|
|
MassKara: A Thousand
Smiles Per Minute
By: Imogene S. Kana-an, Bacolod
City Tourism Officer
What started as "just a new activity" to spice up an otherwise se
routine civic-military parade, awarding ceremonies and a
literary-musical program for a city charter anniversary, Bacolod City's
MassKara Festival is now 3 years short of its third decade and has
already become of the entries of the Philippines to the global tourism
community.
The MassKara Festival of Bacolod City has
repeatedly represented the country in some major festivals in Asia,
notably in the Chinggay Festival in Singapore in 1998, the Lunar Festival of Hong Kong in 2001, in the International Tourism Festival of
Shanghai in 2004 and in the Midosuji Festival Parade of Osaka, Japan,
emerging as champion in the foreign category and first runner-up in the
local category - the first award to be given to a foreign participant in
the 10-year history of that Japanese festival.
Among the Philippine festivals, MassKara
is one that has also been to almost all major festivals in the Visayas
and Luzon. mostly on exhibition performances. During the 23rd Asian
Games held in Bacolod City in November 2005, the MassKara dance got the
most applause from the athletes, visiting dignitaries and the
international press covering the event.
The word MassKara has a double meaning. First, it is
a fusion of the English word "ma ss" or many and "kara",
the Spanish word for "face." MassKara then becomes a
"mass of faces," and these faces have to be smiling to project
Bacolod already known in the late 70's as the City of Smiles. MassKara
also is the dialect "maskara" for the English word mask, which
gives rise to the use of giant smiling masks in varied hues, colors and brilliance
which the gaily costumed dancers wear as they stomp, swing,
pulsate and gyrate in the major streets of the city every third weeded
nearest to the 19th of October, which is the City Charter Anniversary of
Bacolod.
The concept of combining the English word
"mass" and the Spanish word "kara" is a mind product
of the then Art Association of Bacolod president, the late Ely Santiago,
with the support of the late city councilor chairman of the
committee councilor on tourism, Romeo Geocadin and the then Negros
Occidental Department of Tourism head and now city mayor of Bacolod,
Atty. Evelio R. Leonardia, the concept has become a reality, with the
city having her first MassKara Festival in 1981.
After two or three years, the MassKara would have
died a natural death. But thanks to the tenacity of an Evelio
R.Leonardia to lobby at the city council and to initiate the movement
among tourism stakeholders, the festival moved on, year after year,
despite political economic, natural or man-made impediments. Now, after
28 years, it has not only attained its recognized festival stature- as a
national ANVIL awardee of the Philippine Public Relation Society - but
also as one major tourism identity for Bacolod City.
Through the years, MassKara has evolved and has
undergone a lot of changes from its attempt during its start in 1980 to
be historical by portraying vignettes of Philippine history, to the time
when it has become a symbol of survival, when the sugar industry as the
lifeblood of the Bacolenos continued to plummet down.
The long years of affluence and abundance
brought about by the sugar industry, with Bacolod as its center of trade
and commerce, has made the Bacoleno a lover of the good life. He knows
how to laugh heartily while his fine taste is seen in his cuisine, in
dressing, the sports he indulges in and the kind of car his bulging
pocket chooses. But beneath all these, he is also resilient because he
knows how to take things in stride in times of crisis. He can still
smile as sincerely as during the times of plenty. Decades after the
backlash of the sugar industry, Bacolod now no longer depends on this
cash crop and the Bacoleno still celebrates life along the mainstream of
contemporary events, industry and technology.
The MassKara Festival is here to stay, an icon
for Bacolod as the City of Smiles. Today, with the more than four
hundred fifty thousand Bacolenos giving their warmest smiles, MassKara
becomes a festival of a thousand smiles per minute, projecting the
Bacoleno's ability to smile, to be gregarious and charming and to shoe
his instinct to survive and triumph over trials and challenges. MassKara
is not history nor is it anchored on any historical, religious or
cultural event. Artistic, yes. MassKara is simply his story, that is the
Bacoleno as a human being whose innate capacity for goodness, happiness
and beauty is expressed in the sights, sounds, color and rhythm of a
people celebrating the might and bounty of a Great Creator.
|
|
Best
viewed 800x600 screen resolution
Site Developed by MITCS, Bacolod City Hall, 6100