Richie C. Quirino wins the 2004 National Book award in the Music category for Pinoy Jazz Traditions

On September 4, 2005 at the Manila International Book Fair in Pasay City, The Manila Critics Circle in cooperation (for the first time) with National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and the National Book Development Board, awarded Quirino with the prestigeous award before a SRO crowd on the upper level of the International Trade Center.

On the basis of Richie Quirino’s research as compiled in Pinoy Jazz Traditions, Richie and I are working on a 60-minute documentary. Below, are remarks I made about the book and its significance to the jazz field as a whole:

"As an American jazz aficionado, I must profess my utter and total ignorance of the generations of many great Filipino jazz composers and performers until I was able to read Richie Quirino's meticulously well-documented and lavishly illustrated book, Pinoy Jazz Traditions. With the exception of Bobbie 'The Wildman' Enriquez, whom I personally knew in the U.S., I had no inkling of the development of the Pinoy jazz scene here in the Philippines.

From having read this important volume, one comes to appreciate how Pinoy jazz musicians came to learn of the African-American roots of jazz from 1898 onward, their self-taught mastery realized from listening to imported 78-rpm jazz records, survival of the blackout on jazz performances during the Japanese Occupation of WWII, and the onlaught of rock music from 1960's onward. The history contained within Pinoy Jazz Traditions leaves little doubt but that Filipino musicians probably did more to spread a keen appreciation of the art of jazz in Asia than any other factors such as record sales and radio broadcasts. Often criticized as being mere imitators of American jazz luminaries, Filipino jazz musicians actually started to forge an early Philippine identity in composition and arranging by drawing on Filipino traditional songs and folk sources during the late 1930s and early 1940s by the likes of Angel M. Peña, a tradition continued until the present day by artists such as Bob Aves. Although Quirino's research indicates that many musicians were self-taught in the early years, others on the scene today have enjoyed the highest attainment of educational opportunities in the academy here in the Philippines and in the U.S. The annals of world jazz history cannot be considered complete without the addition of this ground-breaking work." CHDavis

© 2005-2007 Collis H. Davis, Jr.
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