A South Korean musician impressed Filipinos with his instrumental version of Eraserhead’s “Ang Huling El Bimbo” performed in acoustic guitar.
Sungha Jung, a 22-years-old acoustic fingerstyle guitarist, uploaded a video where he arranged the song that has since garnered more than 300,000 views on YouTube as of writing.
He tuned his guitar “half-step down” to achieve the particular tone.
A tuned-down guitar gives off a “more precise” sound as it “can switch a song to a more desirable key for a singer,” change the tension of the strings and the tone of the guitar as a whole.
His performance was warmly received by Filipinos who commented that he played the famous song “to the next level.”
“Ang Huling El Bimbo” is originally performed by Filipino pop-rock band Eraserheads and is considered one of the most iconic songs in the history of OPM or original Pinoy music.
It received extensive airplay on various FM radio stations and earned the second spot on Monster RX 93.1’s “Top 20 OPM Requests of 1996” chart.
The song was the only one written in Filipino that was included in the legendary band’s international compilation album “Aloha Milkyway.”
Its music video also catapulted Eraserheads to international attention when it won the “International Viewer’s Choice Awards for Asia” at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.
Meet Sungha Jung
Jung has been actively creating acoustic covers and arrangements since 2006 but it was only recently that he became an online sensation because of his cover of the “Pirates of Carribean” theme song.
The video, despite being uploaded on YouTube in October 2008, has since amassed more than 50 million views as of writing.
Jung has collaborated with the now-disbanded South Korean girl group 2NE1 in 2012, where he created the acoustic versions of their hit songs “Lonely” and “I Love You.”
He also performed with American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz in 2013 who described him as “amazing” and a “hero.”
Jung has released nine albums of his covers and has more than 5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel.
