Folkerie

I feel the need to praise two works of art in this post. Last night I was sent a preview of Irish singer Róisín O’s music video for her upcoming song Hold On . With only a short text to introduce me to this new artist from Dublin, I didn’t have any expectations. So I put on my headphones and watched a moving short film. Yes, you read it right. Ever since outgrowing them, what I miss most about music videos are the stories they tell. This one brought me back to that time when everything felt younger, though what I was seeing on-screen was as old a story can be—about us in our everyday lives, reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s subjects. I couldn’t help that the film itself got my first attention. We see a man with a military haircut wake up at 6:30 in the evening. We suppose he is of Brazilian ancestry because of the flag beside his dining table. There’s something written on his door. He works the night shift… Ahh, the details! Kudos to the director, Simon Eustace , and the cast, Aaron Heffern...

Thought I’d never do a fashion feature, but these three sites, a blog and two shops, just overloaded me with all natural fabric goodness that I have to share them. First up is a crazy fashion blog by Paris and London aka The Mad Twins . They recently did a hippy shoot which I loved. Below are some of the photos. Next, the English lifestyle brand Cabbages & Roses . They sell clothes, home accessories and fabrics. I’ve never been to any of their shops, but they have collaborated with Uniqlo, a Japanese retail company that has branches here in the Philippines, and news is that they’ll be expanding to the provinces. So hopefully soon in Davao, too. Last but not the least, Folk Fibers is a little shop of naturally dyed handmade quilts. It is owned by Maura Grace Ambrose of Austin, Texas. Her “goal is to share the craft and folklore that prevails around natural dyes and quilting.”

I’ve been following Geninne Zlatkis’ art for about three years now and they never stop coming. She blogs here and sells prints on Etsy .

Folksongs & Ballads is an animated short film by Mathieu Vernerie, Pauline Defachelles, and Rémy Paul. Produced in 2011 at Supinfocom as a student project, it gives us 8 minutes of purely beautiful imagery and music, no dialogues. The film is about an old sailor trying to resist inactivity in an isolated port.

This song confused me seriously. At the time, my sister was looking for a Christmas carol to sing at their office’s Christmas celebration. We decided to look for a simple soft song to go with her simple soft voice. I started with the Christmas albums we had and made a list of the songs she could sing. “Away in a manger” was in two, one in Nat King Cole’s album and another from a choral group. When she came home, she listened to the songs and narrowed down the list, which includes Away in a manger . Next stop, youtube. The first video we found was Celtic Woman’s version. I thought that was perfect! My sister always loved Celtic Woman. So we watched a live performance… wait! That’s not Nat King Cole’s Away in a manger , is it? Again we listened to Nat King Cole, and after reading wikis, that’s how we found out. That there are two accepted melodies for this song and that the choral group version I was listening to was the same as Celtic Woman’s. Play the tracks below. The “Mueller” varia...

handpainting Paglisan sa dating bayan (Pantabangan Resettlement 1972) Ballpen Drawing 1995 with Blood Signature Acrylic painting Lukso ng Dugo 5 (blood on canvas) Amangpintor , born Elito Villaflor Circa, is a Filipino folk painter and notably the “first blood and hair painter of his generation of Filipino folk artists.” Official website  

As a follow-up to the previous post about kudyapi (2-stringed lute), I give you the master himself, Manlilikha ng Bayan Samaon Sulaiman , a folk music artist from Maganoy, Maguindanao. He was awarded the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (National Living Treasure Award) in 1993. As envisioned under R.A. 7355, “Manlilikha ng Bayan” shall mean a citizen engaged in any traditional art uniquely Filipino whose distinctive skills have reached such a high level of technical and artistic excellence and have been passed on to and widely practiced by the present generation in his/her community with the same degree of technical and artistic competence. ~ NCCA He died in May of last year. A year later the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) paid tribute to Sulaiman with Mamayog: the Music of Samaon Sulaiman , a set of audio recordings with a book containing more than 300 pages of transcriptions of these recordings and a monograph about the Maguindanaon kutyapi, published by the Gawad ...