READING is not necessarily a solitary affair as it can be a fun activity shared with somebody else. On April 23, book lovers of all ages can celebrate Dia del Libro or International Book Day at Makati’s the Ayala Triangle where hundreds of free books will be given to visitors, participating book shops will offer 20% off their wares, and roses will be distributed for every purchase.
Starting at 10 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. at the Ayala Triangle Park, around 4,000 titles -- ranging from children’s books to classic and contemporary titles -- will be offered for sale with a 20% discount. The participating book stores include National Bookstore, Fully Booked, Artbooks, and Powerbooks, while local publishers like Vibal, Visprint, Anvil, and Adarna, and some university-based publishers including the University of Sto. Tomas and Ateneo de Manila, will also take part.
As the book bazaar runs, other activites will be held including storytelling and puppet shows, a balagtasan (a traditional poetry joust), a jazz concert, and cocktails.
The event is led by the Instituto Cervantes, in partnership with the National Book Development Board (NBDB), Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, WTA Architecture and Design Studio, and the Intellectual Property Office in the Philippines, among others.
APRIL 23 IN LITERATURE April 23 is an important day in the world of literature.
In Spain where Dia del Libro started, the 23rd of April is St. George’s Day, a day when men and women exchange roses and books. April 23 is also the day two of the world’s greatest authors, Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, died (See stories on this page. -- Ed.). Thus, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) declared April 23 as “World Book and Copyright Day.”
In the Philippines, April is the birth month of the great classic Filipino poet, Francisco “Balagtas” Baltazar, the man behind the epic poem “Florante at Laura.” To honor him, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts declared April as National Literature Month.
POP-UP LIBRARY In the lineup of activities of Dia del Libro is the inauguration of a pop-up library called the Book Stop. A project of the WTA Architecture and Design Studio, the non-profit mobile library aims to bring the books directly to the readers and encourage the development of a community of book lovers. The long-term goal, according to one of Book Stop’s architect designers, Manolo Guanzon, is to eventually set up permanent Book Stops in open public spaces.
A three- by four-meter space, the Book Stop will be open at the Ayala Triangle for two weeks before moving to Intramuros, Manila, for another two weeks. The other places where the Book Stop will be set up are yet to be announced.
The Book Stop at the Ayala Triangle will have more than 500 titles gathered from private donations. Anyone can get one book by giving another book in exchange to replenish the Book Stop’s shelves. Mr. Guanzon said the majority of the titles it has are textbooks, but there are also books of fiction like the Percy Jackson series, Twilight, and some children’s books.
“We want to encourage a culture of reading, especially among the youth. In addition to it, we aim to redefine the meaning of architecture, which should be about maximizing open spaces like parks,” Mr. Guanzon told BusinessWorld.
Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, NBDB chairwoman, laments that the country does not have public libraries open for leisurely reading. Instead, “we only visit the library to research.”
She added: “[The event aims to provide] access to books... Why do we have to buy all the books we want to read?” she asked, when we could read them in the library -- that is if our barangay has a library.
REWRITING AND PRINTING HISTORY One of the highlights of Dia del Libro is the actual rewriting of the classic book Don Quixoteby Miguel de Cervantes. Insituto Cervantes is calling for 500 volunteers to take part in, well, this “quixotic” activity -- to write Mr. Cervantes’ novel by hand. A volunteer writer has two minutes to write a sentence from the novel. The final hand-written book will be deposited in the Library of Instituto Cervantes. Participating writers will get a rose.
From handwriting we move to printing quotations and excerpts. Book lovers and visitors can bring their own shirt -- or buy one from the NBDB booth -- and have a chosen lines printed on the shirt. Visitors can choose from excerpts of works by poets Marne Kilates and Joselito Delos Reyes, fictionists Noreen Capili and Jun Cruz Reyes, and graphic artists Mervin Malonzo and Manix Abrera. To complement the experience, visitors are treated to body art calligraphy through face paint and henna tattoo.
