Night Of The Fireflies

Bimbo Cabidog

I once lived in a neighborhood rimmed by a patch of undergrowth. Our rented house was about two hundred meters away from the marketplace and almost the same distance from the town square where the municipal hall stood, on the opposite side. Although we lived already in an urban area, the ticket nearby afforded the experience of a rural scene.

The houses in the neighborhood were still few with wide open spaces between. Denser undergrowth hemmed the bank of the river a few hundred paces away where our street ended. On days when there were no classes (I was then in grade school yet) and the vibrant sun was up at eight or nine in the morning, I would wander into the surrounding nature bringing top-of-the-line bird hunting equipment, a slingshot.

The spot hummed with life. Chirping and buzzing were all over. I instinctively turned on my body radar for bird detection. The beautifully feathered kingfishers flitted in the thick canopy of leaves atop the tall trees. I always had bad luck with birds. So I content with spending the rest of the hunt catching dragon flies with a midrib from palm leaves tipped by the sap of a jackfruit tree.

I could spend the whole day lost in the mini jungle. But my father’s voice would ring near noon. And to signal the time to terminate the useless fling, he held the belt around his waist. I still couldn’t figure why we had to eat at twelve. But lunch was mandatory. Past it I was obligated to lay down for siesta.

In the noonday nap, I briefly dreamed of losing myself amid the forest of shrubs and bushes blanketed by an iridescent sea of yellow button-like flowers that broke into a dense swirl of malobago trees. Then I met the spirits inviting me to live in their dazzling kingdom.

Already awake at midafternoon, I would no longer go back to the nature trip, but waited for another thrilling sight to end the day. As the huge disk of blinding sun descended into the mountains, the bats flapped out of their day’s roost. The formations of the nocturnal creatures in flight above darkened the land with the advanced shadows of the coming night.

The night had a main attraction. I watched by the window the palisade of malobago growths disappear into the blackness and reemerge in evolving shapes mystically lit by an ethereal radiance. The radiance came from myriads of pin lights dancing in the ink black hollow of evening.

The bright scene at the Las Vegas strip that I would frequently see in movies in later years paled compared to the splendor of that nightly show. I had seen massive Christmas lights bathed houses and flooded streets, like the popular attraction at a posh subdivision in Mandaluyong during the yuletide season. I wouldn’t trade with it the mystery that I beheld every night in that time of my life.

Such was the nightly appearance of the fireflies transforming the ticket of malobago trees in our town into a theater. How I’ve yearned to embrace it. But the mesmerizing beauty was not for anyone to possess. It could not be wrapped in all its wholeness.

Childhood could be a dream and waking growing up. I had been a poor would-be marksman trying my luck with a crude slingshot. But somehow the hunt was not that much important. It was a child’s enchantment with nature, flowing with innocent belief. Adulthood overtook and snatched the gem away.

Electricity came to town when I was in second year high school. At that stage, I was already being taught to be a proud young man and have ambitions. Decades later, the environs I used to roam have vanished in the invasion of houses. I entirely lost the nights of the fireflies and a childhood forever. 

The Coming Of The Boat People, A Malayan Odyssey

Bimbo Cabidog 

What may be considered as the first Pinoy epic was that of the Bornean boat people who came to the country in a long distant past. Escaping from the tyranny of a certain Datu Makatunaw, they sailed on boats called a balangay and travelled at sea for several weeks until they reached the island of Panay. The ten datus with their families and followers settled here, 300 years before the Spanish and Portuguese explorers set foot on the archipelago on March 16, 1521.

A datu was the Malayo-Polynesian title of a chieftain. Ten of them would be said to be the fathers of the archipelago before the Spanish colonial times. Datu Puti then was neither a Caucasian nor a commercial vinegar. He was the leader of the expedition. He was with his wife, Piangpangan.

The others were Datu Sumakwel (and wife, Kapinangan), Datu Bangkaya (and wife, Katurong), Datu Paiborong (and wife, Pabilaan), Datu Paduhinogan (and wife, Tibongsapay), Datu Dumangsol, Datu Libay, Datu Dumangsil, Datu Domalogdog, and Datu Balensuela. All were of fair complexion.

Legend has it that upon arrival the foreigners encountered the short, black and kinky-haired natives who inhabited the island, the Aeta. They were terrified of the arrivals. Datu Puti convinced them not to fear. He told the native chief Marikudo that his group came in peace. The two parties then struck a trade deal later.

Marikudo held a feast for the datus. During the revelry the Borneans negotiated for the buying of Panay with a golden salakot. Since the land was immense for their own settlement, the Aetas consented and went to the forest in the uplands and mountains. The Datus partitioned the purchased estate among themselves, namely Aklan, Irong Irong (Ilo-Ilo) and Hamtik (Antique).

