Music, Public Schools & 2,300-Year-Old Dragonboat Festival at Kamuning Bakery Café

Wazzup Pilipinas!

On May 29---the eve of Asia’s colorful 2,300-year-old Dragon Boat Festival honoring the ancient Chinese poet and anti-corruption statesman Qu Yuan, the 78-year-old Kamuning Bakery Café in Quezon City and 15 songwriters of “Tinta Aklat Rekord Awit” group celebrated the event with an all-night concert of original Filipino songs.

Proceeds of the night’s ticket sales were donated for grade four students of a public school in Los Baños, Laguna chosen by the songwriters.

The Dragon Boat Festival this year falls on May 30 in the Gregorian calendar. Apart from celebrating with dragon boat races worldwide and also with poetry, another tradition is the eating of delicious rice dumplings called “zongzi” in Mandarin and called “machang” in Hokkien or south Fujian language. Kamuning Bakery Café gifted all the songwriters and singers with packs of handcrafted, pugon-baked pandesal breads and with the traditional machang rice dumplings.

Kamuning Bakery Café was bought and revived in December 2013 by writer and realty entrepreneur Wilson Lee Flores, who has envisioned it to become a social enterprise which shall support unique, non-traditional socio-civic and cultural causes. Among these non-traditional philanthropic endeavors include the tertulia-inspired and non-partisan “Pandesal Forum” where leaders and newsmakers dialogue with media and intellectuals; poetry reading and open mic music nights; book launches; art exhibits; donations of entire public schools for poor rural areas, and many others.