Max Surban receives Lifetime Achievement award
Visayan Music Awards (VizMA) has honoured Max Surban with the Bahandi Lifetime Achievement Award. Widely considered the Father of Visayan Music, he has composed over 300 Visayan songs.
Gossip Girl was there on awards night at the Oakwood Pavilion in Cebu City. Minutes before I went onstage, award-winning furniture designer Kenneth Cobonpue told me, “I remember singing the Visayan songs of the late Yoyoy Villame, and listening to Visayan music when I was younger. But as the years went by, with the influx and influence of American music and Original Tagalog Music, Visayan composers started diminishing in numbers, with some even opting to write in Tagalog.”
This is why the Sacred Heart School for Boys Batch 1985 Foundation, decided to create VizMA, a Visayan Songwriting composition, to give Visayan Composers a chance to write beautiful Visayan songs and, at the same time, give them avenues to air these songs.
Max was honoured together with Monsignor Rudy Villanueva, who could not make it due to his medical condition.
Internet sensation Karencitta, who popularized the song “Cebuana,” opened the event. I hosted the event with fellow Cebuano, OJ Cimafranca.
Graphic and visual artist Ferdinand Aragon won grand prize for “Matag Piraso,” a hugot song about someone going through loss. He received a 100,000-peso cash prize and a Thames International Scholarship amounting to 150,000 pesos.
The other finalists also received cash prizes and scholarships. Their songs will also be given exposure as the Board of Advisors to the Visayan Music Awards are composed of big shots in the Philippine music industry — National Artist of the Philippines for Music Ryan Cayabyab, FilipinoAmerican member of the Black Eyed Peas Apl.de.Ap, Jimmy Borja, Christine Bendebel, and Evelyn Seale.
Through the years, Batch 85 has promoted Cebuano beauty, talent and culture. They produced one of the biggest and grandest pageants in the country, Binibining Cebu.
Secretary Michael Dino, Presidential Assistant to the Visayas and one of the members of Batch ’85, make sure the proceeds of their projects go to charity and to fund medical missions, livelihood programs, construction of Malasakit centers and relief operations in various calamitystricken areas.