LOPEZ, Quezon — Yes, a member of the LGBTQIA+ in this Quezon Province town will celebrate his birthday with a style.
Jasmin David, a gay woman with a sweet scented name, who is celebrating his 66th natal day will be serenaded tomorrow, September 29, by an emerging singing group composed mostly of straight young men from the community who are either in college or working in various fields in the homefront as well as abroad.
HIPAK U Band is all set to make Jas -- the celebrator's pet name -- hip and fit even more despite the inevitability of her ageing process.
"It's an honor for us to be singing for a friend on has been out for the longest time," said Vincent Villasanta, an honorary member of the band who after joining the iconic Eraserheads as stand-in and sound mixer has decided to stay mostly in the bucolic southern Tagalog town to help young and deserving musicians refine their craft.
"When I heard this project of a unique birthday concert I readily said yes," exclaimed Kenneth Loniza, a junior member of the group who is also the president of Musicians of Lopez Association (MOLA), a diversified org of local music artists in first class municipality of Lopez.
While Kenneth is an Education student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (TUP) in Lopez, his bandmates Jonard Sasson is a seaman who is currently on vacation, Gio Macasinag is a freelance sportsman, Serafin Manlangit is a vape store staff in the town and Villasanta as a farmer-cum-musician.
The gig, billed "Jas HIPAK U" aims not only to pay tribute to David but to recognize the values and pertinence of the LGBTQIA+ in the countryside to neutralize myopic gender biases.
The uniqueness of the birthday shindig is also shown in the personal, intimate and elbow room frontyard venue of the show.
"A band concert along the railtracks where Jas lives is to show how a marginalized person as she is able to command respect and awe among her neighborhood and townsfolk as well," observed Dr. Nestor de la Rosa, one of the celebrant's best friends.
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