Arts festival to tender music therapy for Sendong victims by Carina Cayon
I
nstead of bringing gongs and bamboo music fete in typhoon Sendong-stricken Cagayan de Oro City, the Philippine Arts Festival 2012 will be held in said city to provide music and dance therapy to the disaster survivors.
The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) will be staging the PAF this year in CDO as well as in Iligan City to tender the arts therapy in lieu of the First Asian Festival of Gongs and Bamboo Mu
sic activity which was earlier programmed. NCCA official Marichu Tellano told the media during the weekly Club 888 Forum that the music and dance therapy will be integrated during the debriefing and therapy sessions at some identified evacuation centers on the second week of February. “We’re going to provide the therapy utilizing creative forms of the arts,” stated Tellano, head of NCCA’s Planning, Policy, Policy Formulation, and Programming Division. She explained that the gongs and bamboo music festival is supposed to bring together local and foreign gongs and bamboo ensembles for performances and workshops in CDO on February 20-24. But the typhoon calamity that severely devastated the city in December last year has caused the transformation of the festival into aiding the healing process for the survivors through music and dance, Tellano said. Though the said festival will Saturday, January 28, 2012
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