This April, TV personality Bianca Gonzalez unwittingly turned her 6-month-old daughter, Lucia, into a cause celebre after posting a picture of her baby on Instagram. The low-angle shot shows a cute little foot connected to a cute little leg several shades darker than lily white. Online trolls took to the comments, bashing Lucia for being morena and Ms. Gonzalez’s supporters for being deluded “fantards.”
The 33-year-old social media influencer, who has 5.17 million followers on Twitter and 1.5 million followers on Instagram, went into Mama-Bear mode and hit back against the negativity. “The past few days have been so eye-opening to find out that so many people are still bullied for being maitim (dark). It’s 2016, huy! Naniniwala ka pa rin ba na ‘mas maganda’ ang maputi kaysa sa maitim?” (Do you still believe that white is more beautiful than black?),” said Ms. Gonzalez in an April 26 post that has garnered 35,000 likes as of writing.
Yes, Ms. Gonzalez, it is 2016, but there are still people like Hannah Reyes, 23, who are willing to go through pain for beauty — tiis-ganda in colloquial parlance. Ms. Reyes, who works in the human resource department of a private company, pops a glutathione whitening pill in the morning and washes her face with papaya whitening soap. This ritual isn’t cheap: each bottle of glutathione pills, which she buys from Japan, costs P3,000 and lasts her a month. “I don’t mind spending a lot to get a fairer, smoother skin,” she said. “It boosts my confidence.
The hankering for lighter skin is so intense that it fuels an entire industry of whitening elixirs, soaps, pills, and treatments. According to Jia Salindong-Du, country leader for personal care at Procter & Gamble (P&G), the majority of P&G’s clients are women, particularly Millennials who have just entered the workforce. These young “first-jobbers,” said Ms. Salindong-Du, feel that fair skin increases their chances of success. Addressing the needs of this market, P&G recently launched Olay’s Skin Whitening Bar, which uses a rose extract from Egypt, said to whiten and even out skin tone. The whitening soap costs P46 per 90-gram bar. Other soaps that promise the same effect range in price from P34 to P350 a bar.
Beauty, it should be noted, is a booming business in the Philippines. A study released last year by Kantar Worldpanel Philippines showed that consumption of personal care items grew by 11% from June 2014 to 2015, outpacing other categories such as household products (7%), food (6%), and beverages (5%). “This growth is a clear manifestation of the Filipino shoppers’ high regard for hygiene and beauty products,” Lourdes Deocareza, Kantar Worldpanel Philippines’ new business development head, said in a statement.
‘TO BE DIVINE IS TO BE WHITE’ Understanding the desire to be white — and the trolls who dissed baby Lucia’s skin color — requires a look back at history. The wish to have a lighter complexion, after all, is nothing new — just read Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, written in 1887, which featured the character Doña Victorina, a social climber who powdered her face heavily in her attempt to look more Spanish.
“Spanish colonialism demarcated those with wealth, power, and authority (or success in broad terms) and those without the same power and authority,” said Dr. Ricardo Abad, chairperson of the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Sociology and Anthropology, in an e-mail interview.
“Wealth, power, and authority also imbued its possessors with cultural capital so the possession of social graces, elegance, literacy, and a cosmopolitan outlook, to name a few, rested on those in society’s upper echelons. It also happened, however, that those with power and authority were largely white-skinned and those without these qualities were largely dark-skinned. And since that social stratification lasted for centuries without much challenge, it was fairly easy to ingrain in people’s mind that skin color (and maybe texture as well) is associated with success, or being on top of the social heap.”
The Catholic religion that the Spanish brought to the country with them also ingrained upon us a penchant for white, which we equate with divinity, said Mr. Abad. “Jesus, his mother Mary, his stepfather Joseph, and all the saints and angels in heaven were white,” he pointed out.
“So added to the association between skin color and success, as pointed out earlier, comes this layer of divinity. To be wealthy and powerful is to be white. To be divine, or approximate standards of the divine, is to be white as well.
