National Artist and multi-awarded composer Ryan Cayabyab is the sole Filipino in this year’s roster of Ramon Magsaysay awardees.
He will receive the award this year along with Kim Jong-ki from Korea, Ko Swe Sin from Myanmar, Ravish Kumar from India, and Angkhana Neelapaijit from Thailand.
Cayabyab, a renowned composer and songwriter, is being recognized for “compositions and performances that have defined and inspired Filipino popular music across generations; his indomitable, undeterred confidence to selflessly seek, mentor, and promote young Filipino musical genius for the global stage; and his showing us all that music can indeed instill pride and joy, and unify people across the many barriers that divide them.”
He was named Magsaysay awardee nearly a year after he was conferred as the country’s National Artist for music.
The 65-year-old artist started writing music in the late 1970s, making his mark when his signature song “Kay Ganda ng Ating Musika” (How Beautiful is Our Music) won the grand prize in the first Metro Manila popular music festival in 1978 and an international song festival in South Korea that same year.
He also played a vital role in the country’s Original Pinoy Music movement in the 1970s to promote Filipino popular music.
Cayabyab is also the president of The Music School of Ryan Cayabyab and served as a professor for the Department of Composition and Music Theory at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.
He also runs a music studio with his wife and has conducted free workshops for thousands of students across the country.
Cayabyab is a moving force in the Philpop Musicfest Foundation and the Elements Music Camp which have major initiatives dedicated to music training, promoting Filipino music abroad, and fostering Filipino cultural identity through music.
“The next generation should be better than us for our country to move forward. For this to happen we must teach them everything we know at very possible instance. I like teaching, I like sharing what I know, and I like playing music, When I’m doing all these, I’m very happy,” Cayabyab said.
Two journalists are also this year’s awardees – Ko Swe Swin, the editor-in-chief of Myanmar Now and Ravish Kumar, the executive director of the New Delhi Television Network in India.
Ko Swe Sin from Myanmar “is being recognized for his “undaunted commitment to practice independent, ethical, and socially engaged journalism in Myanmar; his incorruptible sense of justice and unflinching pursuit of the truth in crucial but under-reported issues; and his resolute insistence that it is in the quality and force of media’s truth-telling that we can convincingly protect human rights in the world.”
The 41-year-old journalist has criticized powerful, ultranationalist Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, who has rejected stateless Rohingya as illegal immigrants and has spread hate speech against human right activists.
Myanmar Now is an independent online news service focused on long-form investigative reports in both Burmese and English.
He has been facing defamation charges since 2017. In July 2018, he was arrested at the Yangon International Airport and was then taken into police custody for the charge brought by a follower of the ultranationalist monk.
Swe Win has also had to travel over 1,000 kilometers to Mandalay for court hearings.
On the other hand, Ravish Kumar from India “is being recognized for his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity, and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfills its noblest aims to advance democracy.”
Kumar works for the New Delhi Television Network, one of India’s leading television networks. He had his own program, “Prime Time,” which discusses under-reported problems in India such as the lives of manual scavengers and rickshaw-pullers, the plight of government employee, and underfunded state schools, among others.
Meanwhile, another awardee, Kim Jong-ki of South Korea, established the Foundation for Preventing Youth Violence, after his own son committed suicide. His foundation addresses school violence as a systematic social problem affecting students, families, school, and the community.
He is being recognized for his “quiet courage in transforming private grief into a mission to protect Korea’s youth from the scourge of bullying and violence, his unstinting dedication to the goal of instilling among the young the values of self-esteem, tolerance, and mutual respect, and his effectively mobilizing all sectors of the country in a nationwide drive that has transformed both policy and behaviors towards building a gentler, nonviolent society.”
Angkhana Neelapaijit of Thailand “is being recognized for her unwavering courage in seeking justice for her husband and many other victims of violence and conflict in southern Thailand; her systematic, unflagging work to reform a flawed and unfair legal system, and the shining proof she is that the humblest ordinary person can achieve national impact in deterring human right abuses.”
She founded the Justice for Peace Foundation, a network of human rights and peace advocates that documents the human rights situation in southern Thailand.
Carmencita Abella, president of Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, said the 2019 Magsaysay awardees “all reflect courage, undaunted, in their commitment to build solutions to vital and complex issues in their societies.” (Erma Edera)