When Women Perform Home: Queensland’s Filipina Musicians and Performers

Filipino migration to Queensland stretches back more than a century, and within that history, Filipina musicians and performers have done quiet, essential cultural work. Their voices and choreography have scored community festivals, sustained heritage practices, and built social worlds for generations of Filipino families. On multicultural stages, parish halls, and community spaces alike, women have translated memory into movement, turned nostalgia into song, and transformed public stages into sites of belonging. 

Sisters Maintaining Heritage through Dance and Festivals

When the Philippine Australian Society of Queensland (PASQ) was established in 1973, Filipina women were already at its heart. Through the Mabuhay Dance Troupe, women rehearsed late into the evening in community halls and taught children traditional dance steps. The troupe’s early programs – some dating back to 1972 – showcase a familiar roster of folk dances such as Tinikling, Pandanggo sa Ilaw, Binasuan, and Singkil, among many others.

These performances did more than entertain. For new migrants navigating language differences, homesickness, and culture shock, they offered a way to feel grounded and connected to their heritage. For Queensland audiences, they served as an introduction to Filipino culture and heritage in all its colour and rhythm. Many of these early dancers became pillars of the community, helping younger migrants find confidence, friendships, and a sense of place. Their legacy lives on today’s festival stages across Brisbane, Logan, Gold Coast, Cairns, and regional Queensland. 

Every June, Filipino festivals spread across Queensland, including Barrio Fiesta at Rocklea Showgrounds, Gold Coast Fil-Aust Festival, and the fast-growing Bayanihan Festival at Kingston Butter Factory, Logan, among others. Filipino diasporic cultures have been historically and constantly intermingling with Queensland venues, spaces, cultures and peoples through Philippine Independence Day celebrations. Given the size of Queensland, Filipinos have been celebrating their own Filipino festivals or piyesta in every major city, metro or regional hubs. See my previous blog for more information. 

Behind the scenes, Filipina women do the heavy lifting: organising performers, coordinating costumes and attire, leading rehearsals, choreographing presentations, and anchoring stages with confident hosting. Similarly, for many daughters of migrants, the piyesta stage becomes a space to explore heritage and first experience of a large audience with pride – through folk dance, pop covers, original compositions. 

Below, I present some Filipina women who represent the diversity and power of diasporic performance in Queensland, who embody both tradition and contemporary creativity across decades and ancestry.

Singing Cabaret from Cairns to Belfast: Candy Devine’s Transnational Career

Born in 1939 in Cairns to a sugar-farming family, Faye McLeod née Guivarra (a.k.a Candy Devine) drew on a rich, diverse heritage of Spanish, Sri Lankan, Filipino, English, Danish, Norwegian, and Torres Strait Islander lineages. Both of her parents, Thomas (of Filipino heritage) and Ivy Guivarra, were musically inclined, founding the city’s Tropical Troubadours and later establishing Cairns’ cabaret bar, Coloured Social Club. 

Faye developed musical skills early, playing piano and cello professionally and performing at school events. She then adopted the stage name Candy Devine as she transitioned to singing in clubs and cabaret venues, before appearing on Australian TV, including Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968), hosting Channel 7’s Beauty and the Beast (1964-1973), and appearing in the Australian TV show Kain (1967).

Faye travelled to Ireland in 1969 and secured a cabaret residency at Belfast’s Talk of the Town. She then married music promoter Donald McLeod in Dublin in 1970 and moved to Belfast in 1975. For nearly 40 years, she hosted her show at Downtown Radio, where she started broadcasting in 1976. Candy Devine recorded the album Candy Sings Devine with the Jim Doherty Sound (1970) and a single, God Rest Ye Merry (1976). 

After her husband died in 2012, Candy returned to Brisbane and lived with her celebrity chef son, Alastair McLeod, until her passing in October 2024 at age 85. Aside from receiving the MBE from the Queen (2014) and the first woman to be inducted into the Irish Broadcasting Awards Hall of Fame, she graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium in 1957. 

Candy Devine’s career as a singer, actress and radio presenter exemplified the richness of her multicultural heritage – bridging Far North Queensland’s Indigenous and immigrant roots with the global stage. With this, she brought Queensland’s diverse musical traditions to an international audience and amplified diasporic stories, including her identity as ‘a league of nations’ mixing Filipino heritage and multicultural family lineage.

Strumming Heritage Strings: Perla and the Philippine Rondalla Ensemble

If dance has long been the most visible expression of Filipino culture in Queensland, rondalla music has been its quieter but deeply resonant counterpart. The Philippine Rondalla Ensemble Perfroming Arts Queensland (PREPA) was established in 2005 to introduce Filipino culture and the traditional music to the wider Australian community. At the heart of this tradition in Ipswich is Perla Pound, whose dedication to rondalla has helped sustain Filipino musical heritage in diaspora. 

Rondalla – an ensemble of plucked string instruments such as the bandurria, octavina, laud, guitar, and bass – emerged in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period and later indigenised by Filipinos. Rondalla became a fixture of community gatherings, religious celebrations, and family events both at home and overseas. This is both a musical form and a mnemonic device recalling home through familiar melodies and collective texture. In Queensland, rondalla has been preserved through the PREPA, as Perla ensures that this tradition remains a living, communal practice rather than a relic of the past. They have since been performing in Queensland’s multicultural and Filipino festivals, as well as musical extravaganzas showcasing diverse musical expressions.