“And if you can’t be white, the next best thing is to associate with matters white. Wealth, power, and religion are mighty forces to beat, and if for these reasons alone, difficult to budge.”
And so, for much of Philippines modern history, the epitome of feminine beauty was the mestiza — with sharp features, prominent nose, and, most especially, pale skin — as seen by the great silver screen beauties of the 1950s like Gloria Romero and Susan Roces. Save for a blip in the 1970s and ’80s — when kayumanggi (brown) beauties like singer Nora Aunor, actress Tetchie Agbayani, and beauty queen Gloria Diaz came to the fore — paragons of Philippine beauty have been overwhelmingly fair-skinned.
“The American invasion only helped sustain the skin color-success notion,” said Ateneo’s Mr. Abad. “The Americans who came asserted white power and its racist policies at home and abroad only serve to demonstrate the might of the white. That the Americans made their presence in the Philippines actively felt after the 1946 Independence strengthens this attachment in the post-war period,” he said.
“The Americans reinforced these notions with images of popular culture, and in particular Hollywood culture. The American cinema invaded the Philippines (and the world) and with it another set of glamorous iconic figures, females and males, who became the new epitomes of success. The large majority of these Hollywood superstars were white and reinforced to the Filipinos the connection learned during Spanish times — that skin color and success were highly correlated. Add to this the perceived superiority of anything ‘Made in USA’ and again you have an attachment to whiteness that is both material and non-material.”
‘WHITE IS MIGHT’ Today, neighboring countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China, have become purveyors of the idea that “white is might.”
Consider the current crop of East Asian pop stars and actors who look like they’re made from delicate porcelain. Consider, too, the cosmetics brands that are making inroads in the Philippine market: Etude House, Tony Moly, Innisfree, Laneige, Holika Holika, Majolica Majorca, K-Pallete, Dolly Wink, Shiseido, and Shu Uemura, among many others. Many of their products, especially the BB and CC creams and emulsions, promise a whiter, smoother, and blemish-free face.
“All these countries have attracted us with their versions of success, popularity, fame, material strength. It again happens that for the most part, the images of success from these places also feature white faces. Korea has even gone the way of sculpting skin and face to make it appealing for show biz, and the standards of sculpting entail making the face white. The success of the Chinese in finance and business also adds to the power of whiteness. There is a gender bias here, too, as females have more pressure than males to be white — and I think this has to do with the association between females and purity, meaning that we are back to the religious roots of whiteness that I mentioned earlier,” Mr. Abad said.
With this kind of historical precedent behind “white is might,” the Ateneo professor doesn’t see a sudden shift in our mind-set happening. “Not in the near future. But there’s no stopping anyone from campaigning that ‘Dark is Beautiful.’ Groups have tried before to no avail. But the effort must go on,” he said.
#PROUDMORENA The effort starts with individual acceptance. There are Filipinas who, like Ms. Gonzalez, have learned to embrace, with love and pride, their year-round summer skin, and see no correlation between skin color and success.
“I have to be frank, I’ve had my fair share of insecurities during my adolescence. When you get teased and bullied a lot, who wouldn’t? Naïve and young, I thought I didn’t fit the beauty standards of Filipinos because I wasn’t ‘kutis mayaman’ (“rich skinned,” meaning “pale skinned”). I thought whitening lotions and soaps would save me from further ridicule. Spoiler alert: none of them worked,” said Erika Dizon, 25, a special features writer in BusinessWorld.
“Growing up morena (dark), I’ve probably experienced all sorts of rude and gratuitous jokes or comments about my skin tone. The most memorable one happened a few summers ago, when an older lady offered to sponsor glutathione sessions for me. She said. ‘Maganda ka,’ then murmured, ‘maitim ka lang.’” (You are pretty, it’s just that you are dark.) The road to acceptance was never easy, she said. “The only solution, it dawned on me, was to live with it. Living with it was easy. Loving it is a different narrative.”
