I
remember as a kid going to my town's "Harvest Festival", generally
held the last week of August, just before we packed off for a new school year,
which in the U.S. starts in early September. The festival was great fun. They'd
block off Main Street in town and the carnival people would come in with their
game booths and portable Ferris wheels and merry go rounds. For a kid, it
didn't get much better than that.
As the
town got swallowed up by a rapidly growing city, Denver, Colorado, to be exact,
the farmlands got swallowed up by housing developments, miles and miles of
them, plastering the plains with wood and brick boxes all the way to the Rocky
Mountains, and onward east toward Nebraska.
Somewhere
along the way, the Harvest Festival lost its relevance. The name was changed
and it became a street carnival, somehow detached from its origins of crops
harvested and stored or shipped, and money in the bank. Then it just died.
The
reason? The plowed fields were gone and the joy of the harvest was gone. The
harvest meant a lot to the agricultural community. But agriculture was bought
out, the farmers left or died, and the festival became a cheap, junky traveling
carnival hosting gangs and druggies and drunks.
Yet
fiestas remain big in the Philippines. Very big. There must be a reason. And
the reason must still exist.
Perhaps
it is found in the drums, pounding today on hypersonic amplifiers that bounce
the thumps off the surrounding buildings. Hell, some nights the thumping
bounces off the nearby mountains.
I once
watched the fiesta parade in Gingoog City, in Mindanao. Area schools competed
in a street-dancing competition judged during the parade. Winning prize,
P30,000.There were six different groups the day I watched. It was fantastic.
Amazing creativity went into the costuming and choreography, the same story
told six times through six different creative visions. The winner featured a
fantastic opening where about 50 dancers somehow crammed into a gigantic ball
surrounded by huge feathers, colored nipa palm branches. The pounding music
began and the dancers exploded out like the fast-motion photography of a flower
in blossom. Golden bronze warriors with blond hair and loincloths pounced
across the street, twirling and stomping, raising the energy so high that you
could get lost in the moment.
The
common story is of love, of course, and conquest. You know it better than me.
I imagine
it was like that around a huge fire in the forest so many centuries ago. A
small world, defined by darkness. The black night held at bay by the blazing
yellow fire light. Dancers glistening in sweaty splendor as they pounded around
the fire to the beat of tribal drums. The dancers told the same story as today,
older than their grandparent's grandparents. Feathered spears jabbed upward,
angry, defiant, victorious. The elders sat together babbling in toothless
tuba-stoked joy, the women held babies in their arms and fretted over the
cooking fires.
Well,
it's baaaaack!
Fiesta
time is here again here, in the big city. The bands are out rehearsing at odd
hours of the morning or night. They use cut-off oil drums and big sticks of
wood to work up a fine, loud, throbbing beat. And somewhere, for some reason,
off over there, an electronic beat, amped to max, is throbbing another
everlasting story of love, conquest, and victory. Thumping, thumping, thumping
until four in the morning.
Somewhere
creative people are once again putting together choreography for their dancers.
Walking through the rehearsals. Soon, we will get the seasonal tents springing
up all over town, selling mostly cheap things, tin ware, clothing, plastic
goods.
Then on
the final day, visitors from across the Philippines will flood in to partake of
the main event. Eating.
Every
door in town is open wide to anybody. Every guest is served the fiesta meal as
graciously as the mayor is served. Need is set aside for a mammoth day of
kindness and spiritual unity and generosity. Those who have, share. Those who
don't have, help out. Heh, or just stop by. And everybody eats big time.
Why is my
Harvest Festival long dead, but the Philippine fiesta lives on, strong and
loud?
Here's a
guess.
Because
the Philippines has yet to find a modern passion anywhere near the joy of a
tribal dance. If the One Man Band or Lady Gaga do the music instead of a bunch
of mostly naked drummers, so what? It is the spirit, the pounding, that
matters, not the tune. In the Philippines, there is no wealth to aim for. No
war to march off to. No grand patriotic vision.
But always trials and tribulations, the roots of soul and music around
the world.
Pound
them into oblivion with drums and bass.
In that
regard, the Philippines is still a collection of tribes, not a nation. It is a
nation still dancing in the firelight.
Most
people don't live in the wilds any more, but a good many still cook over a
fire. And they spend their days with their friends and neighbors, not worrying
about impeachments or even Chinese gunboats. And they play their music loud.
The
modern era of Philippine national history has largely been one of submission.
To Spaniards, to Americans. To Japanese. Liberated with help from the
Americans, at the cost of a destroyed Manila. Then a dictator, Marcos. Since
Marcos, ruled by cheaters, the powerful and the corrupt.
The
"free" and genuinely independent Philippines is still non-existent, a
figment of people's imagination unfulfilled by patriotic bonds. The nation is
not even born yet, if you think about it that way. It is trapped in the
darkness by thieves and lackluster productivity. And leaders taking advantage
of their power.
Patriotic
spirit is hard to summon if your leaders command no deep respect.
Security
and bonding here have always been found closer to home, in the family, and the
tribe. Not the national government. Even today, with Ampatuan Senior in jail,
his representatives are (allegedly) out murdering the witnesses who might
testify against him. His tribe remains strong and lethal, defying the national
government. Mayors of Davao City and Cebu run their cities as kingdoms. They
are the law. Not those pantywaists in the Palace.
President
Aquino bowed to the powerful locals who wanted to keep their private militias.
The nation bowed to the tribal leaders.
Afghanesque.
Today the
family names still dominate government offices, handed down, one to the other
on fierce local loyalties. That's why the names Marcos and Estrada and Arroyo
and Aquino live on, no matter the scandal or shame. It is why three senators
once plotted coups, yet serve today, elected by those who value history and the
comfort of whom they know above democratic valor and even competence.
Democratic
purity pounds no drums, in the Philippines. Nor does getting things done
productively. The Constitution is a document, not a passion. It lights no fires
in the soul.
Tribal
loyalty, close to home, is where the fires burn.
And yet.
And yet, I sense something is changing. Modest perhaps. Found in the maturity
of an impeachment carried out in lieu of
murder or a coup. Of a bill providing freedom of information based on the
principle that government is owned by the people, not the other way around. Of
the HR Bill beginning to move again through the Senate, perhaps on the profound
realization by the old folks (Senator Enrile and his band) that people are
watching carefully, and the senators' legacy rides on modernization. Not
staying inept.
Will
fiestas disappear? Ha ha. Not in my lifetime, nor yours. But the way things are
going, I suspect more and more people will turn to the national leadership and
say, "yes, I buy into this".
"This is a nation I don't have to apologize for, or make
excuses for. I don't need to cheer a boxer or singer. I can cheer my country,
the Philippines. MY country."
THAT may
be Mr. Aquino's biggest contribution to the Philippines, if he continues
constructive acts. The establishment of a national allegiance stronger than
local loyalties. Perhaps one day the history books will record this simple
achievement:
He molded a nation from a gathering of tribes.
