AFTER two and a half months of nightly online concerts to raise funds for poor communities affected by the lockdown, Bayanihan Musikahan says goodbye after raising more than P122 million for its beneficiaries.

“Bayanihan Musikahan is a coming together of different sectors to raise funds,” National Artist for Music Raymundo “Ryan” Cayabyab said in a video posted on the online concert series’ Facebook site on Sunday.

“Artists are naturally emphatic so it wasn’t very difficult for them to decide to join us… while most of them are not so familiar with online streaming and [while] most of us needed assistance to prepare the stage, to prepare the sound [in normal concerts], well this time they did it on their own,” he said.

The online concert series — organized by Mr. Cayabyab and four others — was named after his late-night music show, Ryan Ryan Musikahan, which ran from 1988 to 1995. The online concert series, which started on March 19, had more than 170 concerts.

The show featured performances by Lea Salonga, Martin Nievera, Ebe Dancel, Sponge Cola, Top Suzara, Noel Cabangon, Regine Velasquez, Ogie Alcasid, Jennylyn Mercado, and Dennis Trillo, among numerous others.

Its final show, held on May 30, saw performances by Chito Miranda, Ebe Dancel, Noel Cabangon, Louie Ocampo, Mike Villegas, Bayang Barrios, Yumi Lacsamana, and Kate Torralba. An encore concert by Gary Valenciano was held the same night in a separate stream on Mr. Valenciano’s Facebook page.

The project was created in the early days of the Luzon-wide COVID-19 lockdown in order to send help to the most vulnerable people in the National Capital Region.

Initially, the project aimed to raise enough money for 15,000 food packs. The concert series was expected to run for only a week or two, but it quickly turned into something bigger than its organizers ever imagined.

“The beauty of Bayanihan Musikahan is its end-to-end system, we have a platform where artists can perform and entertain the public and attract them to donate to our cause,” Danilo A. Songco, CEO of PinoyMe Foundation, a foundation which supports microfinance institutions, said in the same video. Mr. Songco is one of the organizers of the series.

The donations were managed by Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and the funds were converted to more than 100,000 food packs for informal settlements in Mega Manila, its nearby provinces, and Cebu. The funds were also used to aid performing arts workers who were left without jobs.

They also sourced produce from farmers in Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, and Bicol for the food packs and helped those farmers transport their produce to the beneficiaries.

Their system ensured that “all our assistance goes to the beneficiaries,” said Mr. Songco, and this contributed to the success of the project.

“I believe mounting Bayanihan Musikahan was certainly groundbreaking. Imagine we were creating content that was normally done live, straight from our homes. We were completely adapting to the new normal by simply jumping into it. It was quite something as we were pioneering something in the digital space,” Jay Adlao Block, head of events organizer Outbound Asia, said in the video. Ms. Adlao Block was also one of the organizers of the program.

“We still have a long way to go before the pandemic ends, but now we are certain that musicians, artists, singers, creatives, community leaders, we are not going to leave our countrymen behind,” Mr. Cayabyab said in the vernacular. — Zsarlene B. Chua

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