Mary Inolino, 29, a freelance digital designer, has the same issues. Born with morena skin, she was called many names. But as she learned to accept her natural color, people started complimenting her look and aura. She currently has a foreign boyfriend and is happy with her life. “What does skin color have to do with success?” she said.
Like Mlles. Dizon and Inolino, Ms. Gonzalez had to endure being taunted long before Lucia was born: she was bullied and called “negra” (black) when she was 10 years old. “Huwag na huwag ma-pressure na magpaputi dahil hindi mo kailangan ’yan, maganda ang kulay mo (Do not give in to pressure to whiten because you do not need that, your color is beautiful). To parents, siblings, best friends, special someone of anyone being bullied for being dark, reassure them that their color is beautiful and they need not be fairer to be appreciated. Whether you’re born with dark or fair skin, embrace your color and be proud of it. Wala sa kulay ng balat ’yung halaga mo bilang tao; nasa pakikisama mo at kung paano mo ibinabahagi ’yung talents mo na mahalaga (Your worth as a human being is not dictated by the color of your skin; it is in your friendliness and how you use your talents that is important). Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts and comments, nakakatuwa na madaming#proudmorena!!!! (it makes me happy that there are so many #proudmorena),” her Instagram post read.
With hope, Lucia will grow up in a less white-obsessed world.
Ms. Dizon agreed and said, “For everyone out there, especially the young girls, don’t believe in everything you see or read on billboards and magazines. Brown is not ‘dull,’ neither is yellow, white, or black. Beauty knows no color so wear your skin confidently. Trust me.”
At the end of the day, to remain morena or to become a modern Snow White is an individual’s choice. What matters more is deeper than one’s skin color. In this day and age of social media, it is easy to make judgments based on superficial physical attributes. Perhaps, it’s a matter of minding our own business.
Book Food Holidays Published by Colors Integrated Travel Media, Inc.
HUNGRY is the heart that yearns for an adventure, and so is the stomach that craves authentic fare. With the promise of fulfilling the pangs of these hungers comes the book called Food Holidays, a 195-page culinary guide-cum-travelogue-cum-recipe book that highlights the Philippines’s best tourist destinations and its (not so) secret heirloom dishes. The Philippines — its sights and its food — is still begging to be discovered, both by local and foreign visitors. This is what the book is for.
Published by the Colors Integrated Travel Media, Inc., the book was two years in the making and focuses on provinces that are already tourism-ready, meaning they are easily accessible. The compilation of essays has side notes including fares, suggested itineraries, and route guidelines.
The book is mainly intended for hungry travelers who want to have a memorable culinary journey. At the book launch on April 4 in Kawit, Cavite, the book’s publisher, writer and travel agent Clang M. Garcia, said she is open to compiling more destinations once they are more accessible.
Priced at P500 and available in all leading bookstores, the book provides heirloom recipes paired with stories of the regions, presented in five sections. “Divine Dining” has two essays, one that looks at the “confluence of culinary offerings” that make “Manila a veritable food paradise,” and one that describes Philippine history through a 10-course degustacion meal. “Culinary Day Tours” describes areas which one can visit in a day from the capital city, including Bulacan’s Malolos, and Pampanga up north, and Cavite and Quezon’s Villa Escudero down south. “Overnight Food Trips” range from a tour of Laguna, Quezon and Batangas, to sanctuaries for the body and soul. “Three Delicious Days” tackles longer trips — tours of Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and Bukidnon in Mindanao; Negros, Guimaras and Iloilo, Siquijor, and Dumaguete in the Visayas; Ilocos Norte in Luzon, among many other stops. “The Philippine Cuisine in the Global Spotlight” is self-explanatory, focusing on restaurants and chefs bringing Pinoy cuisine abroad.
Ten writers contributed essays for the book: Marilen Fontanilla, Boboi Costas, Eugene Jamerlan, Ige Ramos, Cyrene Dela Rosa, Marianne Crandang, Anson Yu, Ruth Minerva Cruz, Roly Marcelino and Ivan Henares.
