On his 108th birth anniversary on Monday, National Artist for Music and Literature Levi Celerio was honored by tech giant Google with a doodle on the search engine’s homepage.
The Google Doodle depicts Celerio in his iconic leaf-playing moment while being surrounded by sheet music, books, violin and a plant.
Born on April 30, 1910 in Tondo, Manila, Celerio was the youngest member of the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
He made it to the Guinness Book of World Records as the only person able to make music using just a leaf, according to his biography published in the website of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts.
“Levi Celerio, more importantly, has enriched the Philippine music for no less than two generations with a treasury of more than 4,000 songs in an idiom that has proven to appeal to all social classes,” his biography read.
In 1997, President Fidel V. Ramos named him National Artist for Music and Literature.
He passed away in April 2, 2002 at the age 92. /atm