The author, critic and academician, Dennis B. Gonzaga, wrote a series of 28 short features on various creative, cultural, and heritage elements around the city of Naga. These were featured on The 416 Art Space FB page and the Rigmat Arts and Culture Fest FB pages — about a theater collective, artists who immortalize the Naga River, a homegrown reggae act’s tribute to the Agta people, the city’s elegant monument to our national hero, the area’s decaying historical structures, a hip-hop act promoting the Bikol language, public market stalls that overflow with pre-loved books and magazines, and many more about this vibrant, colorful and happy place. This is Part 3 of a series of 4, featuring Days 15 to 21.
February 15: Mga Aninipot sa Tahaw kan Salog
The environmental play, Mga Aninipot sa Tahaw kan Salog (Fireflies on the River), was first staged in the municipality of Camaligan in 2017. It has been staged also in the iconic Emily Theater. It was written by renowned Bikolnon playwright Sari Saysay based on stories collected and curated from the accounts of elders who lived along the stretch of the Bikol and Naga Rivers and witnessed its transformation from being a lush ecosystem to one that has fallen to the effects of modernity and urbanization.
The play offers a rich narrative about the river which was once at the center of the region’s geopolitics, economics, and cultural evolution. Now, the river is all but forgotten, save for the occasional local syncretic festivities that were originally influenced by its prominence in the indigenous consciousness. The play reclaims unto our memories the flora and fauna that once thrived in the local waters. It utilizes the symbolism of the spectral and elemental creatures of folklore to remind us of our estrangement from nature. With the gradual disappearance of these apparitions, we also lose a portion of our place and space in the greater scheme of things.
Mga Aninipot sa Tahaw kan Salog is the tangible and powerful result when an advocacy becomes the anchor for artistry. It is an enduring cultural work built on the collaborative efforts of environmental advocates, various homegrown theater collectives, creatives crossing their artistic comfort zones, and local communities reclaiming their affinity with the natural world.
February 16: The Forgotten River
In Greek mythology, Lethe is the river of forgetting. Souls are required to drink from its waters so that they can let go of their past lives and be potentially reborn. The Naga River is a river at the edge of our collective social memory : It cuts right across the physical and cultural landscape, yet it is peripheral, ephemeral. We need not drink from its dirtied waters to forget. We are simply forgetting.
If not for the seasonal religious fluvial celebration that is equal parts faith and fanfare, we would have no enduring memory of the Naga River. The rich stories that the spirits of the river have bequeathed to us are fading fast in the dimming memories of our elders. The four bridges that arc over its serpentine flow conceal it from our immediate gaze. The rubbish that has accumulated on both its bed and surface has rendered it murky and gray, incapable of reflecting the light of day to beckon us. We move above and away from the river, instead of moving with its silent cadence.
Still, what little trace of memory of the river endures in the ruminations of the creatives. Our cultural workers persist to constantly remind us of the river and its vitalness and centrality to the life of the Nagueño. Our artists continue to immortalize the river in songs, poetry, sculpture, and drama.
In the end, the river will outlast us. It will be the one to retain the memories of those that came and went.
View photos of local visual artists at work on the river banks:
February 17: Ako Agta by MistaRoots
This simple song by homegrown reggae act, MistaRoots, is both a subtle critique of a cultural and colonial injustice, and a prayer that seeks to restore an identity slandered and lost.
The Agta has endured centuries of discrimination and demonization from both external and domestic ends. Other than the stigma attached to their complexion is the dismissal of what is perceived as their inability to integrate into modernity. They are associated with negative attributes, from being ignorant to being dishonest.
MistaRoots’ Ako Agta subverts this by presenting the Agta persona as one that has remained true to its heritage and its affinity with the straightforward and unassuming facets of the natural world. The simple honesty of the Agta is misunderstood as a lack of sophistication by the outsider. The Agta embraces a pure form of spirituality that is unnecessarily convoluted by moral pretensions and doctrinal complications. The world is cause and effect, actions and accountability. And the Agta submits to this natural cycle of the world with empathy.
MistaRoots celebrates the Agta as a return to form, as a reclamation of the roots of identity and consciousness that have been buried beneath sediments of colonial incertitude.
View the live performance of Ako Agta by MistaRoots on YouTube.
February 18: The Rizal Monument
For most Nagueños, the Plaza Rizal is the heart of the city. It is located between the streets of Elias Angeles and General Luna, the two busiest thoroughfares cutting through Naga City’s old business district. The Rizal Monument is ground zero of civic self-awareness. In a city that is heavily guided by the ecclesiastical compass, the Rizal Monument serves a true north for the more secular affairs of the urban lot.
The Rizal Monument in Naga City is one of the more elegant and visually striking variants of the National Hero’s commemorative dolmen. The symbolism of the four female figures standing vigilant around the monument and the angelic apparition in silent conversation with the hero offer a vast landscape of cultural, philosophical, and poetic discourses.
But the most important discourses are of the mundane kind. The monument is witness to the basic, unfiltered, and unassuming chatter of humanity. It offers spaces of relevance for both historians and hookers, demagogues and diplomats, lovers and loners, preachers and pickpockets, advocates and anarchists. In the vernacular, “makuapo ni Rizal” ( grandchildren of Rizal ), can mean a lot of things, from laudatorg to derogatory.
Saints and sinners — arbitrary designations of a parochial world — seek sanctuary and meaning at the foot of the monument. The figures of stone and steel do not command reverence from passers-by. At most, they are but convenient backdrops for the obligatory selfies and souvenir photos. At the very least, they are elements of an obstacle course charted in the mind of children. In some cases, their limbs and sculptural protrusions are pegs and hooks for the makeshift structures put up by both ambulant vendors and city event planners.
