Echoes From
BY JOHNNY DAYANG
Kalibo Ati-Atihan and the Pinoy psyche
Nothing traps memory faster than the profusion of color, sound, and movement. This is a basic rule in retention. The more senses of the body gets exposed to stimuli, the better is one’s memory recall of an event or phenomenon.
Which is perhaps why fiestas and festivals from Aparri to Jolo are always celebrated with sights and sounds of pageantry and mirth.
On the third week of every January, the capital town of Kalibo in Aklan detonates a centuries-old festival. Described by connoisseurs of street revelry as the “wildest” among Philippine fiestas, the Ati-Atihan suffuses Kalibo town with the pounding of bass drums and pulsating music, backed-up by endless dancing, shrieks, and shouts of celebrants wearing the brightest, most outlandish costumes – their faces, arms, and legs blackened by soot.
The weeklong Ati-Atihan is actually a re-enactment of the 13th century sale of the land in Panay by the Ati chieftain Marikudo to Datu Puti so that the visiting Bornean datu can have a place to settle. Spanish missionaries gradually added a Christian meaning by infusing the festival with the honouring of the Santo Nino.
But unlike other fiestas steeped in the Catholic faith and tradition, Kalibo Ati-Atihan is a centuries-old ritual of our people’s unabashed pride in our nation’s heritage. All indigenous festivals and rituals have this untained quality. They are able to dig deep into the Filipino psyche and fish out the part of us that centuries of colonization have tried to bury and obliterate from our consciousness.
More than the thunderous sounds and sighting lights of revelry and merry-making, Kalibo Ati-Atihan connects us with our roots. It is a virtual, cultural blood compact that helps bind Filipinos of today with their past in order to reach out and claim, with as much excitement and celebration, our glorious future as a people and as a nation.
Surprisingly, of all the government agencies we have today, it is perhaps the Department of Tourism that best understands this politico-cultural configuration; National development can only be achieved by a nation with citizens proud of their citizenship and their heritage. And it is in festivals like Kalibo Ati-Atihan that national development takes root in almost month-long of merry-making and revelry.
Viva kay Senor Sto. Nino! Hala Bira !
BY JOHNNY DAYANG
Kalibo Ati-Atihan and the Pinoy psyche
Nothing traps memory faster than the profusion of color, sound, and movement. This is a basic rule in retention. The more senses of the body gets exposed to stimuli, the better is one’s memory recall of an event or phenomenon.
Which is perhaps why fiestas and festivals from Aparri to Jolo are always celebrated with sights and sounds of pageantry and mirth.
On the third week of every January, the capital town of Kalibo in Aklan detonates a centuries-old festival. Described by connoisseurs of street revelry as the “wildest” among Philippine fiestas, the Ati-Atihan suffuses Kalibo town with the pounding of bass drums and pulsating music, backed-up by endless dancing, shrieks, and shouts of celebrants wearing the brightest, most outlandish costumes – their faces, arms, and legs blackened by soot.
The weeklong Ati-Atihan is actually a re-enactment of the 13th century sale of the land in Panay by the Ati chieftain Marikudo to Datu Puti so that the visiting Bornean datu can have a place to settle. Spanish missionaries gradually added a Christian meaning by infusing the festival with the honouring of the Santo Nino.
But unlike other fiestas steeped in the Catholic faith and tradition, Kalibo Ati-Atihan is a centuries-old ritual of our people’s unabashed pride in our nation’s heritage. All indigenous festivals and rituals have this untained quality. They are able to dig deep into the Filipino psyche and fish out the part of us that centuries of colonization have tried to bury and obliterate from our consciousness.
More than the thunderous sounds and sighting lights of revelry and merry-making, Kalibo Ati-Atihan connects us with our roots. It is a virtual, cultural blood compact that helps bind Filipinos of today with their past in order to reach out and claim, with as much excitement and celebration, our glorious future as a people and as a nation.
Surprisingly, of all the government agencies we have today, it is perhaps the Department of Tourism that best understands this politico-cultural configuration; National development can only be achieved by a nation with citizens proud of their citizenship and their heritage. And it is in festivals like Kalibo Ati-Atihan that national development takes root in almost month-long of merry-making and revelry.
Viva kay Senor Sto. Nino! Hala Bira !
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