For many Catholics, pipe organs are a source of wonder and joy. Operated through pressurized air moving through a system of pipes, organs can take many shapes and forms and are usually made of wood, copper, lead, or tin. However, the organ of St. Joseph Parish Church, in the town of Las Piñas, part of the urban district of Metro Manila, Philippines, is made from a rather unusual material: bamboo sticks.
Built in 1824 by Father Diego Cera, Las Piñas’s first Catholic priest, this rare instrument is a testament of the interplay between Catholic tradition and local craftsmanship.
When Father Diego Cera, a Spaniard who was well-trained in architecture and the natural sciences, arrived in the Philippines, he found that bamboo was a widely available building material frequently used for indigenous buildings.
A naturally sturdy and flexible material, bamboo served as the backbone of the Philippines' vernacular architecture for centuries. Father Cera decided to craft a bamboo pipe organ, something he probably never witnessed back in Europe. Thanks to the help of local builders, he identified the best bamboo plants out of the Las Piñas and Zapote forests.
Construction started in 1816 and ended in 1824, after years of tinkering with the unusual material – Cera dreamed of building an organ entirely made of bamboo but eventually decided to make the trumpet stops, the bits of the pipes that let air in, with metal as it allowed for better sound.
What was probably the world’s first bamboo organ was used during Mass and celebrations in the late 1820s. However, the organ’s life was soon affected by severe weather. In the years 1880-1882 Las Piñas was hit by three earthquakes and a typhoon. After each natural disaster, Cera led restoration efforts to bring his beloved bamboo organ back to life.
Natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons repeatedly damaged the bamboo organ for decades after its construction, with bamboo pipes found floating outside the church after a particularly violent typhoon that flooded the town of Las Piñas. By the early 1900s the organ was mostly unplayable.
Starting from the 1960s, restoration efforts led by the German ambassador were carried out. Still, it wasn’t until 1973 that the organ was successfully restored thanks to international cooperation among the Philippines, Japan, where some of the unassembled pipes were taken to be restored, and Germany where the majority of the instrument was taken to be restored.
On February 18, 1975, the Philippines’ bamboo organ was showcased to the world during a concert at the Philippine Embassy in Bonn, Germany. Today, residents and visitors alike can hear Catholic music echoing through Las Piñas church out of the nearly 1,000 bamboo pipes of its 150-year-old organ as it originally did in 1824.
