Sto. Niño Parish opens 1st Waray Liturgical Music tilt

CEBU, Philippines — A first in its history, the Sto. Niño Parish in Tacloban City is staging the Liturgical Songwriting Competition for Communion Songs, in Waray dialect, and is now inviting qualified Waraynon songwriters to join.

Father Ronel Taboso, parish priest and the brain behind the competition, explained that this is the parish's way of helping the Archdiocese of Palo come up with original communion songs in the Waray dialect, “we can use in our daily celebration of the Mass.”

The competition, which is eyed to become an annual event, is open to all regardless of age, but must be baptized Roman Catholics and knowledgeable of the liturgy and identity of the Mass.

Taboso said a competing songwriter may submit one or more entries, which must be originally composed and not yet sang in the Masses. The song must not be shorter than three minutes or longer than four minutes and may have a genre of either ballad or pop.

Entries will be judged based on originality and creativity (30 percent), lyrics (30 percent), melody (30 percent) and over-all appeal (10 percent), said Taboso.

Cash prize of P30,000 awaits the grand champion, P20,000 for the 1st runner up, P10,000 for the 2nd runner up and P3,000 for each finalist.

Taboso said the parish and the SNP Praise Chanters reserve all the rights to cause any of the finalist songs to be re-arranged, orchestrated and performed after the contest.

Application forms are downloadable the official Facebook page of SNP Liturgical Songwriting Competition 2018. The SNP official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/snptacloban/ can also provide the link to the contest FB site.

Deadline for submission of entries is at 12:00 noon of April 28, 2018 while the contest proper will be on June 15, 2018. (FREEMAN)