June 3 to 7 – Visual Arts – Paintings and Sculpture of Traditional Pangasinan
June 8 to 14 – Literary Exposition by Anacbanua and Exhibits of Pangasianan
Poetry and Essays
June 10 – Poetry Reading by Anacbanua / Film Showing – Sine Caboloan/
Christopher Gozum
June 11 – Stage Play by CCP: "Pragress" by F. Sionil Jose
June 12 – Musical Festivities: Pangasian National High School Rondalla /
Mangatarem National High School Rondalla
June 14 – Cultural Fashion Show – Filipiniana Twist of Traditional Pangasinan
June 16 to 19 – June Bride featuring the Pangasinan stylist and bridal suppliers
June 20 to 21 – Father's Day Celebration – Featuring Toy Collectors of
Pangasinan
June 22 to 28 – Photo Exhibit – The Traditional Pangasinan – like Puto and
Bagoong making
If music is the soul of a nation, then what is Pangasinan music?
Last November 2007, when I attended the first conference on revitalizing Pangasinan language and cultural heritage where I presented a paper on Pangasinan studies, a guy in his late teens with uneven teeth chatted me up while I was browsing magazines and books on a table he was watching over. In the course of conversing with him, he told me that he was a member of a band at his school.
It flashed in my mind that recently a progressive group of Kapampangan youth had successfully launched a music feast known as RocKapampangan featuring different renditions of "Atin cu pung sing sing" in rock by different bands. So, I broached to him this idea: "Why not do the same in your school?" I remember telling him that by doing so his band would be pioneering in promoting Pangasinan Rock at the same time reacquainting Pangasinan youth with their native language.
Months later, the following year, I was told that a festival of that sort was being planned in San Carlos City only to be aborted. Why I felt a little sad about it is that music is in the family's business.
My beloved grandfather can play the trumpet; I think, well, well enough to be invited whenever an important occasion happens in our barrio like fiesta or a funeral wake. I imagine him playing the trumpet to the tune of "Malinak lay labi." It's the only song I can sing since I was a grade-schooler ignorant of what the lyrics meant. It's the only Pangasinan music that I can think of immediately without actually thinking. Anyway, I regret that my grandfather did not teach me the trumpet but more than this I regret what happened to Pangasinan music all these years. It has got to do with a national policy implemented when I was not yet born but when I entered school, the whole of my generation and the next were made to suffer so that the meaning of that beautiful song became buried deep in our memory.
That language policy has been around since 1974 when bilingual instruction in schools was approved to the detriment of the other languages including Pangasinan because the use of local languages in schools as medium of instruction was indefinitely suspended. Do you still wonder why Pangasinan music is not heard in most radio airwaves or why Pangasinan bands continue to ape music foreign to their ears but no stranger to an indifferent audience accustomed to Western and popular Tagalog songs? Most Pangasinenses are not trained to listen to their own music that embodies their being as a people, as a nation. Because they were made illiterate in their own language, how can they compose great songs that would express their aspirations and longings as a people? How is Pangasinan music? I could shout on top of my lungs to bewail and protest the deafening silence.
But I'm happy to note that this is not the whole picture.
Sometime in 1984 a professor at a local university who did her dissertation on Pangasinan folk literature at UP organized a performing arts group to showcase Pangasinan music.
First called Tambayo Cultural Group, in 1988 they got invitations from civic organizations, government offices and cultural associations to perform at seminars, conferences and workshops.
Under the stewardship of five former presidents: Gilmer Bautista, Genaro Manolid, Larry Milanes, Jess Estabillo and Nathaniel Valerio, this student organization came to be known today as the Tambayo Singers.
It was last year, at the book-launching of the founder's daughter, when I finally met the group. At the dinner I talked to Shirley L. Milanes, one of the six singers and married to the musical director of the group, asking some timid questions and betraying my joy of having known that they exist, that all are not lost for Pangasinan music.
True to their name, they offered solace to the audience, mostly Pangasinenses who are, for the first time, listening in unison to the cadence and tempo of the national anthem in Pangasinan.
It had a cathartic effect on me – something in me had reawakened – but I also feel the revulsion of having to endure listening to music all these years in languages not entirely alien to me yet they caused almost irreparable damage to the indigenous musicality of my people. Nevertheless, a veteran broadcaster keeps this musicality alive.
Raul "Insiong" Tamayo, who is himself a singer, livens up the mood with his amusing, light-hearted songs in Pangasinan. Listening to him, I could not help myself grinning. His compositions depart from the folk songs like "Managsigay" or "Dumaralos", which evoke the unhurried life in the sea and in the farm.
Or the communal chants, verses in themselves, performed around a bonfire and during harvests before the colonizer Juan de Salcedo set foot on the coasts of Pangasinan.
