, as well as parts of Latin America and Africa.

Most of the instruments are part of Maceda’s collection, including gifts received during his travels. Others are donated from the center’s workshops, field work, and conferences and forums.

One of the oldest on display is the Nose flute recorded in 1957. Gazmin says other instruments could be older than when they were recorded.

Like the library, most instruments may be borrowed, with permission from the center’s director.

The archive is the powerhouse of never-before-seen-or-heard audio recordings, audiovisual materials, texts, images, and scores of great ethnomusicologists’ documentation of ethnolinguistic groups globally. These are stored in the audio conservation laboratory that uses state-of-the-art equipment for maintenance.

Preservation

UPCE media archivist David Dino Guadalupe says the center began digitizing its archives in 2008. “The usefulness of the collection diminishes if it cannot be heard, so we preserve it by digitizing,” he says.

Guadalupe shares with CoverStory.ph a recording of children playfully singing a song in their native language, little knowing that it would become a treasure in the country’s sole ethnomusicology institution.

The recordings hold a different meaning for the communities where culture is very much alive, according to collections manager Roan Mae Opiso. More than the preservation of culture, the recordings represent the voice of revered family members and ancestors.

Some staff members recall that Bukidnon culture bearer Datu Rodelio “Waway” Saway once checked the recordings of his community for accuracy, and heard his father’s voice from a recording that dates back to when he was a toddler.

The recordings are also seen as a revival of an aspect of culture absent from the consciousness of this generation. Guadalupe narrates an incident when, during a UPCE seminar in Baguio, one recording captured a song almost forgotten by the older generation and never passed on to the new one.

“One old teacher remembered the song they learned decades ago,” says Guadalupe. “The whole group learned the song again and came back to the community. That’s Dr. Maceda’s goal—to keep things from being lost.”

The UPCE strives to bring back research and archive materials to their origin community and to train local archivists. “We realized that it’s about time communities were trained so … they will ultimately collect their own data and decide what will be included in the archives,” says De la Peña.

Guadalupe adds: “They are more knowledgeable in what should be collected or archived because it’s their culture—not only the rituals but also the members’ interaction. It’s like a family picture: You know what’s important. They will decide what [to do]; we will just provide training.”

The community training will create a new perspective—from a researcher’s to an insider’s—on materials. For De la Peña, a genuine cultural and heritage conservation program should involve the community.

The initiative started in Sagada, Mountain Province, where students and faculty members in schools near the indigenous communities were taught how to record and safeguard its music.

Lack of space and funding

Gazmin, the library aide for the instrumentarium, says the UPCE expects 400 to 600 more instruments this year.

But as it is, the facility is cramped with its current collection. Instead of being displayed aesthetically, the instruments are stacked one on top of the other due to lack of space. The situation is the same in the overflowing archives room.

Librarian-archivist Grace Buenaventura says the UPCE originally requested a whole building for its use, but the insufficient university budget brought it to a mere wing in the new Jose Maceda Hall. The center receives an annual budget from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development in UP Diliman for maintenance.

With the new building, Buenaventura says, the UPCE was hoping for bigger space for its current collection alone. “The archive should be at the core with a vault for the physical materials. Performance, conference or exhibit venues are also needed. We also need bigger space for the instruments,” she says.

Collections manager Opiso and archivist Guadalupe say the archives require consistent maintenance 24/7, including weekends. But per university policy, they have had to turn off the air-conditioning units beyond work hours—certainly not ideal for the archives’ condition.

“We plan to send a request for exemption to [limited air conditioning],” says Buenaventura. “But we still need to figure out how to maintain it. The maintenance and electrical budget will double, but it’s one thing that needs to be done.”

De la Peña, however, has no plan to request bigger space.

The UPCE also receives regular funding for its projects from government offices like the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and international nongovernment organizations, but these, he says, are still not enough to maintain a whole building.

“I am content with this [current office]. There are bigger problems in other offices, other schools, and here at the College of Music. Most of our clientele are from the college, so I’m good with keeping the facilities here,” De la Pena says.

“Having a new facility is not simple,” he adds. “You have to look for funds for how that building will be maintained. We can explore that later but for me, it’s not a priority. If 600 instruments come, we’ll just find a way to reconfigure that space.”

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