National University of Singapore

NUS Rondalla

Currently 40-strong , the NUS Rondalla is an ensemble which performs on a mix of Spanish and Filipino tremolo/plucked-stringed music instruments - bandurias, lauds, mandolas, octavinas, mandolins, guitars and double basses. The group has also developed its own instrumental formation and music arrangements.

The rondalla came to Singapore 1981 through Dr. Joe Peters via the National University of Singapore. He studied this music form, in his spare time, while he was a post-graduate student at the College of Music at the University of the Philippines.

He saw the potential for the rondalla as a new musical activity within the extra-curricular music programme at National University of Singapore (NUS). Initially, the rondalla at NUS was for students who did not have a chance to learn music during their school careers. Within the first 10 years, the programme expanded as student interest grew rapidly. They visited and performed in the Philippines many times – in 1984 and 1987 for the television programme Concert in the Park and in 2008 and 2011 for the International Rondalla Festival.

By 1985 the NUS Rondalla had expanded and developed their own model by adding new instruments: the Spanish bandurria, the Italian mandolin and the Filipino mandola – the latter was re-constructed from a loose drawing that Dr. Peters found in a book in the UP Library while doing an ethnomusicology research bibliography for the late Emeritus Professor Jose Maceda. The current orchestral model of the NUS Rondalla expands the sound spectrum to obtain the best for tremolo/plucked-stringed instruments. It has also made the rondalla more interesting and challenging to students in Singapore.

By the 1990s, a tier-system developed, and the approach to the rondalla became modular, making it easier to define its instrumentation, for teaching, composition and music arranging – all of which became student activities. The students were posed with the challenge of being self-reliant and making the NUS Rondalla self-sustaining as it was the only rondalla in Singapore. To ensure easy peer group learning, Dr. Peters developed the Heuristic Group Rondalla Method. The stronger performers and learners would, over and above performing, begin teaching the new students each year to replenish graduating ones. Rondalla was, and still is, a non-credit musical activity at the National University of Singapore.

The NUS Rondalla will stage the latest of their annual Fiesta Rondalla series on 28 Feb 2012 at 8pm at the UCC Theatre. This year, a new group of student leaders will present their arrangements under their Assistant Conductor and Tutor for Filipino instruments, Linda Zhong Yi, and their Tutors, Bill Shengyang (Spanish Instruments); David Wangzhi (Mandolin) and Tian Hongyu (Double Bass). A special feature " The C-10 English Pantun Show" will follow. It tells the story, in Peranakan dondang sayang style, of the 3rd cohort of university band students at the cross of the 1960s and 1970s. These students with their well loved band director, Gerry Soliano, made an old chemical storage room (C-10) into the first dedicated space for music on the campus. C-10 was the acorn from which a large extra-curricular music and dance programme evolved on the campus. These pioneering students called C-10 the only stress-free area on the campus, and they honed their musical and other creative skills in that little room. Gunong Sayang, the leading Peranakan musicians in Singapore, will be performing the pantuns in English, accompanied by the NUS Rondalla. A section of those C-10 Alumni will be present at the concert.

Click here for an image gallery of rondalla instruments.