Biting but funny, Tamayo satirizes the excesses of individuals known and dear to every Pangasinense. In "Malabir Ka" he lampoons a wife addicted to gambling who was also a nagger.
In "Ponciano" he takes issue on some (here a family he hilariously named Ponciano from the word poncia in Pangasinan meaning party or gathering) who makes a living out of attending parties and other gatherings where food is served.
In 2004 Tamayo was named one among the most outstanding Pangasinenses in the field of music. Last year he was commissioned to write a Pangasinan hymn to be translated into Tagalog! I argue, however, that there is no need for that because we already had.
"Malinak lay labi," in English "calm is the night," is not only a love serenade of a man to his beloved. It is more than that. Mita Q. Sison-Duque says it's "a love song to Pangasinan."
And I tend to agree. Taken metaphorically, that woman, Urduja if you will, personifies Pangasinan, our homeland that we love and care because we owe her our life and freedom.
It is a patriotic song that appeals to Pangasinenses wherever they are, either scattered throughout the country or abroad. Whenever they remember Pangasinan in their loneliness or go home to visit, their sufferings are made bearable and their anxieties seem to fade away.
Pangasinan appears as a spring of hope and dreams to the masses, a fountain of wisdom to its thinkers and a source of wealth to a selfish few. For more than a century, this country song had touched the hearts of millions of Pangasinenses.
Nobody knew who wrote it but the genius of its author tells us that behind the literal meaning lies the message – love of country.
Let us love Pangasinan by promoting our culture and loving our language. Sing new songs to her, mistress of our heroes, who rekindled in them the fire that forged an ancient civilization on the banks of Agno. Let these new songs, yes in Pangasinan, express love, patriotism, loyalty, anger, hate, humor, and injustice – everything in the realm of human emotions – in every musical genre.
Prepare for a musical revolution and get ready to rock.
[First published in Northern Watch, March 22, 2009]
Ricky is a Filipino laborer who works in Korea to support his family in Manila. In his dream, he sees apparitions of his grandmother telling him to return to Manila in order to succeed his family vocation as a witch doctor. From the next day on, strange things happen to him as he wanders around and follows the voice that haunts him.
The Calling: Pilikula nen Christopher Gozum:
The Calling was directed by Christopher Gozum (produced by the Asian Film Academy in 2006 and premiered at the 13th Pusan International Film Festival). The Calling won Best Short Film in the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in 2007.
Christopher Quijalvo Gozum was a Master of Arts in Theater Arts student in the University of the Philippines. He was an alumni of the 2006 Asian Film Academy Fellowship Program in Pusan, South Korea.
Christopher won two Palanca Awards for Literature for his two full-length drama War Booty (2001) and The Pasyon of Pedro Calosa and the Tayug Colorum Uprising of 1931 (2002). His second Palanca-winning play with a revised title of Pure Stone Is the Source of Light was awarded a publication prize/grant by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ Ubod Young Author’s Series in 2005.
Christopher’s filmography includes The Independence Mission (2004 Gawad CCP para sa Alternatibong Pelikula at Video), Lakaran ( featured in the 2006 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival ) and Surreal Random Mms Texts Para Ed Ina, Agui, Tan Kaamong Ya Makaiiliw Ed Sika: Gurgurlis Ed Banua.
Christopher is from Bayambang, Pangasinan in the Philippines.
International Premiere ed 10th Jeonju International Film Festival (South Korea) "Stranger than Cinema" section Abril 30, 2009 angga ed Mayo 08, 2009
Surreal Random Mms Texts Para Ed Ina, Agui, Tan Kaamong Ya Makaiiliw Ed Sika: Gurgurlis Ed Banua
Surreal Random MMS Texts for a mother, a sister and a wife who longs for you: Landscape with figures
SECTIONStranger than Cinema
DIRECTORChristopher Gozum
FILM-INFOPhilippines | 2008 | 15min | DV | Color |
SUBTITLEEnglish
Synopsis
Using a Pangasinan-language translation of Filipino-American writer-activist Carlos Bulosan’s 1942 poem “Landscape with Figures”as a narration, a young expatriate Filipino filmmaker working in the Middle East sends surreal, random and found digital images of displacement and longing to his loved ones in the Pangasinan region of the Northern Philippines.
Profile
Chris is a M.A. Theater Arts student in the University of the Philippines.
Chris won the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema during the 10th Cinemanila International Film Festival (2008) for his short experimental film SURREAL RANDOM MMS TEXTS PARA ED INA, AGUI, TAN KAAMONG YA MAKAIILIW ED SIKA : GURGURLIS ED BANUA. Recently, he finished filming his first full length feature film called “The Storyteller” and is currently on the post-production stage.
Ipapakabat ko pa ed saray kabiangan na Ulupan na Pansiansia'y Salitan Pangasinan (UPSP) ya wala'y miting no Mayo 16, 2009 ed United Way, Lingayen ed alas-9 na kabuasan.
