“As culture witnesses say, the music is on and the fedora-hatted Serenaders keep the beat”
FOR real, this 7-piece string ensemble in the garlic-producing landlocked town up north, who call themselves the Pinili Serenaders, are traditional musicians unintentionally preserving the culture of their municipality and, on a wider sheet, their region of Ilocos.
In the main farmhands in much of their lifetime, the group, although members are now in their senior years, regrouped only last summer, thanks to a philanthropic townmate who works as a certified dental assistant in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Minerva Cacuyong was encouraged by her father Florendo to organize a string ensemble as early as 2012, but several restraining factors, including the global health emergency which whacked the third class town of nearly 18,000, put the strings and tunes for the nonce suspended.
By summer of 2025, the 56-year-old Cacuyong and her husband Dave de Boer re-assembled the musicians and gave them their moniker Pinili Serenaders, reviving memories of old-time serenaders when electricity was not yet switched on in the erstwhile tobacco-growing town rich in loamy soil.
With only two months jamming and improvising, sometimes just underneath crowns of wattle or monekeypod trees or mangoes, abundant in the sun-kissed town, their tunes have revived the love songs and folk songs of old Ilocos which include O Naraniag A Bulan (O luminous moon) and Bimmullalayaw nga ayat (Love like the rainbow).
Off the buddy-buddy Ilokano love and folk tunes, they also play La Paloma, written by the Spanish Basque composer in 1860, or Fraulein, written by Lawton William and sung by Bobby Helms which brings back 1957, or I Can’t Stop Loving You, sung by Don Gibson, released in 1958.
Although newly re-assembled, the Serenaders have gained, thanks to social media, fans from as far east of the International Date Line as Hawaii and Canada who were quickly transported back to their homeland sans passports, with the poignant tunes strummed by the seven string pluckers.
Things going for the musicians, from different barangays, are their enthusiasm and passion to preserve the music of their region, lapped by the waters of Luzon Bay and caressed by the breeze that blows westward from the Ilocos Mountain Range.
As re-assembled, the members are: Freddie Barcancel (co-founder, organizer, violin); Freddie Pacariem (audio technician, videographer and organizer); Hector Fernandez (guitar); Benito Cadalzo (double bass); Artemio Sugui (octavina); Jaime Pacariem (bandurria); Rudy Galinato (guitar); Noli Cacuyong (guitar); Julia Baldomir (organizer); and the Waterloo-based fifth generation British-Dutch Canadian citizen Dave de Boer (sponsor/manager).
The group keeps playing their music da capo al fine, with their fans, from Pinili and other towns of the Ilocos, egging them on to play more of the oldies that make them reminisce the years before and after the second world war, when Pinili, founded on Jan 1, 1920, was rising from the devastation following the occupation of the town by Japan’s imperial troops in the 1940s.
They are also getting a slice of the pie from baby boomers, GenX and the millennial generation with their rendition of traditional music, the stamp for the Ilokano people, the third largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, composing 10.53 million individuals, representing 9.0 percent of the national population of 117 million.
They are primarily in the Ilocos region (Northern Luzon) and neighboring provinces where they have migrated, Metro Manila, some towns south of the capital including in Mindoro and far Mindanao as well as Hawaii, the US mainland and Canada.
The Pinili Serenaders are “traditional musicians” or “folk musicians” since they play music passed down through generations, often within a specific community or region, and considered an important part of that culture’s heritage.
It was in the 1970s when Cacuyong had noticed string ensembles and other brass musicians in the town, which boasts Ilokandia’s first living national treasure in Magdalena Gamayo of the cotton-growing barangay of Lumbaan-Bicbica, who turns 101 on Aug. 13.
The 1970s was a vibrant era for music, with a blend of popular and emerging genres. Disco, funk, soul, and R&B were major players, alongside the continued prominence of rock in various forms like punk rock, hard rock, and progressive rock.
But the tunes the Pinili Serenaders are dishing out are closer to home: love songs and folk songs that touch always a local strain or memory.
The string pluckers and the lone violinist undoubtedly preserve their regional culture by playing traditional music when their feet are off their terraced lands, their music telling the present generation stories of love, life, emotions concealed while connecting with the community.
It is not far-fetched, as observers say, that before long the Pinili Serenaders will be performing at festivals, ceremonies and other cultural gatherings as the string ensembles of the 1950s and early 1960s: the Upon Rondalla led by Wenceslao Cabie and the Salanap Strings led by Juan Pagatpatan.
The musicians keep strumming the tunes, guided by their watchword: Surround yourself with people with no drama or negativity, smile with people who motivate you with good times and positive energy, have a peaceful life everyone.
As culture witnesses say, the music is on and the fedora-hatted Serenaders keep the beat.
