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.
April 15, 2009 marked the formal opening of the Dagupan City Bangus Festival 2009. One of the kick-off events scheduled was the Gilon! Gilon! Ed Baley Street Dancing Competition. The contest was open to the local groups particularly the 28 barangays and some schools of Dagupan City.
Gilon Gilon is the street dance extravaganza that depicts and interprets the “Gilon” or harvesting Bangus through vivid visual display, graceful gyrations and well-choreographed dance in groups.
Gilon in the Pangasinan vernacular means the traditional way of harvesting bangus (milkfish) at the fishponds particularly here in Dagupan City.
Barangay Lucao was adjudged the winner in the said event. They received P80,000 as cash prize. Barangay Mangin, last year's champion settled for second place (P60,000). The third, fourth and fifth place winners were Barangay Bolosan (P50,000), Dagupan City National High School (P40,000), and Barangay Tambac (40,000) respectively. Other partcipants were given P3,000 as consolation prize.
The distinguished panel of judges were: Peter De Vera and Franco Velas of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts; Hilly Vann dela Cruz of Sinukwan Performing Arts; Rebecca Lim-Nulud and Sheila Marie Marquez of Saint Louis University; Romarico Sunga of Angeles City National Trade School and Alfredo Niner of Juan G. Macaraeg National High School in Binalonan.
Here are glimpses of the event (video courtesy of PJay Gutierrez):
Barangay Lucao being this year’s champion will again showcase their winning form in the Festivals of the North street-dancing competition on April 27, 2009. The Festivals of the North street-dancing competition which is touted as the “Biggest Gathering of the Best Festivals of the Northern Philippines” will feature popular festivals in the region, to include those in Pampanga, Ilocos Norte, and Isabela.
Thirty five localities (festivals) will be competing in the two categories (city and town). The champions will each receive P200,000 cash prize.
Guest performers are the Iloilo City's Dinagyang Festival and Mapandan's (Pangasinan) Tribu Pandan who won in last year's Festivals of the North and was champion in Baguio City's Panagbenga 2009.
Fatalistic tendencies, which I find cross borders and transcend cultures and affinities, render us humans attaching an inordinate amount of importance to luck. So we wish one another good luck, be it for a trifle thing or a grand undertaking. And we consider things, places, days, even persons, lucky or unlucky.
In the Philippines we take this to the extreme. Claiming as the only Christian country in Southeast Asia, we are devoted to our religion/s, so much so that we consider any religious event, icon, and the like, lucky. We wipe statues with our hankies to wipe on ourselves (for healing), we carry their carts during processions in the belief that it will bestow upon us blessings, we pray for wins in the lottery. We keep on our house doors the palm fronds used during Palm Sunday as a talisman against lightning.
Holy Week is a venerated time, when a lot of things is forbidden. Laughter is banned, and the spirit of penitence is taken seriously. Good Friday, the heaviest – the most revered – day of the week, is a dichotomy of sorts, as it is a combination of good and Friday, which is usually considered an unlucky day (no wedding is celebrated, nor no funeral is held, on Fridays).
Travel on a Good Friday is considered an unlucky decision, as the risk of encountering accidents is at its highest. But at the same time, the day is the luckiest one can get, and there are things done only on Good Fridays to take advantage of this good luck.
The most well known is the supposed witches' coven on an island in the Visayas. They gather on Good Friday, and it is believed that their powers (healing or otherwise) can reach its maximum level on this day.
In Pangasinan there are no such witches, healers or otherwise, who form a coven. But on Good Friday, specifically at noontime, the whole province is enveloped in the thick, almost rancid scent of coconut oil.
Pangasinenses make coconut oil all the time, for a variety of purposes. But coconut oil, or larak in the local language, made at noontime of Good Friday is believed to possess magical powers derived from the auspiciousness of the circumstance being commemorated. It can heal even in the hands of non-healers. It can even take the place of holy water.
So the day before there is a scramble to climb trees to harvest mature coconuts (it is taboo to climb trees on Good Friday). These are then opened, the meat grated, then stored to be expressed the next day.
In the morning of Good Friday the grated coconut meat is mixed with water, squeezed, then sieved to get the gata (coconut cream and milk). The creamy and milky gata is boiled over a woodfire, stirred occasionally, until it thickens and clears. The cream/milk is reduced to brown curds which sink to the bottom. The oil is then strained to separate the curds.
The curds is called ganuza, or latik commonly. These are used as topping on a variety of kakanin (puddings, rolls, cakes made from glutinous rice), producing nutty accents to the creaminess of the local delicacies. These kakanin are traditionally served and eaten on Easter Sunday, when fasting is over and feasting is in order.
Ordinarily, though, by which I mean outside of the Holy Week, old folks in Pangasinan eat the ganuza along with boiled rice. And ordinarily, too, larak is used for its natural healing properties, way, way before the advent of VCO (virgin coconut oil). It is used in massage, in setting bones, in rituals ascertaining who harmed who, in correcting the position of a fetus in the womb.
