Eid'l Fitr Festival 2013: understanding Filipino Muslim cultural heritage

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An awesome musical night with the Iskwelahang Pilipino Rondalla Ensemble of Boston

Note:  This story was published as East Coast FilAms rock the homeland with rondalla music in the 02-08 August 2013 of the weekly FilAm Star in the Bay Area, our first as the paper's Special Correspondent - Manila.

The Rondalla ensemble in their Filipiniana (top) and contemporary (bottom) costumes during their Biyaheng Diliman concert at the University of the Philippines..

There’s no doubt that the 25 young musicians comprising the Iskwelahang Pilipino (IP) Rondalla Ensemble of Boston dazzled local audiences across the Philippine archipelago during their tour from July 2 to 22. 

That this is a group of born-in-the-USA Filipinos playing the banduria, that indigenous musical instrument now seldom heard live in the country, and other rondalla instruments (guitar, octavina, laud, and bass guitar) with an American twang could have been very inspiring to the local rondalla ensembles with whom they exchanged musical experiences.  The twang was in their inclusion of Broadway and movie medleys in counterpoint to the traditional Filipino folk and contemporary popular music in their repertoire   What’s amazing is that they danced as they evoked both nostalgic and modern airs from their rondalla and guitar strings!

We had a chance to attend their performance during their Biyaheng Diliman at the University of the Philippines Abelardo Hall in a back-to-back concert with the UP Tugtugang Musika Asyatika (UP TUGMA), which specializes in Filipino ethnic music.  This was certainly a learning exposure of the FilAm musicians to different kulintangan rhythms from brass kulintangs, gongs and native drums that accompanied tribal dances of the Panay Bukidnons, the Maguindanaos and the Maranaos .

Chant, kulintangan rhythms and folk dances from the Muslim Philippine South rendered by the UP TUGMA.

They opened their Philippine tour at Resorts World Manila with musical artists Ryan Cayabyab, Rachel Alejandro, Jon Joven, Celeste Legaspi and Jim Paredes on the 4th of July in celebration of the Philippine-American Friendship Day.

The FilAms had their tour schedules filled with encounters with local rondalla and other cultural groups in San Pablo City, Central Luzon State University, and Bohol; concertizing in Cebu City, Sorsogon, Batangas City and UP Los Banos; attending music workshops and performing with the cultural groups in UP, PUP and PWU; and interactions with Aetas, and children with special needs.

We are a frequent visitor of the East Coast, with long stays in Salem, MA, which is a short drive away to the Boston, but, as we informed an IP coordinator, we have not been told about a rondalla group in the area.  And the IP Rondalla has been playing since 1986 when it was established in 1986 by Cristina Castro with New York-based guitarist and composer Michael Dadap as musical director during the first eight years.

 Dadap was succeeded by Christi-Anne Castro, who, like other past members, became teachers of younger generations of rondalla players.  The young musicians are trained during Sunday classes at the Iskwelahang Pilipino (http://www.ipbahay.org/rondalla.html) at Bedford Center in Bedford, MA.

The ensemble has toured throughout the East Coast, performing at colleges and folk festivals there.  This is their third Philippine tor, the first in 1990, and the second in 1998 during the Philippine Centennial.   They’ve played before presidents Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos.  They have done Europe in 1994 and 2004, and they’ve brought rondalla music as well to NATO in Brussels and the United Nations in New York. 

They have two CDs:  Crossing Over containing selections from their 1994 European tour, and the Pasko sa America comprising Filipino and Western Christmas favorites.

It warms the heart that Philippine culture in its varied forms is being nurtured in Pinoy communities throughout America, and in this instance, traditional rondalla music kept alive by FilAms born in the East Coast, US of A.  It’s an awesome achievement of the Iskwelahang Pilipino, a non-profit cultural organization run by volunteers since its founding in 1976, whose goal, among others, is “to develop in Filipino American children a strong ethnic positive ethnic identity and instill pride in [their cultural heritage.”  And they started the IP Rondalla as an “attempt to revive a musical genre that was [already] disappearing in the Philippines in the 1980s”.  Awesome, indeed!

