Description:
As part of the multi-part project, José Maceda: Echoes Beyond the Archipelago, Western Front and the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre presented two community workshops that culminated in a public performance of José Maceda’s composition Udlot-Udlot (1975).
Udlot-Udlot is a forty-minute composition for thirty up to 1,000 performers. Composed for voices, wooden percussion sticks, and traditional bamboo instruments—balingbing (buzzers), tongatong (stamping tubes), and ongiyong (flutes)—the work was designed so performers without musical expertise could equally participate. Modelled on tropical rainforest rituals and ceremonies, Udlot-Udlot implies a fundamental connection between human activities and nature, and explores how drone, colour, and melody come together as independent elements in performance. Udlot-Udlot was first performed in 1975 by 800 students at the University of the Philippines, and has since been presented internationally and recognized as a key work within Maceda’s career and the canon of avant-garde performance.
In Vancouver, the work was performed in the Exhibition Hall of the Roundhouse Community Centre by fifty community members who responded to an open call. Participants were invited to choose between voice and percussion, and were divided into three groups for rehearsals led by local musicians DB Boyko, Elysse Cloma, and George Rahi, with support from LaVerne C. de la Peña, director of the University of the Philippines Center for Ethnomusicology. The performance took place in the round, and audience members were invited to move throughout the space to experience different elements of the composition.
Curated by Aki Onda.
Captions:
Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.