Asian Drumming Festival, May 23 '10, The Forks

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March 8, 2010
Monday

The current president of the Asian Heritage Festival Committee of Manitoba contacted me to represent the Filipino culture in the upcoming Asian Drumming Festival (part of the weeklong Asian Heritage Month celebration in May).

I already have a concept of what to perform--something that I thought of even way back I was still a member of Half Life Half Death in the Philippines--something that I once suggested to my former bandmates to be included in our debut album, but which we never pursued.

My concept will be, my current band haLf man haLf eLf will perform our original arrangement of the song "(Ako'y Munting Tinig) I Am Not a Small Voice." Then, the instrumental part will be a drum routine, which will build up into a series of drum patterns to be rendered by several drummers using various kinds of drums and percussion. This 3-minute drum exhibition will be accompanied by a group of female dancers. Afterward, we revert to performing the song. The dancers will then be joining me in the singing of the song's chorus/coda. The drummers will simply continue playing along the song until they simultaneously come to a break. The song will end in a semi-a-capella--vocal choir with a group of guitarists playing 6-string and 12-string acoustic guitars.

A narrator will be voicing over over the drum-exhibition part of the song, talking about the drums as a percussion instrument and its presence in many traditional and modern musical performances and cultural festivals.

This will be the same arrangement that haLf man haLf eLf will record to be include in our CD.