SPOTLIGHT: CAVITE The book’s launch was held in Cavite because the province played a vital role during the Galleon Trade (1565-1815) — it was where the galleons were built and repaired. According to Cavite-born food historian Ryan Sebastian, the trade route in the Philippines included the Ilocos, Bicol, Cebu, Manila and Cavite. Yet, the food culture of Cavite has remained relatively under-celebrated, unlike the provinces of Pampanga, Bicol, Cebu, Negros and Iloilo.
Cavite and the rest of the Calabarzon region (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) are now being billed as culinary destinations.
“Food, restaurants and historical cuisines in the region could well play an important role in linking and looping together the destinations and attractions in the region,” said Department of Tourism IV-A Director Rebecca Labit, who told BusinessWorld that the Calabarzon region recorded 2.1 million same-day tourist arrivals and 3 million overnight tourist arrivals in 2015 (mostly Japanese, Koreans, Americans and Indians).
To highlight the province’s best food, the Culinary Generals and the Razor Chefs of Cavite — an organization of Cavite-based chefs, food businessmen and members of the academe — presented a feast for the journalists who attended the launch. The fiesta-like celebration highlighted the area’s best local dishes.
Founded by chef Christopher Carangian in 2008, the organization “advocates the revival of the food culture” in the province. Cavite is a culinary hot spot, he said. Thanks to the Galleon Trade, the province had access to spices and other ingredients from Spain, Mexico and China, which it went on to incorporate in its dishes.
A favorite during Christmastime is tamales, a localized version of the Mexican dish. While the Mexican tamale is made of a starchy, usually corn-based dough which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf, the Philippine version is made from ground peanuts and rice flour wrapped in slightly toasted banana leaves. Both versions are filled — with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, or chilies for the Mexican tamale, and hard-boiled egg, slices of liempo (pork belly), or chicken breasts cookedadobo-style (stewed in vinegar), among other items, in the local version. It is sweet, salty and spicy all at the same time.
Another Cavite favorite is pancit pusit or pancit negra, a noodle dish made from sotanghon (vermicelli noodles) with squid ink, and garnished with siling labuyo (chili), kintsay (celery) and fried garlic. This noodle dish is a bit sweet and sour because of the squid ink.
Rivaling the Bicol Region’s Bicol Express, a dish of pork cooked in coconut milk and chilies, is Cavite’s own version called the ciento quince(115 in Spanish). Though not literally made with 115 pieces of sili(chili), Mr. Carangian said ciento quince is made with cocount milk, pork,langka (jackfruit) and an overdose of chili.
“It has more kick and spice than Bicol Express,” assured Mr. Carangian.
These are just some of the region’s best dishes you don’t want to miss when heading south or when grabbing a copy of the book.
CHOCOLATE IS GOOD. This is a universal truth. While it is good when eaten alone, chocolate may be even better when paired with something else: chocolate and fruits, chocolate and caramel, even chocolate and chilli flakes. Thanks to its versatility, chocolate has become a favored ingredient in food experimentation.
This was the challenge for chef Jordy Navarra of the newest casual restaurant in the city Toyo Eatery, which pays homage to Filipino food and flavors. He was asked to curate a menu that made chocolate the hero and he came up with choco veggie flan and wagyu beef with chocolate.
“It was challenging to come up with a [savory] dish with chocolate,” he told BusinessWorld on April 28, at the sidelines of the event that launched Magnum ice cream’s two newest flavors: caramel and raspberry. He said the local palate isn’t used to chocolate-infused dishes yet, but the international culinary scene is more experimental. “There’s a chocolate pasta available abroad,” he pointed out as an example.
Mr. Navarra made a name for himself when he handled the kitchen of Black Sheep Manila, which CNN dubbed as one of the world’s hottest restaurants in 2014. He was also the first Filipino chef to work with world renowned British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck kitchen, the three-Michelin starred restaurant in Britain.
