This Master Rondalla Musician is Preserving the Sounds of Philippine Culture in L.A.
Rondalla groups, with their ensemble of plucked-string, wooden-body instruments of varying sizes — including the bandurria, laud, octavina, guitar and double bass, can be a sight that brings back many memories of home for the Filipino American community. And as they perform, the beloved, multilayered chorus of strings mesmerize with each chord progression, expressing the sounds of the Philippines through such moving ballads as "Dungawin Mo, Hirang" ("Look at me, my love") and fast-paced, crowd-pleasing folk dance songs as "Maglalatik." Watching the musicians' fingers strumming together with precision, tremolo picking in full effect, heightens the drama and poignancy of the music, rousing those in attendance to sing along, cheer, smile, applause and, for some, shed tears. That's the power of Philippine rondalla.
Here in Southern California, the most well-known and respected ensemble is the Rondalla Club of Los Angeles (RCLA), which has 10 members, and often seated at the center of the action is the leading figure of rondalla in the country, maestro Tagumpay Mendoza De Leon — affectionately known as "Uncle Pi" by friends, students and colleagues alike — playing as if he was born with a stringed instrument in hand. (It's worth noting tagumpay means victory in the Filipino language.) He has performed rondalla music for more than six decades, all around Metro Manila as a teenager, at the Hollywood Bowl and at festivals in Marseilles, France to name a few. For his longtime dedication to performing, teaching and preserving the art form, De Leon was recognized as a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow, the highest form of recognition for a practitioner of the traditional and folk arts to receive in the United States. Only one other Fil-Am musician, kulitang player Danongan Sibay Kalunduyan, has been recognized with the honor.
The history of rondalla in the Philippines dates back more than a century, when plucked string instruments were introduced to the country during Spanish occupation. Over time, Filipinos indigenized the instruments, making them their own, by using local versus imported wood to produce the hollow bodies and modifying the 12-string instruments of the colonizers to 14 strings to expand their range and create a more resonant sound. Instead of playing European songs, they played Filipino songs.
De Leon considers rondalla a communal art form for the masses — players come from every walk of life, every generation. In the Philippines, rondalla groups are a staple of joyful events. They often appear at town fiestas and family celebrations. They accompany folk dance troupes or serenade one's beloved. Larger orchestrated rondalla ensembles play at educational institutions and renowned performance venues. "It makes you want to be close to each other . . . It's not aloof. Like if you had an orchestra, you're listening, but you don't feel like you belong to them. But if you have rondalla, it makes you feel that you're part of the family of rondalla, because the music is sensitive to your feelings," says De Leon, who immigrated to the States in 1971 and is now in his late 70s. "Especially if they play your favorite Filipino songs, the more you appreciate the sound. For me, I love the strings because they're very nostalgic…especially for older people who have been here for a long time [to hear], they feel like they're home."
The prestigious NEA honor follows other awards De Leon has received over the course of his career, including being selected as a master artist by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts Apprentice Program with apprentice Patrick Tanega, who has played in RCLA since 1994 and credits De Leon for helping "to shape the L.A. rondalla landscape." Versus having each instrument (thus player) have a defined role and set parts in a song, as most contemporary rondalla groups do, "Uncle Pi would create the template for the tunes we'd play —he'd simply establish only the basic melody and chords," explains Tanega. "We were all given artistic freedom to fill in the spaces, making our own lines, constructing unique harmonies and, as a result, I developed my own individual style."
The De Leon family is no stranger to high-caliber music. In the Philippines, his mom, Illuminada Mendoza, was a concert pianist, and his father, Philippine National Artist honoree Felipe Padilla De Leon, was a famous bandleader and composer whose songs are still popular today, including "Sapagka't Mahal Kita" (Because I Love You) and the holiday songs "Noche Bueno" (Christmas Eve) and "Payapang Daigdig" (Peaceful World). His older brother Bayani Mendoza De Leon, an accomplished composer and educator, was posthumously given a Presidential Award for his own musical contributions in the Philippines and the United States.
The children were raised playing piano at an early age, with De Leon starting on the keys at age six. It was not until he was 12 that he'd be introduced to rondalla. His father and other members of the Manila Lions Club arranged for their kids to be taught the instruments to occupy their time while the adults had their meetings. At the time, De Leon chose to play the biggest instrument. "I thought the [upright] bass would be easier to learn because there are only four strings," he remembers. "I was intimidated by the bandurria, which is 14 strings." (He's now skilled at playing every instrument.) Together, the five siblings would form the De Leon Family Rondalla, with their father sometimes conducting them at performances. Despite their lineage and training, De Leon's parents discouraged him and his siblings from pursuing music full-time; It's hard to support a family as musicians, his parents reasoned. At the same time, his parents wanted their children to embrace their heritage, whether through music or other means. "My father always said, 'If you don't promote your culture, who else will do that for you?' So we always keep that in mind in the back of our minds."
Decades later and thousands of miles away in Southern California, where he immigrated to in order to help support his family in the Philippines, rondalla remained close to his heart while working as an engineer. De Leon started performing with rondalla groups here in the late 1970s, accompanying the Pamanlahi Dance Group and singing in the Philippine Concert Choir, as well as teaching rondalla to the choir members' kids, in step with Filipinos' emphasis on intergenerational cultural exchange. In 1985, he joined the Fil-Am Cultural Family Group as its assistant director, which is how he met Nitoy Gonzales, its musical director and former rondalla maestro of the renowned Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company.