History can often be a fleeting interest. Monuments were designed to serve as reminders of watershed moments in the ongoing story of humankind. But even as we continue to put up these monoliths of memory, we are gradually growing distant from our past. Instead, we are much more invested in the conversations and the tales of the present, the immediate, the proximate. We let monuments bear the burden of remembering, so that we can focus on the “here and now.”
February 19: The old and lost structures of the City
Rumi, the renowned 13th-century Muslim poet, jurist, and ulama, opined that when there are ruins, there is hope for treasures. While the scholar’s thoughts focused on the intangible beauty and nobility of the world that is hidden beneath its superficial horrors and injustices, the same can also be applied to how we value the deeper and essential value of our physical world.
Structures are mostly valued for their utilitarian reason for existence. While they are built to endure the elements, there is the understanding that at some point, they will fall into disarray and obsolescence. But while old structures may lose their immediate usefulness, they become representations of humankind’s ongoing progress. They are landmarks in time and in space.
As the City marches forward in the name of economic growth, there is the struggle to hold on to its heritage and history. Most times, heritage becomes relevant only when it serves the engine of progress. We have lost sacred spaces, architectural marvels that were the product of the nuances or their period, and other civic abodes that were once an integral part of the personal growth of the people.
If not for the efforts of our artists, poets, and our patrons of heritage, the sense and memory of Naga City’s old but iconic structures will be forever lost. Some of these pieces of architectural history have been lost either to nature or to economic enterprise. Some, while retaining bits and pieces of their glory days, have been buried beneath oppressively lit business signages, cobwebs of cables, garish tarps advertising products and personalities, and dust and grime and unkempt urban foliage.
A few have been at least restored, mostly due to the persistent efforts of cultural advocates. And there are some that have been immortalized by artists either in photographs or paintings even as their physical counterparts are long gone.
February 20: Spin That Sheet and the local hip-hop scene
Spin That Sheet is a music collective that was established in 2011 by childhood friends and hiphop enthusiasts Leo Paulo Imperial and Julius Symon Jose “Barredz” Barreda. Completing the core of the initiative is Gyno Alvarez who brings his own brand of creative and production sensibilities.
Spin That Sheet was organized to carve a niche for hip-hop in the City’s contemporary music scene which has mostly been dominated by the genres of pop and rock. There were sporadic events that featured and showcased hip-hop acts. Through linkages with the burgeoning hip-hop and punk scene in Albay, Spin That Sheet evolved into a true-blue exponent of the genre in Naga City.
Since its inception, Spin That Sheet has provided a platform for hip-hop to bloom from a niche culture to one that shared creative space with other contemporary music forms. It has also contributed immensely to promoting the Bikol language. More hip-hop artists are incorporating the Bikol language, in all its variants, to their verses in order to fully capture homegrown themes and sensibilities. Through its staple events such as Demobeats and Rap Battles, the Spin That Sheet initiative is discovering up-and-coming talented MCs, beatmakers, and wordsmiths.
Check out Spin That Sheet on FB
February 21: Periodicals and pre-loved books, Naga City Public Market
As the popularity of digital media continues to increase, it is assumed that print media will become obsolete. While it is true that some publications — including big ones with daily global circulations — have closed shop, or have migrated a significant portion of their content online, the printed form still thrives. Book authors have also considered a significant shift to digital media due to perceived lower production costs and due to the primacy of online promotion and circulation. But recently, there is a resurgence of the printed media, driven by social and cultural factors such as nostalgia and the perception that paper offers greater credibility in a time of misinformation.
For book lovers and loyal readers of regional and national dailies, the Naga City Public Market is a default destination. At the second floor of the public market overlooking Igualdad / Jaime Hernandez Avenue are a row of stalls overflowing with pre-loved books and magazines. With the art of haggling involved, they can be a lot cheaper than secondhand books sold in the bigger malls. From relatively recent editions of nursing textbooks to obscure works of fiction, there is always a perfect book for anyone who has time and patience to go over uncatalogued stacks and piles. Interestingly, there are a lot of young people who are as interested in traditional printed matter as they are invested in digital content.
Located at the ground floor near the corner of Prieto St. and Gen. Luna St. is one of the oldest and yet thriving newspaper retailers in the City. Before the Internet became the one-stop shop for information and entertainment, students, professionals, and retirees would frequent this stall to browse the latest editions of weeklies and dailies, the latest issues of locally-published “komiks”, and the most recent fashion and lifestyle magazines. Niche publications were also available on consignment basis.
A quick stroll along these stalls reveal that there remains a healthy population of readers in Naga City. People from all walks of life still find great satisfaction in flipping through crisp pages, and sifting through bits and pieces of information that add flavor and sense to the usual and often predictable pace of urban life.
The header features Naga artist Boyet Abrenica’s distinctive socio-art paintings which he contributed to Susog Salog, the community arts and culture-based project supporting the Integrated Naga River Revitalization Project. Boyet’s depictions of the stagnant and dying Naga River have now become part of Susog Salog’s message and its urgent call for its revitalization.
About the author:
DENNIS B. GONZAGA: Writer, critic, and academician. Former Humanities faculty at Ateneo de Naga University. Curator of The 416 Art Space in Naga City. Advocate for local culture. AB Political Science graduate, Ateneo de Naga University; MA Asian Studies graduate , University of the Philippines.