‘Sarung Banggi’ composer finally home

STO. DOMINGO, Albay — Finally, after more than 60 years, Potenciano Gregorio Sr., composer of Sarung Banggi, Bicol’s most famous love song, is finally back in his hometown.

Last Thursday morning, Gregorio’s remains, long forgotten in a grave "covered with tall grass and wild berries," as described by Sto. Domingo Mayor Herbie Aguas, at the La Loma Cemetery in Manila, were re-interred in his own monument at this town’s plaza.

The event was auspicious. Last Thursday was Gregorio’s 125th birth anniversary and the episode highlighted the week-long Sarung Banggi Festival, now on its third year.

Gregorio, a violin prodigy when he was growing up here, got sick of pneumonia on board the S.S. President Pierce while he was on his way to the United States to compete in the Golden Gate International Festival.

He died at the Fort Shafter Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii on Feb. 22, 1939. To mourn his passing, the vessel was said to have delayed its voyage for three hours.

When the remains of Gregorio, then a corporal in the Philippine Constabulary Band, were brought back to the country, they were interred at the La Loma Cemetery.

Gregorio’s great-grandson, Erwin, 32, said it took them a year, with the help of the National Historical Institute, to locate the tomb of his Lolo Potin at La Loma.

Erwin told The STAR they were able to identify his remains through "the rusty buttons and tattered upper vest of his Philippine Constabulary Band uniform."

"I cried when we found the grave of Lolo Potin covered with tall grass and wild berries," recalled Mayor Aguas during the necrological service at the Bicol Heritage Park in Legazpi City.

"It showed nobody cared to visit the grave of the great composer of Sarung Banggi, the father of Bicol music. It’s just fitting to bring his remains back so he can rest and be honored," Aguas said.

There are different versions of how Gregorio composed his masterpiece.

Hilario Balilo, chairman of the Sto. Domingo Historical and Cultural Society, recalled Gregorio’s uncle Justo as saying in 1962 that Lolo Potin wrote the first bars and the lyrics of Sarung Banggi (which means "one night" in the Bicol dialect) in 1910 when he was awakened by the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves one evening.

Balilo said Sarung Banggi was first played in public during the fiesta of Guinobatan town on Aug. 15, 1910.

Resurreccion Gregorio, another great-grandson of Lolo Potin, meanwhile, said his great-grandfather wrote the love song during the 1897 eruption of Mayon Volcano when he and his family evacuated to their farm in Barangay Salvacion here.