CMPAG’s quest: Spreading love, smiles, and folk music

The evolution of music from folk to modern greatly affect the lives of youth nowadays. Even with the new trends, there is a group of children and teenagers in San Pablo, Laguna who still sways and swings to the tune of traditional Southern Tagalog music.

This group, who aims to become instruments in preserving the culture and arts of Southern Tagalog created in 2015, is called CARD MRI Performing Arts Group (CMPAG).

Bring back the golden times

CARD MRI Hijos Tours, one of CARD MRI’s institutions, started in 2013 with the aim to promote the culture, local tourism, and heritage of San Pablo, Leyte and Samar, Iloilo, Davao and Baguio; empowering the rich history of those places.

“The way we can ensure that our unique culture will still be alive years from now is to teach the younger generation to appreciate our traditional music and dances,” said Marilyn Manila, president, CARD MRI Hijos Tours Inc.

Now, one of the advocacies of the community-based tour company is to preserve the traditional dances and songs in the hearts of the youth.

“By letting them become knowledgeable about our culture and arts, they learn an important piece of our history,” Manila added.

The CARD MRI Performing Arts Group is composed of CARD MRI clients’ children and CARD-MRI Development Institute (CMDI) students. From the weekly rehearsal, where they are taught folk dances and kundiman, they are also trained on the importance of discipline, teamwork, and camaraderie.

In every step they take

Wearing their brightest smiles as their best accessory in every performance, the performers delight their audiences with a heartfelt, nostalgic feeling; a sense of love for the history of our country.

“It was an honor and a great experience to perform folk dances in front of different people and seeing them happy with our performances. Whenever we perform, we also tell ourselves to bring pride not only to our group, but also to CARD MRI and to our country. We don’t just perform, we introduce our rich culture to the people,” said Nicole Ann Santos, a member of CARD MRI Performing Arts. CMPAG recently performed during the 20th anniversary celebration of the Microfinance Council of the Philippines on July 25, 2019. Some of the other notable performances of the group was during Her Majesty’s Queen Maxima of the Netherlands visit in July 2015 and during Banko Sentral and Rafael B. Buenaventura Microfinance Foundation Inc.’s Paeng Microfinance Awards.

CARD MRI, through CARD MRI Hijos Tours, will continue to inspire the youth of the importance of history and culture, enabling our traditions as Filipinos to live on generations from today.

The CARD MRI Performing Arts Group during their performance for Hijos Tours in San Pablo staging the Southern Tagalog traditional dances.