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If you happened to be at Harbourfront in Toronto
from July 15-17 of this year, you would have seen the presentation
of the Filipino cultural festival. Filipino traditional music, dance
and drama are as varied as their regions of origin; but singing
and dancing have always been a part of Filipino festivities - whether
in urban or rural areas. Music and drama symbolize the way of life
and temperament of Filipinos.
As
with any other cultural group that has left its home country, the
Filipinos have brought with them their music. Open the suitcase
of a newly arrived Filipino immigrant and you find records of music
from the Philippines, in addition to what he brought with him in
his heart and soul. Wherever Filipinos settle, music and dance groups
are soon organized. Theatrical groups, it has been observed, take
longer to bud and bloom.
In
the Metropolitan Toronto area, for example, there are two well-known
Filipino dance troupes - the Fiesta Filipina, which is seen every
year in the Filipino Pavilion at Caravan, and Folklorico Filipino,
which has been performing at Harbourfront for several consecutive
years.
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Both
groups have had engagements in various parts of Canada and the United
States and have won popular acclaim. The Filipino Pavilion at Caravan
is always one of those that attract the largest number of attendants
every year. Both dance troupes are made up of dedicated young men
and women from a variety of jobs and professions who have contributed
their talent, time and energy for the sheer enjoyment of the art
and the promotion of Philippine culture outside their homeland.
They rehearse in the evenings and on weekends. They spend their
holidays touring the country performing.
Brass,
string and wind instrument bands are very popular in the Philippines.
Any festivity, whether social or religious, is not complete without
a band. In the rural regions it is still a common sight to see a
band in a funeral procession, providing some Filipino lamentation.
There are some of these types of bands in Metropolitan Toronto.
Tanglaw
Ng Kabataan, a Filipino family organization in the southwest of
the city, has a string band composed of elementary school children
and a Filipino teacher as organizer and director. This children's
band has performed at various multicultural gatherings throughout
the city. The Filipino Heritage Band is a brass band often seen
playing Philippine music at various cultural events.
It
has also performed in concert - one of the most recent occasions
being at the Ontario Science Centre. There are other groups in the
city which are usually seen at church services, like the Cursilista
Group at Holy Family Church.
From
an interview with Baby de Guzman, the charming host of the "Filipinesca"
Toronto television program, the following information was gathered.
The program, which can be seen three times a week, includes Philippine
music and songs in all the major dialects of the various regions
of the Philippines. Local singing talent is encouraged.
The
program sponsored a Filipino music festival in 1980 held at the
Minkler Auditorium, Seneca College. The drama portion of the television
program is, however, imported from the Philippines. Filipino folk-tales,
as well as contemporary Philippine life, are portrayed in these
prerecorded dramatizations.
The
program has a wide audience both from the Filipino community as
well as from other cultural groups in Ontario. From a survey of
program patronage, it appears that it attracts a relatively high
percentage of viewers from ethnocultural groups other than Filipino,
according to the program host and associate producer.
There
seems to be no legitimate Filipino drama troupes in Metropolitan
Toronto, or, for that matter, in Ontario. There have been dramatic
presentations for special occasions now and then, but the group
usually disperses after the presentation.
A recent
grand presentation of a Toronto Filipino group, which had all the
elements of drama, was the "Filipino Cultural Heritage Show," sponsored
by federally funded New Horizons - a government agency looking after
the concerns of senior citizens. The show was presented by the Pillars-Silayan
- a Filipino senior-citizen organization in the east end of the
city - at Ryerson Auditorium on June 19, 1982 to an audience of
more than a thousand, made up of Filipinos and other cultural groups.
The
performance, two hours in length, incorporated significant events
in Philippine history, a typical Filipino feast in honour of a patron
saint and Filipino music, song and dance. The plot revolved around
a family who had immigrated to Canada and then went back home for
a visit.
