My Wish for Local History, Culture, and Arts Field

My Wish for Local History, Culture, and Arts Field

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 or resident informant.

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 a drought. A lot are nowhere to be found. 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. If you want to find a comprehensive Pangasinan dictionary, it is yet to be built.

There 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.

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

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. 

If you want to read Pangasinan novels published in yesteryears, good luck if you can find an extant copy.

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.

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 imprtance 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? 

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. 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. 

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 it, it can be done.