Crucially, Perla places strong emphasis on intergenerational transmission. Rondalla rehearsals become sites of teaching, storytelling and belonging. As a musician, organiser, and cultural mentor, she has helped build an ensemble that performs not only Filipino folk repertoire but also adaptations of popular songs and ceremonial pieces suited to multicultural audiences.

Situated in Ipswich rather than Brisbane’s metropolitan centre, PREPA also challenges city-centric narratives of Filipino cultural life. Under Perla’s guidance, rondalla music affirms that Filipino heritage resonates wherever Filipino communities take root – carefully strummed, collectively rehearsed, and carried forward by women’s dedication.
 

Versatility in Covers: Ellen’s Fire and Rain

Among Queensland’s Filipina performers, particularly in the covers circuit, Ellen Lopez stands out for her exceptional versatility as the lead vocalist of Fire and Rain. Ellen and the band have become a reliable constant across Queensland’s stages, from community balls and barrio fiestas to RSLs and sports clubs. With more than two decades of experience in the Brisbane music industry, Ellen has demonstrated her range and control through seamless movement between classic rock, Motown, OPM, standards, and contemporary pop, inviting audiences to groove with their extensive repertoire. Their wide repertoire serves as their ticket to the circuit, and Ellen’s ability to sing hits from the 60s to the present, including Latin and ballroom music, allowed the band to thrive and persist since its formation in 2001. 

Before migrating to Queensland, Ellen performed endlessly across Asia and overseas. When she moved to Australia in 1989 from Quezon City, Philippines, she was not sure what to expect and do in her new life, initially in New South Wales. This was not until she moved to Queensland a year after and started getting back to music with the help of other musicians from various nationalities and styles, including her early bands, Plumb Loco, Flash, and Beauty and the Beast, among others. When she moved to Queensland, Ellen met her now partner, Joey from Baguio City, whom she had worked with in the Philippines and other Asian countries as part of touring show bands. They formed Fire and Rain as a show band aimed to become entertainers, hence, considered themselves working musicians through and through.

Fire and Rain continuously performs in various venues in Queensland, including places such as North Lakes Sports Club, Caboolture Sports Club, The Blue Fin, Twin Towns, Brisbane Lions Social Club, Marriott Hotel, and others. They are still constantly getting bookings as the band’s longevity rests on versatility: responsive setlists, tight harmonies, and an ear for what each crowd needs. Ellen’s leadership – equal parts rehearsal discipline and on-stage warmth – anchors that adaptability, turning cover songs into moments of recognition and shared memory.  

As these stories show, Filipina musicians and performers have carried far more than melody and choreography onto Queensland’s stages – they have nurtured community life, shaped diasporic memory, and sustained artistic traditions across generations. Their creative labour and heritage caretaking, often unfolding quietly in rehearsal rooms, halls, festival stages, and nighttime venues, continues to anchor Filipino cultural presence in the state. The women featured here represent only a portion of a much wider creative landscape, one built through collective effort, resilience and artistry.

This list is definitely not exhaustive, and the space is not enough to mention many wonderful Filipina women who are instrumental in the creative history of Filipino migrants in Queensland. For example, other notable people in Brisbane and surrounds include Filipinas like Merle Parkinson, Joy Burgoyne, Shirley Nield, Dixie Morante, Adele Rico Tu, Flora Mercer, Emily Wurramara, and many more artists, creatives and performers. Equally important to acknowledge are the Filipina women who have always been working behind the scenes to ensure that events, festivals, and gigs are established, made enjoyable and executed seamlessly for kababayans, Australians, and multicultural communities.

Contact qldmemory@slq.qld.gov.au or carljanacin@yahoo.com if you would like to contribute to this project.

Dr Carl Anacin
2025 Letty Katts Fellow

Read Carl's previous blog story - Piyesta as a Window on Filipino Culture, Music and Creative Expressions in Queensland and Beyond

The Letty Katts Fellowship documents Queensland's music history. Read other blogs by past Letty Katts Fellows. 

The Letty Katts Fellowship is generously supported through the Queensland Library Foundation endowed fund established by the late Dr Stanton Mellick OAM ED and his daughter, the late Professor Jill Mellick.

Selected Bibliography

Anacin, C. (2026). Transnational Labour Migration and Musical Performance: Filipino Musicians in Australia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Guivarra, N. (2015 Oct 24). Candy Devine: A life in the limelight of stage and screen. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/awaye/indigenous-star-candy-devine-faye-guivarra/6868946

Kanowski, S. (2018). Candy Devine: from a cabaret in Cairns to Belfast’s Downtown Radio. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/faye-mcleod-candy-devine-rpt/11327674

Korner, A. (2014 June 4). Tradition kept alive with music. The Courier Mail. https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ipswich/tradition-kept-alive-with-music/news-story/0a5356cc40096c22e9fbf54881aa535b

NITV. (2025). Candy Devine was destined for the spotlight. Living Black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ38T9RWSDI

Ruiz-Wall, D & Choo, C (eds) 2016, Re-imagining Australia: Voices of Indigenous Australians of Filipino descent, Keeaira Press, Southport.

Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict. (2014 March). Celebrating generations of women inspiring women. https://www.goodsams.org.au/article/celebrating-generations-of-women-inspiring-women/

Whiten, A.M. (1999). History of the PASQ, Inc: The Philippine-Australian Society of Queensland, the first Filipino Association in the State. Fortitude Valley: Philippine-Australian Society of Queensland.