The Rondalla of the Fil-Am Cultural Family Group was asked to perform at UCLA's Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN) in 1988, and word spread fast about them. Having a live rondalla group wasn't as commonplace back then: instruments needed to be secured from the Philippines and there weren't enough master players to teach it. Requests for the Fil-Am Rondalla to perform at other PCNs came from all over the state, from UC Berkeley to UC San Diego and UC Riverside, prompting De Leon, Gonzalez and Leonilo "Boy" Angus — another former Bayanihan musician and cofounder of Philippine performing folk arts group Kayamanan Ng Lahi — to form Rondalla Club of Los Angeles in 1991. "We realized that we needed to recruit more members," says De Leon. "With an organization like RCLA, we could probably attract other members to learn how to play, have them for PCNs," and continue to popularize the craft.
Years later, in 1998, De Leon, along with other rondalla players, would join his friend Joel Jacinto, another cofounder of a Kayamanan Ng Lahi and a frequent RCLA collaborator for a rondalla demonstration in a world music class at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). This led to De Leon teaching a Rondalla Ensemble course at the university, a position that has lasted for more than 20 years, influencing hundreds of young musicians.
The addition of the course in 2001 was part of a larger effort by the university, specifically UCR ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong, PhD, and colleague Rene Lysloff, to "establish non-western ensembles that addressed Asian American cultural dynamism," starting with taiko and rondalla classes, shares Wong. "Rondalla is an ideal kind of community-based music since it literally creates a musical space that can involve many people."
De Leon remembers his first day of teaching at UCR well: "I had 28 students, mostly Filipinos, and we only had 12 instruments." He used teaching methods that his brother Bayani had developed while teaching and establishing rondalla groups in San Diego. He started by using numbers to teach students what strings to play versus reading notes. (De Leon still uses his brother's manual today.) The yearlong Rondalla Ensemble elective proved to be popular, yet the veteran instructor admits "teaching was not really part of my goals in life. I was a teacher in the Philippines, but engineering, not music." After decades of helping young kids to university students learn the craft, teaching clearly is one of his gifts, and he is happy to see how his UCR students now include those of Filipino, Chinese, Mexican and European descent. "When I was looking for graduate schools to study ethnomusicology, few schools offered a chance to participate in a Filipinx music ensemble," shared Neal Matherne, PhD, who took De Leon's class starting in 2001. (Wong and Matherne wrote the nomination letter to the NEA for De Leon to receive the National Heritage Fellowship.) "I enjoyed the stories of his musical family in the U.S. and the Philippines. His classes often began with him sharing stories to our class before we played. Uncle Pi's class — histories, his optimism, and his warm, gentle demeanor — are a particularly bright spot in students' memories of college life."
Many former students in an online event hosted by UCR celebrating his fellowship, echoed this sentiment. Drea Castillo, who took De Leon's class from 2009 to 2011, shared, "I miss playing Filipino folk tunes you arranged that I remember from my childhood." She also thanked him for "teaching pakikisama, or how to get along with each other, a core Filipino value that you instilled into every class effortlessly." Another former student for four years, Jenny Cortier, added, "Rondalla was definitely the highlight of every week for me, I look back at those times as the prime of my life," telling De Leon, "It's an honor to know you."
Upon hearing he was selected as a fellow, De Leon was surprised at first. "Then I realized I've been doing this my whole life in America," he says smiling. "It's also a testament to what my family has been striving for. Promoting our culture is part of our Filipino identity. So that means being recognized for that, then it's an honor for my family, too."
Earlier this year, on January 29, recent and past students, fellow performers and numerous family and friends gathered at a theater in Historic Filipinotown for a special evening celebration honoring De Leon's "Life in Rondalla," hosted by FilAm Arts. Many took to the stage to share their favorite Uncle Pi stories and perform songs and dances in his honor, almost bringing him to tears. Among the most moving experiences for the audience was seeing video of three generations of De Leons performing "Pilipinas Kong Mahal" ("My Beloved Philippines") together. Just as his father introduced rondalla to his children, De Leon taught his three kids and grandkids. NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson was among those who spoke at the event and shares by email that "Uncle Pi exemplifies the essence of the NEA National Heritage Fellowships by keeping beautiful, meaningful, artistic traditions alive across generations." (Watch the NEA's tribute video to De Leon.) She adds, "Through his teaching and leadership, Filipino Americans feel connected to one another while learning about themselves and their Filipino culture. In doing so, Uncle Pi has also contributed greatly to our rich and diverse American cultural tapestry."
And De Leon's influence doesn't stop Stateside. While he was coincidentally visiting a manufacturer of rondalla instruments in the Philippines in 2011, he accidentally met a young rondalla group: "There was a bandurria, guitar and bass, three of them were playing 'Spanish Eyes.' And I said, 'We're from America. We know that song. We don't want to hear that song anymore. We want to hear native songs. We want to hear 'Bahay Kubo [a popular Filipino children's song].'" They responded, "Hindi ho namin alam yun." ("We don't know that song."). Their admission shocked De Leon, telling them, "You don't know that music, you're Filipinos…"
Always the teacher, he proceeded to dictate the chords to them, also taking one of their instruments to lead them in the song. "And then all these people gathered around, even tourists, and they started throwing money on the floor and all of a sudden there was this heap of cash, some dollars and pesos," De Leon recalls, laughing. "'You keep all of it,' I told them. I think they collected about 7,000 pesos at the time. They said, 'This is our whole income for the year, po [an expression of respect in the Filipino language]! We'll start learning folk songs now.'"
And just as Filipinos did a century ago when first the Philippine rondalla first developed, De Leon brought the instruments back to the people. He impressed upon the trio his belief that playing Western music defeats the purpose of rondalla. "That's the only way we can instill in this, especially in the younger generation, that they have their own culture. They should appreciate it."
Experience the sounds of rondalla when De Leon performs with RCLA at Pilipino Cultural Nights all over Southern California, starting May 21 at UCLA.
Follow them on Instagram at @rondallaclubla.
