BEGINNING Christmas morning as it has been decades ago, a band of young and old musicians in Loboc, Bohol would again move around town and blare Christmas messages and cheers through music as the traditional “Suroy sa Musikero” unfolds for the next 40 days. As Christmas celebrations in the country officially begin December 16 when the dawn masses start, Suroy adds more days to it when local musicians start their traditional caroling rounds in every home in the town starting December 25 through February 2.

The Suroy specifically celebrates the forty days after the baby Jesus was born in a manger and this peaks on the day of the Christian Feast of the Candelaria. Dusty brass trombones, dented bass horns, silver or chrome plated trumpets, clarinets and percussions get their seasonal shine or cracking beat as musicians again pick them up for the big event: raising funds for the aspiring musicians of the local music foundation. “Sometimes, even if we do not get anything, we play carols or traditional folk songs in tune with the Christmas mood,” said 87 years old Alfonso Varquez, a veteran of the Suroy. Filling the town with Christmas air would be homegrown musicians composing three brass bands of at least 25 members.

“The musicians do not easily become a musician here, they need to undergo the “tiple” says the oldest musician who has had about 80 years of suroy in his belt. Tiple, according to him, is the age-old music mentoring tradition by elder musicians. It peaks when the student reads through the 58 lessons of the solfegio and has shown interest in doing voluntary music services for the local church. That is the primera parte, and that's not all there is, he said. A learner needs to get through the tercera parte, which also features grueling hours of reading intricate music compositions.

A band maestro or an elder in the town's bands picks out students, guides the tiple through the lessons and allows them join band practices until they would play each note by heart. When they get through a rite of passage called the calenda, or the suroy, they graduate to be a full-pledged musikero, Varquez, who also curates the church museum continued. “Every year, right at Christmas morning, the ‘tiples', some of them having gone through a solo performance called the ‘calenda' accompany the bands who move around town' to carol or just play traditional folksongs to elevate the people's spirits,” he shared.

“As far as I know, suroy sa musikero is a traditional practice in Loboc, but Fr. Alger Angcla, parish priest of the Sts. Peter and Paul Parish admits he could not fully talk about the tradition. Maestro Ponso, as what local musicians call Varquez, is said to have joined the traditional “suroy” since Grade 3 and has only skipped the caroling sortie recently because of his weakening knees.  Maestro Ponso is just one of the people here who has since worked to keep the old music traditions alive and seeping into every Lobocanon. And seeping into the psyche of its residents, the internationally acclaimed Loboc Children's Choir, and the Loboc Youth Band are proofs of a homegrown musicality.

For a pool of countless talents, the “suroy sa musikero” has since become a Christmas music tradition in Loboc, and its sustainability is assured, notes local musician Alma Taldo, who also conducts for the Loboc Children's Choir. In Bohol , where towns also attempt to revive diminishing Christmas traditions, the example of mentoring in Loboc could be worth emulating, a local cultural worker once said. The traditional pastores, ige-ige, panghimaja and panaygon using the traditional songs have slowly succumbed to the more modern carols.