Sometimes happiness is as simple as being able to buy a handful of baég (about 50 grams at Php10) to put in a pot of pakbet (pinakbet), or mix in a stew of balatóng (munggo, mung beans) sauteed with chopped, ripe tomatoes. It becomes a joy, really, because the tree, or more appropriately the woody, high-growing shrub, bears only seasonally these light-green, textured, long spindly flowers that turn into a vegetable for us Northerners (Ilocanos and Pangasinenses).
The shrub does not benefit from any blossom-inducing chemical spray since it is not much known outside of the Ilocos region, although I've heard it proliferates even in the Batangas area, where they eat it as a vegetable, too. But it is well that it is kept organic, since I'm well aware how access to fresh, unadulterated produce can be a pricey privilege in this time and place.
Baég is endemic to the Philippines, also known as alokon or himbabao in Ilocano. It is rich in vitamins A, B and C, and contains calcium, phosphorus, potassium and iron. It is mixed in the Ilocano dish inabrao, or a vegetable stew of tomatoes, sitaw (string beans) and patani (fresh lima beans), flavored by pieces of grilled pork. In Pangasinan it is called baég, with the requisite Pangasinan guttural ę that all Filipinos outside of the province find so hard to pronounce (it is like the e in brother, or the second e in eagle – easy, right?).
Baég makes any dish more aromatic, but only subtly so. It adds texture, and additional roughage, to any vegetable dish that is sinágsagán (having as base stock seasoned with the salted, fermented fish paste bagóong). When cooked it turns vibrant green, soft and a bit slick. It can be had by itself, sauteed with shrimps, or in some places with bisukol or kuhol, snails, cooked in gata or coconut cream (definitely not in the Ilocos region).
In Pangasinan it is most commonly cooked with pakbet, a mix of okra, eggplants, tomatoes, palya (ampalaya, bitter gourd/melon), all put together in a boiling pot of sinágsagán and agát (luya, ginger). The pakbet shown here (photo above) also contains cubes of kamote (sweet potato), also a common practice and to which I have some objections, but I allow it because of the kamote's beneficial contents (vitamin A, calcium, soluble fiber and resistant starch), especially for kids.
It is now the season for baég. My cup runneth over.
In Pangasinan we have no name for this vegetable dish, as with other vegetable pairings, like salúyot tan labóng, or kalobása tan marúnggay.
What I call it here, as with the other examples, is by the names of the two vegetable ingredients, apáyas being the Pangasinan term for papaya, while agáyep is sitaw, which is called string beans in English, but the name string beans in the US actually pertains to another pod much shorter than our sitaw.
As a digression, let me add that sitaw is called batong in the Visayan language (Cebuano). Batong sounds related to balatóng, which is the Pangasinan term for the lowly but noble munggô or mung beans.
While they're two different bean varieties, balatóng is actually harvested from pods which look like batong or sitaw. And then, sometimes we open up mature agáyep (batong) pods to get the beans when the pods are already inedible, cooking them like a balatóng. Of course the agáyep beans are softer.
I prefer the shorter sitaw, which is less than a foot long, greener, and has thinner skin than the more common and longer sitaw. There is less insulating white pulp covering the beans, so the pods are firmer and look "skin-tight." This sitaw variety has more flavor, and there are times in the year when they are sold in the morning market mostly shelled – like soft mung beans with a few unshelled pods here and there.
Anyway, in Pangasinan when we ask the cook to prepare vegetable dishes, we just say what vegetables to include. It is actually automatic because it has been established how one complements and enhances the other.
And all native vegetables are cooked the same – in the method called sinágsagán. So if I am asked what I have cooked, I will simply say the names of the vegetables I put in the pot.
Of course not all vegetable dishes don't have names in Pangasinan. Like we have pakbet, or pakbet tan kalobása (with squash, which is the Ilocano bulanglang)…..and….., I can't think of anything else. So mostly they are identified by what they contain, the vegetables just enumerated.
Probably this is the case because the dishes are so simple and so homey, that they did not merit being named. Almost all vegetable dishes in the province I have never encountered elsewhere, but it existent in the Ilocos and Batangas provinces, with whom we share the sinágsagán method of cooking vegetables.
I actually stop in surprise sometimes – because whenever I am away from the province, I so miss and crave for these specific vegetable dishes. The salty smell of bagóong boiling away merrily, and then that of the green notes of the fresh vegetables – they evoke the comfort of home and homecooking.
Looking back at the child who cried in anguish because she actually had to eat the vegetables served frequently (daily, without fail), I never foresaw I would come to this day. That I would actually crave what I used to hate. And even to the extent that it could take on the identity of comfort food.
Agáyep tan apáyas, or vice versa – let's call them AA for short, smells of sinágsagán coupled with the unrealized sweetness of the thinly sliced unripe papaya, punctuated by the deep greenness of the sitaw, which is broken (by hand) into several (about three to four) pieces, removing the string on each side.