Good Friday increases these properties to new heights.
Rosales where I was born is close to the borders of Tarlac and Nueva Ecija. My forefathers were Ilokanos who migrated to this part of the province at the turn of the 19th century; they had intended to go to the Cagayan Valley but were enamored by the lure of the verdant plains of eastern Pangasinan and they decided to settle there instead. In the early thirties, as a boy, I witnessed this migration; the Ilokanos came in their bull carts with their plows the uprooted posts of their houses and weaving looms. They parked in the town plaza for the night. They were all Ilokanos; some of those who came in bull carts were Pangasinan traders with coconut candy (bocayo) dried fish, salt and bagoong to sell.
There was commerce and, of course, intermarriage and one of my cousins married a pretty girl from Calasiao.
I got interested in history, having read Rizal’s novels in Grade School, and concentrated on the Revolution of 1896 after I learned that my grandfather was in it. I came to know so many details, the building of the railroad to Dagupan, the flight of Aguinaldo’s aid Colonel Villa, the father of the poet Jose Garcia Villa, described the town of San Carlos as surrounded by jungle still. This was, mind you, in 1899. Such details were retrieved when I wrote POON the first novel in my Rosales saga. In the novel, too, there is a girl from Lingayen whose family was killed by pirates of the Ilokos coast. This heroic woman becomes the wife of Istak, the novel’s main character, who follows Aguinaldo to Tirad Pass.
I cite all these to impress upon you the importance of Pangasinan in my work, and of history to all of us. This province, aside from one of the richest and the largest in the country, is a focal point of history. It is here were Limahong was based, where Princess Urduja—whether real or not—reign, where palaris fought the Spaniards. Close by is the beach where the Japanese landed in 1941 and where the Americans and MacArthur returned in 1945. Indeed, Pangasinan province occupies a precious niche in our country’s history.
I am sorry to note that Pangasinan as a literary language is waning. It should not and I am glad that there is an effort now to revive it. Santiago B. Villafania has just published a book of sonnets in Pangasinan. I hope that one of these days, this University will set up a Center of Pangasinan Studies to record the culture, the contribution of the people of Pangasinan to the national trove.
Having said these let me now thank the University for honoring me as a writer. Most Filipino’s, our leaders included, do not consider literature important—it is only storytelling and, therefore, mere entertainment. Moreover, although our national hero was a novelist, Filipinos do not read novels. Read more
The University of Pangasinan, in celebration of its 84th Foundation Anniversary, confered the Degree Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa upon Prof. Francisco Sionil Jose (2004 Pablo Neruda Centennial Awardee, 2001 National Artist for Literature, 1998 Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awardee) on February 12, 2009, 10 a.m. at the University of Pangasinan Gymnasium.
Francisco Sionil Jose, a Pangasinense (born in Rosales, Pangasinan) is one of the most widely-read Filipino writers in the English language. His novels and short stories depict the social underpinnings of class struggles and colonialism in Filipino society. José’s works – written in English – have been translated into 22 languages, including Korean, Indonesian, Russian, Latvaian, Ukrainian, Dutch.
The photograph was taken after the Press Conference at the 2nd floor A.S. buiding. He gave me the original copy of his confernment speech which I photocopied and shared with the press.
By Ernest M. Serote (lifted from: ‘Balon Silew’ Oct-Dec 2000 issue – with permission to republish from publishers) A POPULAR JOKE is told about a young Pangasinense who, returning home after a year’s stay in Manila, is completely ‘tagalized’. Feeling hungry one mid morning, he rushes to the kitchen and finds his mother preparing their lunch. “Ang bagal naman ni Inay,” he says, “Gutom na gutom na ako, e. Ano ho bang ulam natin?”
He sees a basket of live crabs. “Inay, ano ba ire?” he asks, pointing his forefinger, and suddenly blurts out: “Aray ! Anak na lasin alama ya, kinetket to ak!” The preceding anecdote is an exaggeration, of course. But it is a telling example of how many Pangasinenses unwittingly kill their language through disuse. For a Pangasinense in another region loses his cultural identity – language especially, and is readily absorbed by the culture of that other region. This, among other things, account for the rapid decay of Pangasinan dialect.
More of the causes later.
In the not-so-remote past, Pangasinan was one of the major dialects in the Philippines. It bares close affinity with some Indonesian tongues, a fact often cited by historians as proof of the assertion that the fabled Princess Urduja was not a native Amazon but a migrant from the South. Pangasinan, too, has a fair share of the Hindu Arabic terms, an off-shoot most probably, of the once flourishing trade between Sual and the Arab world. Pangasinan before the Ilocano Deluge, must have been spoken throughout the length and breadth of this big province. Many barrios in what are now predominantly Ilocano-speaking towns have retained their original names in the dialect. The barrios of Caoringan in Sison, Nancayasan in Urdaneta, Cabayaoasan in Mangatarem, are only three of the scores that can be named as cases in point. Also, many aging people from the Ilocano-speaking towns, whom this writer has had the chance to meet have intimated quite nostalgically that they are, or used that they had to adopt a second language having been overwhelmingly outnumbered.
