Envisioning a More Self-Affirming Culture

Envisioning a More Self-Affirming Culture

(Verbalizing my ardent wish for the local history, culture, and arts field. An end-year reflection)

If you search for traditional Pangasinan culture or cultural markers, will you find them among Pangasinenses today or at least in places where you'd expect them to be found, preserved, protected?

I answered my own thoughts like a fool with a long list of questions and answers.

First, if I or any other researcher and enthusiast wanted to learn about Pangasinan's wealth of folk songs apart from the two most well-known, where would he go? YouTube is a big help to some extent, but based on my research, there is at least one book (by Prof. Elsa Quinto et al.) that compiled dozens and dozens of notated songs with lyrics, thus saving these works from permanent erasure from collective memory. But my big problem is most of these songs, as recorded in various platforms, are nowhere to be found -- no recordings that can be played and heard and enjoyed again and again, no YouTube videos, and no resource persons to refer to, nor cultural practitioners nor random Pangasinense nor resident informant who has the knowledge.

I am glad to find YouTube videos of the aligando or galikin, the country's longest Christmas carol. But why has no one ever recorded the tawtawag songs for posterity? Where can we find the panagcorona song?

Next, if you want to learn about Pangasinan folk dances, it is the same story of hide-and-seek, if not loss. Based on my own efforts, I have learned of a manuscript by Prof. Januario Cuchapin notating a long list of dances, but since I am not a folk dance choreographer, I would prefer to see actual live performances or at least settle with video recordings of them, but they come like rain during drought. A lot are nowhere to be found, starting from the colorong, tagam, and the Spanish-inspired ones. And I can't find Jovita Sison-Friese's book either.

If you want to research on traditional Pangasinan words, there are luckily a number of ancient dictionaries that survived, thanks to Spanish missionary priests and later on, other, native lexicographers. Cosgaya's work is downloadable online, and Benton's dictionary is easily accessible as well. But these works are all slim pickings, though incalculably important in preserving so many words no longer used today. (If I reproduced Cosgaya, will it be unethical?) If you want to find a comprehensive Pangasinan dictionary, it is yet to be built, Santiago Villafania once said. Will the youth rise the occasion? I wonder.

There, too, is no published comprehensive dictionary yet of Pangasinan idioms, so I thought of making one, and I made sure it is available online -- for free, for all to see. It's the least I can do. A proper dictionary would be too gargantuan a task for an individual with a full-time job.

I am also trying to do the same thing for traditional riddles, sayings, and peculiar beliefs -- at least a free online presence, but I am just getting started with very few compared with the documented number of them.

Another project worth having is a manual of traditional Pangasinan games, which number around several dozens.

As for folktales, the pattern is clear by now. The Perla Nelmida collection is largely inaccessible. And so I dream of the day that they will be found intact, complete, and published widely for all to enjoy. Marina Sabangan's collection is nowhere to be found either. I believe the provincial government must act on the pressing need to hunt these down and make them widely available.

If you want to peruse the scripts for zarzuelas, I have no idea where to refer you to. According to one source, there are existing copies but all in crumbling state. So our best prospect maybe is to watch them molder, grow mildew, disintegrate, then vanish into thin air?

If you want to read Pangasinan novels published in yesteryears, good luck if you can find an extant copy. Ask about Maria Magsano, for instance, and you'll surely be met with, "Who is that?"

The rare books in Pangasinan language that I know of are all in delicate stage and crying out to be digitized for the greater public and next generations, but copyright laws make this quest impossible, or so it seems. I wish we could find a way -- the whole point is to make these treasures not rare.

Recently, I rediscovered a Pangasinense musical composer by the name of Anastacio Mamaril. I was struck that he was once called "the pride of Pangasinan." And yet Googling his name yielded a measly couple of decent-length articles. Fortunately, his music has survived in the Internet age, but who else has heard of it? I was also hard put at finding anything about him, his life, or his family. Apparently, his memory is not that important to Pangasinenses of today, just like the memory of the reported composer of "Malinac lay Labi" Julian Velasco and the importance of folk singers of yesteryears such as Perlita Radam, Juvy Resultay ("Matalag ya Agew"), Rosie Evangelista, Corazon Caldona, et al.

If I want to access Pangasinaniana (publications on Pangasinan history and culture) in one place, where should I go? I know provincial, municipal, and city libraries are a good start, but I would have to hop from one place to another. Maybe the Center for Pangasinan Studies would be the better choice? I am not sure about that.

Okay, let me downgrade my wish by limiting it to 'Bayambangiana.' Will I even find what I am looking for in the local public library and school libraries and museum aside from what I've seen? I don't think so. Local museums and libraries are a good start, but inadequate.

Still on the local scene, I have always wondered for the longest time: Why does Bayambang have no historical society when it is a highly historic town? Why does it have no historical markers for notable structures such as the two PSU Gabaldon buildings, two Bayambang Central School Gabaldon buildings, Bayambang National High School Main Building, and St. Vincent Ferrer parish church and convent?

Good thing Prof. Clarita Jimenez has plans of having a historical society and to work on those markers, but how old is she now? Someone younger should do the job.

I wish there were materials that detailed the time of Malong and Palaris here, and Gen. Antonio Luna too, and of course Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, and especially a memorial to those who suffered the horrors of the juez de cuchillo. And where are the WWII memoirs of residents when those would be singularly interesting, if not sensational, especially to generations that have never known war, so they won't be inclined to support any moves that repeat the woeful side of history?

In 2016, I discovered that our public library has a little collection of barangay histories, about a few dozen or so, so I attempted to expand the collection, to include all 77 barangays. What I found among them are not even proper history but tall tales, with some of them unverified and downright invented for compliance. There is little regard for stories of genesis at the barangay level.

I, therefore, wish for the creation of a Center for Pangasinan Culture of sorts, in my town or elsewhere, where all of the above are made possible. ...Where I can play all the folksongs I wanted to listen to and study, read all the folktales for entertainment and self-reflection, watch all the folk dances I wanted to enjoy watching, etc.

I envision it as a hub of sorts that would not just help preserve and promote Pangasinan history, culture, and traditional arts, but also serve as a fount of creativity and ingenuity for present-day creative types and engines of native-born commerce and industry.

I wish for products and brands and jobs created out of our own ideas, inspired by our own insights.

For starters, since I wonder why we Pangasinenses never frame our otherwise unique and beautiful sayings, I thought of making one or two. I envision a gift shop that will sell these together with trinkets like keychains and ref magnets that, say, depict buro, binasuan dance, corn, onion, rice crackers, gipang, other local kakanin, etc. in miniature. How about, say, OKrantz making 'pinakbet vegetable chips' as product?

I hope my wish is not too much to have. I know how much funding and gargantuan effort this will all entail, but it is not impossible either. With a lot of concerned people pitching in, it can be done.

(Artworks were AI-generated using design templates from displays at a house in Taal, Batangas)