Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Marky Cielo is Igorot icon?BONTOC, Mountain Province -- An interesting mix of the rich Igorot culture and show business happened during the second Lang-ay festival that even upstaged the traditional politician speakers like Senator Edgardo Angara.
The two very diverse worlds met in Bontoc when first Igorot teen star Marky Cielo, this year's GMA 7 lone Starstruck survivor, came home and risked the ire of his home network when he and his family granted the overwhelming request of his province to grace the grand gathering of the different tribes of Mountain Province.
With their innate reserve by nature, the crowd did not become unruly as is usually the case in Metro Manila and the lowlands, but cheers and claps were noticeably louder and more people trooped to the gym when Cielo arrived at the venue compared with the arrival of Angara, the guest speaker.
A day before Cielo's arrival, a grand canao was held in his honor where pigs were butchered the traditional way steeped with rituals, in his mother's hometown of Sinto, Bauko where his grand parents - Marcos and Marcelina Cadaweng - reside.
The fierce tribal spirit that propelled a whole province to a text brigade to consciously and religiously text-vote daily to prove a point that Igorots are not "lesser beings with tails" - a racial slur in the past against Igorots - was again in evidence with the division of labor seen in preparing for his arrival in Barangay Sinto, Bauko.
Although busy preparing for their contribution to the festivities in Bontoc, the adults constructed an ingenious makeshift stage by putting side by side two vegetable trucks as base, covered with pine tree barks and wood to disguise it, and backdrop-painted a traditional Igorot life with the spectacular mountains in front of the Mount Data Hotel where his grand parents used to work and bring him to play basketball as a kid.
The young people were rehearsing their own cultural presentation for the welcome program while their parents were constructing the stage. The older folks, on the other hand, performed the rituals and prepared the food, making the preparation a whole community affair.
Neither a relative nor a close neighbor, Marjorie Sawidan said they were not paid for their effort.
"This is to show that we love Marky and he deserves this welcome," said Aladdin Olsim, 44, an architect and one of the artists.
Cielo's statement that he is proud of being an Igorot that earned him the admiration and support of the entire Mountain Province, that even the governor, Maximo Dalog, gave an inter-office memorandum for the province's officialdom to text-vote for Cielo everyday.
Along with the people of Mountain Province, Cielo, although admittedly only half Igorot as his father is from Iligan City, was treated with the rare opportunity of seeing the different tribes perform their traditional dances and chants in full regalia in one place.
From the war dances, reenactment of hunting scenes with live wild pigs, deer and monkey of Barlig, the fast, intricate footwork of Paracelis and Natonin mimicking eagles flying doing the "eagle dance" in their very vivid reds and blues intricately beaded headdresses and hand-woven costumes and blackened teeth, to old men bearing ancient Chinese jars known as "gusi" in the local dialect brimming with aged native wine in a parade in their g-strings.
The Sagada men chant the "wawe" or the beginning of Begnas, the biggest festival of all, and women in their snake bones headdresses and antique beads and bones, and men wearing animal tusks as neckpieces, dance and perform in the searing heat of asphalt and cement barefoot.
Taking pride for being one of the few unconquered areas in the country by the 300-year Spain dominion due to its mountainous terrain that is now ironically a major obstacle in development due to bad roads, Dalog said "we should take pride in the fact that we were not dominated by Spain or else, we would not have Lang-ay."
In his speech, Angara said although Mountain Province remains one of the poorest provinces in the country, the fierce spirit and pride of being Igorots remain and with Cielo's victory "as he has shown our young people that they will also be able to attain their dreams in life."
He said whether Cielo likes it or not, he is now an Igorot icon because he has shown that neither distance nor economic status matter in attaining dreams. (LI)
(April 12, 2006 issue) http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/bag/2006/04/12/feat/marky.cielo.is.igorot.icon..html