'Balde': relic of a now-extinct industry of manufacturing indigo dye in our old hometown

A 'balde' in a village in San Narciso, Zambales.  This large cylindrical concrete vessel was used by the Ilocanos in the manufacture of indigo, which they used for dyeing clothes. The industry died when commercial dyes became available.  Photo by the author.

Part of our boyhood memories are two large baldes in the neighborhood located under the shade of fruit trees beside a water well.  They were demolished when we were in high school to give way to the construction of houses.

But several still exists. Two of them are easily accessible, the sites being along a barrio road.  The one in the photograph is overgrown with vines and hidden by clumps of tall shrubs.  Another is right beside a small house, and used for storing recyclable materials.

We've photographed them for the purpose of asking the assistance of the National Historical Institute in their conservation and preservation.  We've also asked the town's Sangguniang Bayan to protect these historical structures; and they thought it may be possible to transfer one of them to serve as center piece of the plaza park. We learned that there was a prospector who was interested to buy one but he balked at the difficulty of hauling this in one unbroken piece.

The balde was used in the manufacture of indigo before commercial dye killed the ancient art of natural dying. The Ilocano settlers brought the indigo industry to Zambales around 1837.  They also brought their weaving looms, and indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), commonly called ngila, was their source of natural dye for their woven cloths.  

Dionisio Villanueva (1916) left us the best description of the balde and the now-extinct indigo manufacturing industry.  When he wrote this, he was reviewing for the bar examination having just graduated from the college of law of the University of the Philippines.

The balde, he wrote, was "built of cement, the wall is about one and one-half to two feet thick, of cylindrical shape standing on one of its end, of a diameter of about four meters with the altitude of about four to five meters.  At about one yard from is wall is dug a well for the supply of water to soak the plant.  With it are strong bars to press in the plant and hold it under water."

Farmers planted the indigo around February after the rice harvest.  It took more than three months, and usually in the last days of May, when the plants would be about five feet tall and ready for cutting, to be  processed using the balde to produce the dye.  

According to Villanueva, soaking of the plant took overnight with water fetched from the nearby well.  After taking out the plants, lime would be added to precipitate the indigo. The water would be drained out through a hole on the side of the balde without disturbing the precipitate that had settled at the bottom.  Similarly, the solid indigo would be moved through another hole into a ditch nearby for the drying.

The dried indigo dye would be stored in big jars or tinajas.  It was expensive, and the indigo makers sold it for four pesos a can.

It was the women who used the dye for cotton cloths.  It could have been a very dark dye that Villanueva wrote about the product as being 'blackened cotton' with the 'color ... so beautiful and lasting.'

Philippine indigo was part of our commercial history, a commodity carried by the galleons to Europe and traded with China.  We've read accounts about it in shipping logs of American merchant ships from Manila to the Salem port in Massachusetts.  

Cheap synthetic indigo was first sold in Germany in 1897.  Thus, by the early 1900s, the natural indigo dye industry in the Philippines was already under threat.  In 1916, Villanueva was already saying that 'this industry will not be practiced in the near future as much as it is now' because of the expensive natural product.

But this natural dye has excellent colorfastness qualities.  Hence, in very recent times, there had been efforts to revive the Philippine indigo, the bluer than blue natural dye, under the lead of the Philippine Textile Research Institute (PTRI).  It's production is more ecologically friendly than that of synthetic dyes, according to PTRI.  

Even then, the balde will just remain a relic of a once 'colorful' era in a Zambales town's history.  

References:   

• Villanueva, Dionisio. (1916). The Manufacture of indigo (ngila) in Zambales province.  Microform BEY33/1 Sambali Ethnography Paper No, 21 3/4p-1. National Library of the Philippines

• University of New Brunswick Fredericton & St John. (2011, Nov 3).  The history of indigo. Retrieved from  http://www.unb.ca/fredericton/science/chem/outreach/documents/Indigo

• Flores, Malu A & Anonas Framela V. (2007).  PTRI's natural dyes add oomph to baro.  S&T Post. Phil. Textile Research Institute.  Retrieved from http://sntpost.stii.dost.gov.ph/NewPOST/AprJun2007/PTRI%20natural%20dyes.htm