The first dish on the table that day was the chocolate vegetable flan. Chef Navarra said before a hungry audience that he was hesitant to make the dish. “I played on the bitterness of the chocolate to bring out the sweetness of the vegetables,” he said.
While this writer is no food critic, I could taste his reluctance in the dish. The flan did not seem to go well with chocolate. But the rest of my tablemates said they liked it. Taste is personal, after all.
What came next was a hands down, crowd favorite: tender Wagyu beef cubes on a bed of squid-inked creamy mashed potato, drizzled with 85% dark chocolate syrup and chocolate nibbles.
“I used the texture of the mashed potatoes and the mouth-feel of the chocolate,” said the chef when explaining the dish.
The dish was good, but not good-looking, appearing unappetizing and bleak because of the color, but as the saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover. We sliced the tender wagyu beef cubes, dunked them in the mashed potatoes and chocolate syrup, and enjoyed ourselves.
Unfortunately, because the lunch was specially commissioned by Magnum, the dishes the media enjoyed were one-offs. While Mr. Navarra said he is open to creating chocolate-infused dishes in Toyo Eatery, he said he’s currently satisfied with using chocolate as a dessert. “I find it challenging,” he said when asked of what he thought of the special menu.
While the two dishes are not available in the market (yet), what is Magnum’s two newest flavors: Chocolate and caramel with sea salt swirl, and Chocolate and raspberry swirl. The two new flavors, dubbed as “Magnum Infinity,” are made from Belgian chocolate mixed with Tanzania cocoa nibs for texture and extra flavor.
According to senior brand manager Diane Tan, the newest ice cream treats are dipped in Belgian chocolate twice and showered with a hefty serving of Tanzanian nibs making them chocolatier, thicker, and more flavorful.
The two new limited edition flavors are available in leading supermarkets, but not at the Magnum pop-up DIY store at the Mall of Asia. -- Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman
It’s 10:30 in the evening, and the night is still young and yearning. It’s spoken poetry night at Le Café Curieux in Makati. The bar is packed, and people keep on coming and going and coming. Amid the crowd, an imposing looking woman greets everyone at the bar. Aslie Aslanian first gave spoken poetry acts a home back in 2000. The scene for poetry performance has grown since then, and is now spoken and heard in many bars and cafés in the city.
Just some of the performers during the Sanctum 2.0/The Spoken Word event at Cafe Curieux. -- Screenshots from eyesee saguisag film’s Sanctum 2.0/The Spoken Word, courtesy of Aslie Aslanian
“I will dream big and amazing and spectacular and awesome dreams.”
Jourdan Sebastian opened the night with “Dreamer’s Manifesto,” a piece he wrote in his twenties and performed back when he was one of the few spoken poetry artists in the Philippines. He started in 2000.
“I will face my fear. I will stop running away from it and turn around. And when I am face-to-face and eye-to-eye with it, I will grab the bull by its balls and make it scream surrender.”
“Nobody was really watching back then,” Mr. Sebastian told BusinessWorld. The majority of spoken word performances back then were held at the bars in Malate, Manila. “Then it gained traction in Intramuros, Manila,” he said.
This is where Ms. Aslanian comes into the picture. She, along with her partner, opened the bar called Sanctum Unmasked, tucked into the walls of Intramuros.
“It (the bar) institutionalized spoken word poetry and other open mic performances. We gave it a home. It’s a classic case of building community and a place of expression, which we lack in this country,” said Ms. Aslanian, cigarette in hand.
The bar opened in 2000 and closed in 2004. “How do you sustain a bar in Intramuros? It was time. We did what had to be done,” she said when asked why the café closed.
While she moved on to Manila’s clubbing scene, Mr. Sebastian, a “Sanctum baby,” continued his performances in small cafés like I Love You Store and Open Spoken.
