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By Rome Jorge, Lifestyle Editor
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The Kagay-an
Performing Arts
group enacting Darangen |
You know a cultural festival is hip and
happening when a modernized play on an epic Bangsamoro oral
tradition rivets mall rat spectators and earns the hearty applause
of the very people from whom the tale originated—the Maranaos
themselves. You know art is alive when a traditional oratorical
debate from the Tagalogs of Bulacan floors with laughter an audience
in Cagayan de Oro for whom the language is not the lingua franca.
This is the 2008 National Heritage Month
Festival—culture not as some museum piece frozen in time or some
esoteric scholarly work absconded from public view—but as
something that pokes you in the eye and gets you smiling. While
other institutions give ailing Philippine traditions an intravenous
drip more suited to geriatrics, the Filipino Heritage Festival Inc.
together with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts jolts
it to life, kicking, screaming and loving it.
The 2008 National Heritage Month Festival
coordinates with arts groups and local governments to offer a wealth
of cultural activities and showcases. From exhibits on lighthouses
and churches to indigenous music performances such as those by
ethnic musician and visual artist Rhyan Casiño and the Kalimulan
Cultural Dance Troupe to showcases to soil painting art of the
Tala-Andig, to the basketry of the Subanon, the National Heritage
Festival is a celebration of a our rich and diverse culture.
The Darangen—proclaimed one of the 43
“Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity”
by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization—is the ancient epic of the Maranaos traditionally
retold orally for nonstop for about seven days and comprises of 17
cycles, 72,000 lines and is documented as three book volumes.
But for today’s audiences, it is excerpted as
a hip action-packed and romance-flavored play. Its villainous witch
Sarabosing was portrayed with great comedic as a seductress who
imprisons Bai (Princess) Lawanen and gushes pink with her crush for
the Prince Bantugen. She even has a penchant for 21st century
colloquialism that could be discerned by any hip urbanite and its
sword fights and battles resembling fantastic aerial sequences of
recent movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix.
The show regaled the crowd thoroughly and
elicited smiles from the numerous Maranaos who stopped by to enjoy
the whole show.
According to Herbert Glen Reyes, executive
director of the Kagay-an Performing Arts group, “It is composed of
several stories. We adapted it to the tastes of the audience. To
attempt to retell it in its original epic for is unfeasible. We
wanted it closer to Cagayan, so we got the story that is near to
Bukidnon. There is a mention of the tribes of Bukidnon. There was a
part where Bai Lawanen was abducted and spell had to be broken.”
He owes up to the play’s pop culture
references: “There are references to hell’er, crush for
theatrical effects.” He also draws inspiration from kung-fu
movies. “We adapted it to the Asian context,” he explains.
For its part, the Palihang Hagonoy, Bulacan’s
premier Balagtasan group led by artistic director Crispin de Luna,
brought the century-old oratory tradition of Bulacan to Mindanao.
Balagtasan comes alive with young rhetoricians
Ricardo Gutierrez, Recher de Luna and Judith Dagalea in an
irreverent debate on what makes a better backside cleanser: toilet
paper or tabo [dipper]? Entertaining, witty and admittedly thought
provoking, the debate was the sweet finish to several elocutions
that pondered weightier topics. Francisco Baltazar, for whom the
tradition was named, not only smiled from heaven; he laughed and
beamed his approval.
Noteworthy as well are the awesome gigantic
ceremonial Bangsamoro swords several meters in length traditionally
carried aloft by slaves for the datu on display along with Christian
and katutubo artifacts in a potentially world-class museum, not in
Imperial Manila, but in Capitol University of Cagayan de Oro’s
Museum of Three Cultures. With the museum’s opening was presented
Matigsalug Wey Tigwahen ne Kultura [Culture of the Matigsalug and
Tigwahen Menubo], a book written by and for Manobos in their
language with the help of Capitol University Press.
These and so much more are what culture out to
be: of the people, by the people, for the people. Catch the 2008
National Heritage Month Festival’s events nearest you. For details
on the National Heritage Month, call 892–5865 or visit http://filheritagefest.fateback.com.
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