MALAYBALAY CITY, Bukidnon, Philippines -My first Kaamulan Festival is memorable not only for its street dancing for a mardi gras-afflicted crowd, but also for the symphony of crickets (invisible to the eye that midday) and the dirt walks covered with blankets of golden flowers from lush sprays atop tall trees transformed from Garcia Marquez?s mythical place, Macondo, inspiring a bedtime story in my mind for my year-old grandson, Yuri Mikhail.

Staged, street dancing is a way of giving us the overall picture of a changing world where the executions of ethnic dances make us wonder over the extent of innovations from their indigenous forms by choreographers whose main aim is to serve pop culture without necessarily a deep understanding of the context or nuances of folk culture.

The term kaamulan, according to ethnomusicologist Joy Viernes Enriquez, is ?a getting together? for feasts, dances, games and sports. Tribal elders petition the gods through a ritual to bless a bountiful harvest, to seek their protection during the celebration at the same time, inviting them ?to come down??to be with the people for the Kaamulan, Enriquez said.

?Celebrating the Kaamulan preceded by a thanksgiving ritual is still within the context of the form and meaning of a festival,? Enriquez explained.

On that cold Saturday morning, I woke up at 2:30 to observe the Pamalas ritual by Lumad elderly leaders of Northern Mindanao?s seven tribes.

Our 36 students in Folklore, part of the AB English curriculum at the MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), along with Loreta Longos Fajardo?s, were in for a few surprises like meeting English-speaking Datus in full regalia, the offering of one-peso coins, a pig and chickens, and listening to prayers in the dialect, Binukid.

All this fulfilled high expectations after a brief tour and discussion about folklore?s relevance to our present lives the day before at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan?s Museo de Oro.

Our group raced to an empty Fortich Street after a glimpse of an equally quiet capitol grounds at 4 a.m. I spotted a makeshift stage that stood on one side of the street and in the middle of it, a table on wheels with a few neatly laid out paraphernalia for the ritual not unlike what I had observed when the Enriquezes and I were guests of Talaandig Datu Vic Saway in Lantapan, Bukidnon, years ago.

Back then, I remember anthropologist Datu Vic laughing and telling me that as soon as we arrived in Lantapan, Talaandig, children asked him if they should start dancing for the visitors.

The ritual at Fortich Street didn?t begin until after two hours since we arrived because a datu was still missing. Someone had to announce his ?representative? would do. Some of my students and I moved to a food house for a better vantage position. It didn?t help. I saw nothing because of the thick crowds so I contented myself with the sounds from the portable ritual table.

Bastardization

Suddenly, blaring rock music came on but it stopped just as suddenly and a male voice said ?sorry? over the public address system eliciting suppressed laughter from the crowd breaking the seriousness of the occasion.

Had the playwright and Ipag artistic director Steve Fernandez been around, he would have shaken his head at the incident. Fernandez has always opposed the exploitation of indigenous groups and the ?bastardization of folk cultures? where performance is aimed to impress judges to win the prize money, in this case P150,000 for the first prize.

?It is sad because tourists are supposed to experience culture as it is, not as some packaged good. These festivals are encouraging a monoculture dictated by commerce and are products of tourism and exacerbated by [Sen. Richard] Gordon?s WOW Philippines and similar initiatives. Anthropologists must explain this to the people,? Fernandez said.

The Pamalas ritual over, a program explaining the significance of the Kaamulan and the various performing groups in the street dancing was starting. Oblivious to this were several students, pen and notebooks in hand, who gathered around the datus for the ?question and answer? portion, a Tourism employee so put it.

Two booming sounds close to the makeshift stage signaled the start of the street dancing. All eyes focused on the stripes and crisscrossed blues, yellows and reds against the whites, blacks and deep blues of the dancers? costumes, intricate headdresses and colorful turbans.

I kept my eyes lowered against the glare of sunrise and observed the footwear of the participants instead and I realized that the dominant color of the attire matched the color of the slippers. Store owners must have laughed all the way to the bank from rubber slipper sales alone.

Variations of a recognizable pattern emerged in the drum beats from exaggerated arm movements reminiscent of traditional Korean drummers underscoring neat choreographies. Following the pattern for epics, the dancing had uniform quiet openings building up to an exciting finish in elaborate floats highlighting a legend or a municipality?s agricultural produce, handicrafts or natural resources.

The crowd especially delighted over the children participants prancing about and imitating forest animals. The children kept this for three to four hours for the win.

The elderly performers, some of them barefoot lumad natives, danced just as spiritedly in a case of one-upmanship not only for the prize, perhaps, but the pride of birthright because, bereft of a strong voice, they are given importance once a year as subjects for camera-toting tourists on this island more real than Macondo.