This is the basic pairing, and can be served on its own. A piece – preferably the head – of grilled bangus, the favored flavor enhancer of provincial vegetable dishes, ups the allure of the dish, elevating it to almost gourmet status (of course I'm exaggerating, but it's not really far from the truth).
For variety, other vegetables can be added. Here we have bungá'y cabuéy, the fruit of that climbing vine which is considered a weed – called sigarillas in Tagalog (sigadillas, seguidillas, winged bean, Goa bean, asparagus bean).
In the first photo, the dish contained kamansī (kamongsi, breadfruit, Antocarpus camansi blanco), which is prized for its breast milk inducing capability.
Kamansī is another vegetable I crave for when I'm out of Pangasinan, but this post is already too long, so I will leave that for another time.
Note: From the comments made on this post, may I add that this dish actually has a name in other places – dinengdeng or inabraw in the Ilocos and kibal in Batangas. Which got me into thinking that I should try finding out if there is a forgotten name in Pangasinan.
I have seen and eaten labong cooked in various ways across the country, in Chinese restaurants and in a fresh salad recipe using canned bamboo shoots. But this is the most common, and probably the most popular – and easiest – way to eat labong in Pangasinan. Boiled with saluyot tops (young jute leaves) and sinagsagan with inasin (bagoong isda). It is probably the healthiest among all options, because it doesn't contain any saturated/trans-fat, whether of the proven or debated kind, and the dish' nutritive value is magnified by the addition of the miracle, organic vegetable saluyot.
To cook, just bring to a boil a pan of water with several slices of peeled ginger. Never, ever julienne the ginger root, as my yaya is wont to do, because it would easily be mistaken for labong, especially when using the pre-boiled one. A thumb-sized ginger, peeled and crushed with the back of an aklo (sandok, wooden rice ladle) will do. Once the water is merrily boiling, put in a small bowl a couple spoonfuls of inasin. Get a long-handled ladle and pour a ladle-full of boiling water into the inasin bowl. Using the ladle edge, crush the fish in the inasin with downward strokes. Pour into the pan, straining the inasin. Repeat until the fishbones have been finely crushed. Add the labong and let boil for a few minutes, then add the saluyot and cook for about 10 minutes, covered, on medium heat.
The inasin reacts somehow with the labong, and the resulting dish acquires a very distinctive flavor, an acquired taste for some, especially for those who did not grow up eating this combination. A Pangasinense cook who maintains an eatery in Pampanga has successfully gone around this probable hindrance to the enjoyment of the dish by doing away with the inasin. He just sautees the saluyot at labong with a little pork and some tiny shrimps, recreating it into something more tolerable for non-kabaleyans. It tasted ok to my Pangasinense tastebuds, too, and it has become an alternative option whenever we run out of Pangasinan bagoong in Cavite.
When I got married, I started eating labong tan saluyot soured with pias (kamias/kalamias, Averrhoa bilimbi), which is how the vegetable dish is cooked in my husband's house. It's cooked the same as the foregoing, but pias is added the same time as the ginger. It tastes not much different from the regular saluyot tan labong, but the sourness of the pias somehow foils the saltiness of the inasin, which is heightened because not much green vegetable absorbs it. It actually completes the dish, the flavors all rounded up, although of course I never noticed anything lacking before.
I have come to love the taste of pias in my saluyot tan labong that I want a bowlfull of them added to the dish. Good thing there are two pias trees at my in-laws' backyard, and it is commonly available in the public markets, too. As long as labong is available (peak season is during the rainy months, but it can be procured the rest of the year, albeit rarely) saluyot tan labong, with pias, is cooked and eaten weekly at home. It serves to ground my children to their Pangasinan roots, as well as providing us complete nutrition for the day, with added anti-oxidants, to boot.
Saluyot tan labong is best eaten with inkalot a bangos, and acquires a heavenly turn when the fatty head of that grilled milkfish is added towards the end of the cooking process as sahog.
In fact, saluyot tan labong flavored with grilled bangus head is simply divine that I think it is worth serving in a royal court. And since it is a purely Pangasinan dish, if ever, in my other life, I had been the aliping namamahay in the court of the famed Pangasinense, Princess Urduja, I would have wanted to cook this for her. To fortify her during the battles defending the kingdom, and to keep her skin smooth and preserve her beauty to ensure that it attains legendary status. It would also serve as a reminder as to how hardy yet adaptable we are as a people, like the labong, when it grows into bamboo, which sways with the wind that's why it doesn't break, even with the strongest Filipino bagyo (typhoon/tropical storm).
Of course I won't dare admit I would have wanted to be Princess Urduja herself in my other life, but I can imagine. And I imagine I would want to eat saluyot tan labong, everyday. With pias.
