Honoring Our Heritage with Folksong and Humble Dancing

We practice our culture and tradition in different places and events, hoping it will reach further generations to come and that newcomers will practice it with dignity and respect like us. We do it in church, in a street parade, in fiestas, or even in our homes by doing those solemn acts that represent our culture—which in response builds our identity.  If you read my blog before this one, you could easily follow why I am telling these things to you, because this is basically the continuation of our Founder’s celebration last week, which was commenced with a floral opening and the highlight “Eco Tribute” or tree planting. The celebration of the Founder’s birth didn’t end in the morning. In fact, another program was designed for the afternoon, making it a whole-day celebration. If the morning activity interested me in ways that nature always does, the afternoon program did it better because it showcased something I really enjoy watching ever since I was in elementary.   During the afternoon program, different departments prepared their performances for the theme “Legacy of Learning, Heritage of Service”, which means the program was all about the tradition and culture found in our hometown and was represented through dancing and singing presentations. It was not the boring and usual kind of performance since it revolved around different practices and, as a Cebuano, I still have many to learn and discover—and witnessing those performances helped me to do so.   The program started with entrance music by a band in our school known as Band of Brothers. They are composed of drummers with different kinds of drums, and I often see them in events like this that highlight heritage, since their tools create music suitable for the agenda.  Whilst taking photos of the band, I could not take my eyes off this kid until I took a photo of him. Among the members, he was the only elementary kid I saw playing drums, and that was when I learned the band was a fusion of bands from elementary to college.   The ground was an open field, meaning it had no roof, and right after the band finished their part, the rain joined the event as if we had invited it. It was hard for us to take photos of the event given that we had to bring an umbrella while documenting. We could not put our cameras at risk, so we decided that one would bring the umbrella and the other would take the photos. My co-journalist agreed, so there we were—this pair of brilliant journalists lurking in front of the audience. It was a small umbrella, and we could hardly fit ourselves under it, but still, we secured the camera from getting wet.     The first performers were the girl group dancers in our school known as the Boylep Dancers, with their sublime moves and coherent dancing styles. They performed Kuyayang, a cultural and religious celebration held in our town every May to honor St. Vincent Ferrer. The practice revives the traditional Kuyayang courtship dance and is centered on themes of love and, of course, courtship. In May, we see a lot of street dance performances in our town, as well as float parades and ritual showdowns.   We then witnessed a presentation from my very own program, the Psychology Program, and it was a singing session by my teacher from first year. The woman in the photo is one of our faculty members and she is known for her wonderful singing voice. A teacher and a singer—a perfect combination. She sang the famous Cebuano folk song “Si Felimon” which, if you interpret the lyrics, talks about Filemon, “a fisherman” who braves the sea to catch a fish known in Cebu as “tambasakan” and sells it in the market. This song gives me nostalgia because we used to sing it during our catch at low tide ten summers ago. It reminded me of life as innocent and pure, when nothing stressed me out.          I thought the dancing presentations were finished but was excited to find out that another group of performers from the Accounting Department would dance another culturally popular dance—the Pintos. It is originally an annual fiesta in our town, but we also call the dancing performances Pintos, which translates to a corn-based delicacy famous in Cebu. The celebration introduces the town’s pride of making pintos—the humblest tamale made of ground corn, milk, butter, and our town’s best offering to the world. I enjoyed watching them, and as my interest peaked, I googled the dance and found out it was not actually called “Pintos dance” but Kuratsa Bogoanon (in English, glass dance) because the dancers have glasses on their heads that they need to balance while performing. And it is often performed in the Pintos Festival.     The last dance presentation I witnessed was from the high school dance troupe, and I enjoyed it behind the camera. The kids were very good in dancing, and you could see the difference in their energy from the other performers because their bodies moved with vibrance and enthusiasm.  I captured a shot of a kid as they posed at the end of their performance. They had a collective pose that was good to capture, but I focused on this kid, which still turned out to be a good shot for me.       These are some of the teachers watching the presentation, and you can see how extreme their laughter was upon witnessing traditional performances sprinkled with humor and creativity. The last three performances were song renditions from the Departments of Criminology, Education, and Computer Studies. I haven’t found out what their songs were all about, but as you can see in the photos, they sang them with all the passion and emotion they had for the songs. Listening to their voices gave birth to our culture, even if I did not know exactly what they were singing because I was too focused on the camera. But I felt that it had something to do with our rich heritage and tradition, giving me another sense of promise that we still carry our history in our hearts until now.  This was a once-in-a-lifetime photo of me, documenting a performer, and I want to share it with you. The rain had left by that time, so I was freely moving on the ground.     Some photos of teachers I captured are worth keeping, and some of them smiled at my camera while others were too busy in their own tiny worlds—but that was okay with me.   I also have these two photos of the kids beside the stage playing something I cannot identify. Despite being busy, I captured photos of them because they are very cute.   We ended the program with an instrumental exit/cultural drumbeat by the same band who started the program. It was about to rain again at that time, but I was thankful I didn’t have to risk the end of the documentation in the rain again. Everybody headed to the dinner venue, but my co-journalist and I went back to the office because we still had work to finish, and we always want to keep the school events up to date.   That is all about this blog, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you started from the tree planting blog and continued here with my cultural and traditional performances content, you would know how rich my school is in culture and dignity. Events like this remind me of my origin, and I enjoy the process of not only learning how to photograph but also knowing myself more than I expected. Thank you, dearest readers. And to end this, I will humbly ask you to share your traditions in the comments and let’s get to know our origins.