"The Las Piñas Bamboo Organ in the parish church of Saint Joseph in Las Piñas City, Philippines, is a nineteenth-century church organ made almost entirely from bamboo. Only the horizontal trumpet stops are made from metal.
The builder of both the church and its organ was Father Diego Cera de la Virgen del Carmen, a priest under the Augustinian Recollects. A native of Spain, he served as parish priest in Las Piñas from 1795 to 1830. Historians portray him as a gifted man, a natural scientist, chemist, architect, community leader, as well as organist and organ builder.[3]
Having previously built organs in the Manila area with some organ stops made of bamboo, he chose bamboo for most of this organ: only the trumpet stops are made of metal. The choice of bamboo was probably both practical and aesthetic - bamboo was abundant and used for hundreds of items of both a practical and an artistic nature.
Fr. Cera began work on the organ in 1816, while the church was still under construction. The church was completed in 1819 and the organ, in 1821, but without the trumpet stops. The organ was finally completed in 1824 after Fr. Cera decided to use metal for the trumpets whose character he cannot reproduce with bamboo."