The epic is accounted to have given birth to the Filipino people and culture. Some say the story was just legend, and is not backed by concrete historical evidence. But it stuck, and much of it anyway resonates up to present day historical conversation. 

The balangay patterned the village communities that would emerge in the country throughout the past. The boat community originated the DNA for the basic political-administrative subdivisions that the country has today. They are called barangay, a noun coined from the word balangay.

The authenticity of the epic may be contested. But the oral historical account has become part and parcel of the Pinoy culture down the centuries. It would also be an indelible mark of the Ilonggo and Panay people's identity.

And by the way, the head of the basic unit of governance that compose the Filipino nation state now is called a barangay captain. Isn’t the title after the fact that the head of the community in that remote past from which the barangay of today originated was also a captain of the boat called balangay?

The Song Bayan Ko (My Country)

By ILIAD

Of course you know this song. But if you don't, OMG you should. What about it?

Bayan Ko has become a widely popular patriotic song right after the People Power Revolution that toppled the 14-year Marcos Dictatorship in February, 1986. It would be sung by the newly politicized citizenry and post-Edsa activist circles second to Lupang Hinirang, the national anthem.  

But before the triumph of the anti-dictatorship struggle, Bayan Ko would in itself be the story of the suppression of the freedom and democratic rights of the people when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and placed the entire country under authoritarian rule. It was taboo. Singing it in the open invited incarceration by the military, for being seditious and promoting rebellion.

Like the activists and leftist "subversives" that fought with even greater zeal during the dark years of the dictatorship, the music also went underground. It would be sung in secret meetings inside safe houses, in rites of compacts under the thick canopy of trees, the far-off hills, and houses of remote barrios beyond the reach of military operations. The stirring melody would also be hummed by detainees in the inner chambers of the enemy camp insulated by prison walls.

Yet like the freedom fighters and rural-urban warriors that never gave up even under extreme hardships in the constant shadow of death, Bayan Ko was imbued by its own lyrics with the spirit of indomitable courage. This was the sort of courage that underpinned the unwavering commitment to fight for the country’s liberation. It broke the barriers of fear to sing, to articulate, and to express the deep longing for release from Marcos’s imposed garrison state. As a line from the song says, “Ibon mang may layang lumipad, kulungin mo at pumipiglas.”

On February 21-25, 1986 around two million people massed up at the twelve-lane highway named Edsa to mount a political upheaval that irreversibly severed the fearsome military machine of Marcos, grounded his absolute power to a halt, and after four days of stalemate finally sent him fleeing from Malacanang Palace out of the country to a sojourn in the American state of Hawaii. Bayan Ko was now free. Its courageous hymn reverberated throughout the archipelago.

The February 1986 uprising was the historical watershed that separated how Bayan Ko would be sung then, prior to the ouster of Marcos’s fascist rule, and now in the climate of openness and free expression. Then, it was sung as a symbol of protest and defiance. Now, it is sung as a celebration of the people’s heroism,  and as a reaffirmation of the values of liberty and basic rights that the country can just no longer take for granted, given that harrowing ordeal of state terror of a repression.

As throwback further to the past, Bayan Ko was originally written in Spanish lyrics for the Severino Reyes zarzuela, Walang Sugat (no wound). It was attributed to General José Alejandrino, a propagandist. The melody and words were constructed to express opposition to the American Occupation that was going on at that time.

The well-known Tagalog wording now is by José Corazón de Jesús. The music was composed by Constancio de Guzmán.

Here is the song:

Bayan Ko

Ang bayan kong Pilipinas,

Lupain ng ginto't bulaklak,

Pag-ibig nasa kanyáng palad,

Nag-alay ng ganda't dilág.

At sa kanyáng yumi at ganda,

Dayuhan ay nahalina;

Bayan ko, binihag ka,

Nasadlak sa dusa.

Ibon mang may layang lumipad,

Kulungin mo at umiiyak,

Bayan pa kayáng sakdál dilág,

Ang 'dì magnasang makaalpás?

Pilipinas kong minumutyâ,

Pugad ng luhà ko't dalita;

Aking adhika,

Makita kang sakdál laya!

Post Script: Rock artist Freddie Aguilar popularized the taboo (because it was “subversive”) song during the heyday of the anti-dictatorship protest in 1986, which also saw the waning moment of Marcos’s rule. How ironic that Aguilar would now sing it at the inauguration of the republic’s 16^th president Rodrigo Duterte, in front of the dictator’s son and namesake who wants to revise history and vindicate his father by, among others, getting him buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, which the new president has agreed to.