The existence of people still fluent in Pangasinan in as far as south of Paniqui, Tarlac and the distinctly heavy streaks of Pangasinan terms in Ibaloy, the dialect spoken by the Igorots in Benguet, point to the Palaris and Malong in the once resplendent past. Today, Pangasinan is a dying dialect. It is spoken only in a handful of towns in the central part of the province.
And the frontier is continually being pushed inward due to incessant incursions of the Ilocanos from all sides. Even in these diminishing places that are ‘pre’ Pangasinan speaking are as virgins are in England. Perhaps enrichment from other languages augurs well for many particular language. Unfortunately, it is not so with Pangasinan. Contact with other cultures does not enrich but rather annihilates Pangasinan. The invisible limits of what remains a Pangasinan-speaking area are readily noticeable as one takes a bus ride from the city of Dagupan outward to any direction. One notes how, after travelling 20 kilometers or so, the passengers conspicuously change to Ilocano the way the driver shifts his gears. So small has the area grown that the Pangasinenses, once a major ethnic group, are now reduced to mere cultural minorities.
Political campaign strategists in Manila erroneously and sweepingly consider Pangasinan as part of Ilocandia. To native Manileño, other region, a Pangasinense is an Ilocano. Campaigner therefore, who spice their speeches with a smattering of Ilocano idioms usually endear themselves to Pangasinan audiences. If this trend goes on, one dreads that day when Pangasinan-speaking people, cultural minorities that they are now, will be edged out into the sea, like the rats of Hamelin, there being no mountain vastness in Central Pangasinan to which they can retreat. That would mean the death of Pangasinan. And when that happens, “lingotopsy” will surely unravel the following causes of the death of the Pangasinan dialect.
For one thing, there has been no serious and sustained effort to preserve, much less propagate, the dialect. One vital factor in the propagation of any language is the development of its written literature. But alas, Pangasinan literature is largely oral. There is a dismal death of vernacular, including a novel in series. The Pangasinan novel, too, assuming that it deserves such a name, has almost died with the late Maria Magsano of ‘Samban Agnabenegan’ fame. Ironically this novel and some other works which include Colegiala Dolores Nami-ko (a translation from Japanese). Bales na Kalamangan, can be obtained more easily in their English translation than in their original version. The translations were done by Juan Villamil who also has novels to his name, notably: Ampait ya Pagbabawi, Pakseb na Kapalaran, Pinisag ya Puso, Diad Tape na Daluyon and Sika Tan Siak.
The themes of these novels and their variations have nourished for some time another indigenous literary form – the zarzuela. The zarzuela used to be popular fare not only among the simple barrio folk but also in the more sophisticated poblacion. Years ago, no town fiesta was complete without a zarzuela as a major presentation. Now zarzuela is a dying art. One last ditch effort to revive the art was weekly radio program ‘Zarzuela on the Air’ directed by Lorenzo Morante, but it did not last. Lorenzo Morante, who is better known as Lorenzo ‘Tason-taso’, represents the last gasping breath of another dying art-cancionan.
Cancionan is Pangasinan’s answer to the Tagalog ‘Balagtasan’ or the Ilocano ‘Bukanegan’, a sort of verbal joust usually between a man and a woman. It used to share equal popularity with the zarzuela. Now, too, it is a literary form in its death throes. Original Pangasinan songs and ribald tales are occasionally hummed from oblivion by older folk usually after several glasses of alac-bogbog or CDC gin. Unfortunately, these songs and tales never get written for posterity. Of course, the most readily accessible literature in Pangasinan is the Bible and a few religious literature like taw-tawag, galikin, and passion. But how many read today? Another cause for the death of Pangasinan ‘lingotopsy’ is that assertion made at the start of the essay: that Pangasinan speaking people are generally not assertive. Some even go to the extent of denying their dialect. That is understandable. With hardly a literary heritage to stand on and with a stage of linguistic development suitable only for grade two, how can Pangasinenses expect to stand with pride beside Ilocano and Tagalog? Pangasinenses take pride instead in their facility in learning other languages and getting themselves lost in or assimilated by other cultural groups.
Two Ilocanos can transplant Ilocandia anywhere in the world as they use their dialect without feeling embarrassed even before a king. Children of Pangasinenses who migrated to other regions, however, hardly know their parents’ tongue. Pangasinenses are uniquely funny. As hosts, they try hard to seek the language of their guests. As guests, they struggle with the language of their host. Which is a very convenient way of losing, as it were, one’s roots. Must the Pangasinan dialect be left to die?
