A provincial fiesta goes international

Bohol may not have started the tradition of yearly festivals to mark historic events. But it brought its Sandugo celebration to world notice this year, thanks to the initiative of its artists and expats.

Sandugo recalls the 1565 blood compact between Boholano chieftain Datu Sikatuna and Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. Like the Ati-atihan of Aklan, Sinulog of Cebu, Dinagyan of Negros, Moriones of Marinduque and Masskara of Bacolod, it is a combination of religious, art and tourist fiesta. Featured in the festivals are pre- and Spanish-era rituals, costumes, music and dance. The difference is that Sandugo lasts not just a week but all of five months, from March to July.

Islands starved for tourism income and thirsty for world recognition of ethnic identity invariably vie for visitors through standard advertising. But trust artists to think out of the box to attract attention some other way. Bohol sure is lucky to have such notables as Gardy Labad of theater music, Maryo delos Reyes of television directing, and Cesar Montano of cinema acting. Tying up with the Boholano-Foreign Friendship Foundation, Gardy feted seven days of this year’s Sandugo into an eco-cultural extravaganza. Other provinces could pick up ideas on how to entice tourists from Manila, Asia, Europe and America.

Sandugo sa Kalinaw kicked off with a youth jamboree for peace in Dauis town on July 16. At the Tagbilaran capital, Gardy organized an international guitar festival of concerts and workshops. Classical, rock and folk guitarists from Manila and Europe wowed audiences with their styles. Guitar and banduria ensembles from Manila universities performed too. Off stage, they talked of cultural exchanges. Definitely a treat for people in this land of guitar pluckers and makers.

The next day, President Gloria Arroyo flew in for a Cabinet meeting and the street dancing. The blood compact of 347 years ago was reenacted. Bohol Gov. Erico Aumentado and Tagbilaran Mayor Jose Torralba awarded prizes to the best community, office and school dance troupes.

An international film festival opened on the 18th. Producers Lily Monteverde, Vicente del Rosario, Tony Veloria, Malou Santos and Joel Lamangan presented for the first time new films like Magkapatid (Viva Films), Got to Believe (Star Cinema), Laman (Regal Films), Batang Westside (Hinabing Pangarap Productions), and Kapalit (Jaggs Productions). With directors Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, Mel Chionglo, Erik Matti, Lab Diaz, Olive Lamangan, Gil Portes, Boy Vinarao and Maryo delos Reyes, they also led a forum on how Filipino cinema should reach out from Manila. Critical hits from other lands were shown by Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institute, Japan Foundation, Australian Center and Instituto Cervantes.

On the 19th, the Gallery of the Sea sail-painting competition began. Three dozen amateur and professional artists painted on canvass sails their interpretations of water and marine conservation. It was the second stage of the competition that Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Heherson Alvarez began in Boracay in June. In that contest, the artists painted on seven-meter sails for Panay’s bigger fishing boats. The Bohol sails were only three meters, for one-man boats. The third stage will be held in Batangas this month. The winning and runner-up paintings from all three stages will be rigged onto boats that will sail to Manila, for display along Roxas Boulevard. The top placers from each stage will be sent to Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Clean-Up Month in September, and to China for the Ministerial Meeting on Water in October. Who would think that sails can be used to deliver environment messages?

The awarding ceremonies for the Bohol leg was held the next day at Alona Beach. Cash prizes were handed out by Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer Arius C. Ilano and his Tagbilaran district Community Officer Jovencio Taer.

The Kalahi cultural troupe of Alvarez’s wife, Cecille Guidote, was also on hand to present songs and skits by disabled children. Cecille had founded the Philippine Educational Theater Association in the ’60s, and it was in PETA where Gardy, Maryo and Joel Lamangan (with Lino Brocka, Angie Ferro and Lorli Villanueva) honed their skills in the performing arts. Cecille’s new children’s troupe performed at least six times during the week-long Sandugo sa Kalinaw.

The festival peaked on Saturday the 20th with a youth choir concert at the Dauis parish church. Gardy has been organizing community and youth choir concerts for two years in Bohol’s 38 well-preserved, centuries-old churches. That day in Dauis, he presented them to an international audience that included the musicians from Europe. The highlight, of course, was the children’s choir from Loboc town in the north.

That night also in Dauis church was another concert: a solo by classical guitarist Michael Dadap, who flew home from New York to his native Bohol for the Sandugo sa Kalinaw. Michael’s brother, conductor-arranger Jerry Dadap, warmed up the audience with his choir from the Andres Bonifacio musicale. In the audience were officers from the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, who flew in not only to join the festival but also to hold their monthly meeting in Bohol. By the time Michael was playing, the crowd was wishing the night would never end.

After that climax, Gardy must have collapsed from exhaustion. But the town mayors were smiling from ear to ear with the tourism earnings he had pulled in. The townsfolk were proud their Sandugo had gone international. And the visitors? Early the next morning, hundreds were heading for the Chocolate Hills national park, and Loboc river for chance sightings of tarsiers, the world’s smallest primates.

Sunday and Monday were devoted to an international round-table on culture, environment and peace. The film producers, directors and stars were still there, as were the NACC commissioners and the musicians from Manila and Europe. As they exchanged views on how to promote peace through arts and ecology, laymen understood why it’s worth to tour the islands for the yearly festivals that mark historic events. Hans Schoof, the German president of the Bohol-Foreign Friendship Foundation, put it plainly:

"First, I fell in love with a Boholana, then I fell in love with Bohol."

Okay, book us there, same time next year.

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Bohol’s Sandugo could not but extend itself to Manila. Violinist Yeou-Cheng Ma, sister of world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, flew in to catch up with her husband, Michael Dadap. She did, at the CCP, on Sunday the 28th, in a concert called "An Intimate Evening."

Although Michael served as accompanist for Yeou, STAR columnist Rosalinda L. Orosa wrote three days later, the intimacy unwitingly turned into a "friendly contest" between guitarist and violinist as they played classical and Visayan pieces.

The Loboc Mixed Choir was also there, under conductor-musical director Alma Fernando Toldo. Also featured was 18-year-old Hans Cutiongco, now based in New York, where Michael and Yeou are helping him train on the viola.

Yeou, a pediatrician who now runs the Children’s Orchestra Society that her conductor-father Dr. Hiao-Tsiun Ma had founded, must have enjoyed playing to a Manila audience for the first time. Michael’s other brother, Jun Dadap, obliged her with a second concert last August 6, at the Equitable-PCIBank’s Antonio Molina Hall. Yeou played sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms, Mozart, Debussy and Beethoven with Raul Sunico, dean of the UST Conservatory of Music. That "Classic Interaction" had to end, fittingly, with a kundiman composed by Michael.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays, 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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