Pillars-Silayan
has been quite active in the field of music and dance, and lately,
in drama. The productivity of this group can be attributed to several
factors:
1)
The organization has a very active and large membership
2)
It has quite a number of talented members. One of its officers,
Mr. Roy Balen, was a former public school physical education supervisor
and a talented dance teacher. He teaches all the folk-dances;
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3)
The group receives support from the younger members of the Filipino
community who act as assistants or advisors on the cultural projects
the organization undertakes;
4)
It has a very strong set of officers, headed by Mrs. Ludy Andres,
capable of mustering up group cooperation.
Music,
song and drama among Filipinos are strongly intertwined with religion.
Evidence of the truth of this statement can be observed in other
cultural programs presented by both Pillars-Silayan and other groups.
The Pabasa is a good example of music, song and, to some extent,
drama in religion.
During
the Lenten season, especially Holy Week, the life, sufferings, death
and resurrection of Christ are sung in this celebration. A sponsor
- either an individual or an organization - invites relatives and
friends either into a home or chapel to participate in the reading-singing.
The
book read on this occasion is called the Pasyon and is written
in several dialects, and passages are sung in different, distinctly
identifiable melodies associated with regions of origin.
The
Pabasa has been brought to Canada from the Philippines. Several
individuals and organizations have been sponsoring this Lenten cultural
activity in Toronto for several years now. This celebration also
shows the nature of the Filipino sense of hospitality. The reading
usually lasts twenty-four hours without interruption. During this
period guests come and go and food is served continuously. The main
dishes are meatless, usually consisting of fish and other seafood.
Anybody who comes to the Pabasa is invited to join in the feast.
Another
religious celebration brought by Filipinos to Canada, which has
the elements of drama and music, is the Santacrusan. This is a commemoration
of the Greek Emperor Constantine's mother, St. Helena, and her travels
in search of the wooden cross to which Christ was nailed on Calvary.
It is usually celebrated each year in May, June, or July.
A procession
made up of boys and girls or young men and women, representing biblical
characters, winds through the streets of the community for nine
consecutive evenings. The last character in the procession, considered
the most important, is a girl dressed up to resemble Queen Helena,
carrying a small cross and escorted by a young Prince Constantine.
People
from the community join the procession, carrying lighted candles
and singing "Dias Te Salve, Maria" in honour of the Mother of Christ.
The Santacrusan, as celebrated in Toronto, has been modified so
that it is usually held only once instead of the customary nine
evenings. Both the Pabasa and the Santacrusan are relics of Spanish
influence in Filipino culture.
Drama
has played a significant role in Philippine history as an instrument
in bringing about political and religious change. There is, for
example, a kind of drama called the Moro-moro, depicting
the struggles between Christians and Muslims in the southern Philippines.
The
most popular form of entertainment in the Philippines during the
latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the
twentieth was an opera-like play called Zarzuela. The themes
of such operettas, embodied in the songs and script, were usually
patriotic.
Zarzuelas
were known even in the very remote country villages. They were usually
presented by local groups as a part of the celebrations for the
town fiesta. Zarzuela has been revived lately. A very sophisticated
drama group has toured the larger cities of the United States and
Canada presenting one of the most well-known versions of Zarzuela
in the Philippines - Walang Sugat (Unhurt). The operetta
was brought to Toronto in the summer of 1980.
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In
this tradition of using drama as a political instrument for public
information about some existing controversy, a Toronto Filipino
group has been presenting skits and plays, to this end, since 1975,
usually during the celebration of Philippine National Day in June
at Seton Park.
The
group, known as the Coalition Against Marcos' Dictatorship (formerly
Coalition Against Martial Law), made up of men and women between
the ages of twenty-five and forty - professionals as well as factory
workers - has been operating here trying to bring about political
change in the Philippines. The same organization brought a play
to Toronto several years ago from a Filipino group in California.
That play, Mindanao, had many patriotic and reformist themes.
There
has been very little evidence that drama for the sake of art will
flourish in the near future among the Filipinos of Ontario. Their
preoccupation with improving their lifestyle leaves little time
for this type of art. Could it be because drama at the amateur level
in the Philippines has been relatively confined to the elite and
to the schools?
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