June 12, Independence Day a la Pinoy

By Gerry Garcia

TOMORROW, Monday, is June 12 officially declared Philippine Independence Day by former Pres. Diosdado Macapagal many years after the nation had been celebrating the same on July 4, the day in 1946 when, following the end of WW II, the Americans granted freedom to their devastated colony. This in fulfillment of a promise made in the Tydings-Mc Duffie Law, otherwise known as the Philippine Independence Act enacted during the Philippine Commonwealth government (1935-1945).

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The June 12 celebration, traced to the “successful revolution staged against the Spaniards in 1898,” by then Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo and his followers, was actually Aguinaldo’s proclamation made in Kawit, Cavite, on June 12, 1898. The independence proclaimed was, however, short-lived when barely three years after the proclamation, Aguinaldo was captured by the Americans. Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the USA in April, 1901, and subsequently appealed to all Pinoys to recognize their new colonizers.

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Another short-lived independence granted our Republic was also made on October 14, 1943, by the Japanese during their occupation days which did not last long as the Americans came back in 1944… to eventually make good their promise of independence on July 4, 1946. July 4, significantly, is America’s Independence Day. Something that, for a number of super-nationalists, did not ring a bell. That’s why they changed July 4 to June 12, because, according to the Philippine Historical Association, “the choice of July 4 as Independence Day for the Filipinos was made by the Congress of the United States of America and not the Filipino people who should have been given the opportunity to exercise their prerogative of fixing and declaring the date of their glorious emancipation.”

But July 4 remains as Fil-American Friendship Day, however. We can imagine Big Brother America, partly peeved and amused, glossing over Little Brother’s antics and naughtiness.

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If the concert behavior of most Pinoy concert-goers during the last decades is any indication, classical music, especially the symphonies, are a dead duck, ignored and never admired.

When a pop concert opens with young star Geronimo or Velasquez belting out a Canseco hit, a big bulk of the audience remains up to the last number. At the last part however, when an unknown symphony is played ar an operatic aria is sung, more than half of the audience is gone. 

Reason for this negative audience reaction is the unthinking perception of most impressions and symphony band conductors that all great music of the masters can’t fail to stir interest and appreciation, especially if the performers are celebrities. But if their type of music does not connect . . . or is not comprehensible to the average ear, most in the audience would start leaving their seats.

But some symphonic music not of the heavy type, like the last movement of Rossini’s William Tell overture or even the stirring final movement of Beethoven’s symphony No. 1, can keep audience glued to their seats down to the last note.

The first movement of Haydn’s  “Surprize” symphony once played by the Manila Symphony Orchestra under  Billy Manalo here in the city plaza many years ago, including a sprinkling of pop tunes, raised ovation from an appreciative audience and a feeling of gratitude for the man who had brought the MSO to Dagupan at his own expense — Speaker Joe de Venecia from Binloc, this city.

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