He started doing spoken poetry when he was 23 years old. His contemporaries include artists Myke Solomon, the musical director of PETA; and Teddy Corpuz, the vocalist of Rocksteady band and an ABS-CBN TV personality.
The “Dreamer’s Manifesto” that he performed with such vigor on the night BusinessWorld watched, he had launched in Sanctum Unmasked. He said he has performed it more than 12,000 hours combined since then. Audiences both here and abroad have heard it.
“We were the old generation. The ‘OGs.’ We were hungry young poets back then,” he said, smiling.
The saga of spoken poetry is like a lilt of a poet in action: up, down, and with pregnant pauses. Their attempt to continue the spoken word after Sanctum Unmasked was not linear and continuous, because “we were doing other things.”
Aside from being a poet, Mr. Sebastian is a filmmaker, director, artist, and social advocate.
While the OG’s were busy, some younger poets took up the art of spoken word poetry and started to create their own personalities and voices. One of the most popular contemporary groups these days is Words Anonymous (WA), of which artist Juan Miguel Severo is a member.
One of Mr. Severo’s performances, “Ang Huling Tula na Isusulat ko Para Sa’yo” garnered more than one million hits when it was uploaded on YouTube in 2015. Now his spoken poetry has been compiled in a book called Habang Wala Pa Sila.
“Gumawa tayo ng kasunduan, patatawarin kita pero patatawarin mo rin ako para sa wakas ay matapos ko na itong tula na masyado ng matagal na nakatira dito
At patawad kung magiging masyadong mahaba at marami masyadong bulanas pero pangako huli na ‘to, huli na ‘to, huli na ‘to…” — “Ang Huling Tula Na Isusulat Ko Sa 'yo”
(Let us make an agreement, I will forgive you but you will also forgive me so that in the end I will be able finish this poem that has lived here too long
And forgive me if it becomes too long and has far too many twists and turns but I promise this is the last, this is the last, this is the last…) — “Ang Huling Tula Na Isusulat Ko Sa' yo”
Sev’s Café, where the viral video was shot, closed down last year. But WA, born in 2014 with only five members, has found other places to perform — in schools, cafés, and collectives, and at private occasions like the second anniversary of the PETA Theater Center. Now it has 15 artists, ages 20 to 30. The goal is to continue and grow live art expressions “one poem at a time,” said one of its members, Kat Roxas.
“We don’t have a universal organization [among spoken word artists in the Philippines], but we do enjoy working with the other poetry collectives in the country, and we support each other. I think we’re all just pushing each other to get spoken word to where we want it to be, and we work together to achieve that,” said Ms. Roxas.
BEYOND HUGOT There are many spoken word groups and artists in the country besides WA and Sanctum. One of them is celebrated performance poet and social advocate Kooky Tuason, who was one of the performers that night at Le Café Curieux.
She started working with spoken poetry in 2005 when she produced an album called Romancing Venus Vol. 1. This was followed by Romancing Venus Vol. 2 in 2006, and Bigkas Pilipinas in 2007.
Bigkas Pilipinas went on to become the first spoken-word themed radio show in the Philippines, and ran until 2009. Currently, her spoken word poetry show, For Word and By Word, on view on her Web sitethinkingmansclassroom.com, is in its fourth season.
“Spoken poetry is a tool for healing. I live and breathe words — words that are positive. Spoken word has been my advocacy because I believe in the power of words. I am not Christian or a Catholic but I believe in God… We are created by the Creator and we should be creating also because we’re created in the likeness of Him. And it’s a matter of creating words, the right kind of words. Instead of curse why not bless?,” she told BusinessWorld.
She said she likes to empower and chooses not to dwell on the past with sappy, sadistic, and sad hugot lines (slang for deeply drawn sentimental emotions, usually about love). She prefers to bask in the positivity of love and life.
“Instead of talking of pain about love, I’d rather talk about the positive side of it. I thrive on being in love, being in that moment. I see love around me. I’d rather not dwell on what was, because to me every single day you have is [an opportunity to make a] sound decision to make your life happen. You have to find ways to be in love.
