For sure the Buglasan Festival, an annual fiesta being celebrated by the people of Negros Oriental, a Province which constitutes the largest land area of the Central Visayas province has become a veritable tool for the promotion of arts and culture not only for the over one million people of the Province, but for the entire country.
The event which is seen as the biggest tourism booster of a Province that occupies 5, 402.30 square kilometers of the southeast fraction of Negros Island is celebrated every 3rd Friday of October and this years festival kicked off on the 15th of October and stretched till the 24th of October at the Sidlakang Negros Village, Dumaguete City, headquarters of Negros Oriental.
With five main objectives as, the stimulation of tourism development, promotion of agricultural endeavors, preservation of cultural and arts heritage and what’s more, as a community-based promotion of culture and arts events as tourism assets, the Buglasan Fiesta has come to stay as a unifying force, which binds the entire Province.
Buglasan drummers
Buglasan, it’ll be noted derived its name from two origins, first, in the pre-colonial era, natives were said to have called the Island (Negros Oriental) Buglas, that is, after the legendry tall reeds that were the predominant vegetations in the Island. Second, there’s this other story that links it to buklas or to “wrench,” making reference to an earlier cataclysmic event that forcibly tore the Island from a bitter land mass.
Described as Negros Oriental movable province fiesta, the Buglasan Festival was first inaugurated in 1981, when a search was conducted to compose a contingent that would represent the Province in the Folk Arts Festival convened at the time by the then First Lady, Imelda R. Marcos.
It would be recalled that at the inaugural event, only five Local Government Units (LGUs) fielded contingents that were subsequently chosen to compose the Provincial delegation to the first Folk Arts Festival, which took place at the Folk Arts Theater and the five contingents were Inagta from Siaton, Polka Biana from Zamboanguita, Kasal Dauinanon from Dauin, the Sinulog from Tanjay and the last but not the least the Manjuyad.
Buglasan dancers
The first Festival which was organized by just five dedicated individuals then, namely Bobby Villasis, Bobby Café, Prodi Sirilan, Attorney Larot and another Attorney, Coleta Arana was held under the auspices of Foundation University, one of the premier Universities in the Province.
And it has since moved out of the premises of Foundation University and it was not until 2002 that the Provincial Board passed the Ordinance No. 15, which formerly established the Buglasan Festival as an annual Provincial Fiesta to be held every October. It had a serious input from the Balikatan sa Kaunlaran-NCRFW Negros Oriental Chapter and as it’s expected with a backup support coming from the Provincial Government.
Further to that, it was on October 14, 2005, three years after the Provincial Ordinance that the then President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared that the fiesta will be held on every 3rd Friday of October as the “Buglasan Day,” with a special public holiday for the whole of the Province.
Celebrated in Dumaguete City, ever since its inception, the 2010 Buglasan Festival which was officially declared open by the Provincial Governor, Augustine Perdices was described by the organizers as very unique. It has its theme as, “Sustaining Economic Growth Through Value-Driven Culture of Tourism,” and was nevertheless used to showcase the Province’s achievements in arts and culture and even tourism.
In fact, the ten-day fiesta witnessed over 20 performing arts competitions and booth’s exhibition of the finest tourism products of the Province’s 25 LGUs, and with thousands of Filipinos and other foreigners alike trooping out everyday to witness an event that has been sustained for close to 20 years now.
The Festival as it is being organized today consists of several components or segments which are, tourism and agric-fair theme booth presentations by all the LGUs; corporate participants and educational institutions; the selection of the Festival’s King and Queen. Others are performing arts; open air band concerts; games and sports and firework competitions of various sorts.
Buglasan dancers
These key component events that make the Fiesta thick not withstanding, the climax of the fiesta is the event which the organizers call the “Buglasan Festival of Festivals” and in this special event, all the finest performing contingents are gathered and celebrated.
Giving a brief account on how this year’s Festival was celebrated; one of the organizers who saw it all at the inception in 1981, Mr. Bobby Villasis, said that the 2010 fiesta is very unique in the sense that the event witnessed a zero crime rate, unlike the previous ones that recorded some pockets of criminal activities. He attributed this to the high security network put in place by the organizers.
According to him, about 30 to 50 security agents including the police, both the Provincial and the City Police and the Tanod – the Barangay (local) police, were on duty at any given day of the fiesta adding that two communication outfits, REACT and DOPE were also on ground to beef up the security at the arena.
Mr. Villasis who is also a staff of the Provincial Tourism Office (PTO) said that P8 million was budgeted for the event and that the budget went for various prizes to participants, logistics, honorarium for Judges of different events, security, entertainment etc. He also said that for cogent reasons the regular sponsors of the fiesta were not contacted, thereby making it inevitable for the Provincial Government to bankroll a lump some of the expenditure this year.
Although he’s hopeful that by the next year’s event adequate plans will be on ground to contact the regular sponsors like Coca-cola, Globe Communication, LBC, San Miguel Breweries etc. to put money on ground for the event.
He also noted that out of 25 local units that usually participate in the fiesta, only eleven of them participated fully this year, giving the reason as the nation’s 2010 general election which disrupted the planning, as new political office holders came on board.
(c) Dr. Success Kanayo Uchime is a Nigerian missionary-journalist based in Dumaguete City, Philippines. He’s into research and writing and for more information on him log on to his website: www.kmointer.webs.com or email: successkuchime@yahoo.co.uk
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