“I know what it’s like to be there. And it’s not a good feeling. In the end, I am the only one suffering because those are my words. The more you allow yourself to embrace the thought of pain and swim in it, the more you feel stuck. You want to be happy. You want to talk about love. We are the ones who fail love. Kaya nasisira ang image ng love (The reason why love’s image is tarnished) is because we do not understand what love is. Unlearn what we have learned about love and use it as a tool for healing.”
While there are many spoken word groups and artists in the country that speak of hugot — because many Millennials can relate to it — members of WA are quick to say their poetry goes beyond that. This perception that it is all hugot is something they want to change.
“As writers, our topics, as well as our writing styles, vary. We write about love, but we also have pieces on mental health, country, feminism, environmentalism, the LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual), bullying, sex. A lot of people say that the pieces are about hugot, automatically assuming that hugottranslates to love. We’re trying to change that connotation. We write about the things we’re passionate about, about the things we love, so in a sense, we do write about love — but it’s not confined to a romantic love,” said Ms. Roxas.
NOISE Back at Le Café Curieux, Ms. Aslanian is doing the thing that she loves: connecting people. “There is so much talent in this country, it’s mind-blowing. Who is going to connect them?”
Sometimes though she would cut into the performances of her friend-artists to tell the crowd: “I’m getting mad. Listen to the performance folks!”
She told me in private amid the buzz of the bar: “I’ve heckled people. I’ve called them off the stage.”
“I am a natural editor,” she said.
A few months ago, Ms. Aslanian, reenergized and missing the vibe of live performance nights, called Mr. Sebastian to continue their calling.
Sanctum 2.0, which has a home at Le Café Curieux, has been reborn.
“We (the OGs) never really jumped in [today’s spoken word scene]. Then recently Aslie called us together, eh nasarapan ulit kami (we felt good). I still haven’t met that guy (Severo) though. Now we’re back, (and I’m) incorporating it as a platform for my advocacies,” said Mr. Sebastian.
If back in the day, Mr. Sebastian and the OGs performed poetry about teenage angst and rants and identity crises, their acts today have become avenues for social connection. His advocacy centers on three Cs: climate change, conflict, and corruption, which are reflected in his current pieces.
Some performances that night at the café were personal but relatable, with topics including body issues and self-esteem. There were also rap songs and comedic pieces tackling social, political, and economic issues.
For Mr. Sebastian and the rest of the spoken word artists, the importance of spoken poetry is its power to transcend, to go beyond rhyme in search of reason.
“Yung tibok ko may nakakatibok,” said Mr. Sebastian.
He could only wish that people would sometimes “shut the fuck up” when there is a live performance on stage. It’s proper decorum he wants to establish so people can connect eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart.
But the noise doesn’t matter to Ms. Tuason, “because it’s all about the calling — it’s a personal message. Alam mo ’yung feeling na (you know the feeling that) ‘it hit me.’ If the message is for you, then it would reach you. I don’t mind if people do not listen to me because siguro (it may be that) the message is not for you or it’s not your time yet [to hear it].”
But then again, not all open mic gigs are noisy. It depends on the crowd and the place.
“It’s less of commanding attention and more of communicating with the audience, not just through words but through the general vibe in the event. We’ve been blessed with receptive crowds for the most part, but we’ve had our share of uninterested or distracting audiences. In cases like that, we just do our best to establish a connection with at least one person in the crowd and we perform as best as we can,” said Ms. Roxas.
It was past midnight but the energy was nowhere near dying down. Spoken word poetry and the Philippines’ art underground couldn’t be livelier.
“At this point, let spoken word organizations be decentralized kasi iba-iba din ang style and message (because the styles and messages are different),” said Mr. Sebastian. “[But] with the internet and social media as our playground [for sharing the art, I think] sasabog ang spoken word (spoken word will burst out).”
