Joel Jacinto Presentation

Forum sponsored by Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) and California Arts Council - Sacramento, June 7, 2001

Joel Jacinto

As Cultural Program Director of Kayamanan Ng Lahi Philippine Folk Arts, Joel Jacinto has conducted over 17 years of research and study on cultural anthropology and Philippine dance ethnology. His commitment began while a student at UCLA and eventually led him to study with noted Philippine dance masters in Hawaii and the Philippines. Currently he is a candidate for a Master's of Arts degree in Applied Anthropology. Joel has worked with many organizations in the Pilipino American community as well as numerous mainstream arts organizations and institutions California and the United States. In 1994, Joel was a lecturer for the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. In 1998l, he received a Humanities Fellowship grant award from the Asian Cultural Council to present a paper regarding the status of Philippine dance in America at the 1998 Philippine International Dance Festival and Conference and to establish collaborative partnerships with Philippine-based cultural groups and institutions. He is currently working a project funded by the California Arts Council Multi-Cultural Entry Grant Program to facilitate the development of a statewide Philippine Dance Resource Network for community and school-based Philippine dance practitioners.

Presentation to the Gathering

Good Morning everybody. My name is Joel and thanks, Amy. There's a lot of energy, wonderful energy in this room. Let me just get a quick connection. How many of you are involved in passing on traditions, cultural traditions, to younger people? Please raise you hands. All right, then, we've got a connection here.

Let me tell you a little bit about the organization that I work with which is Kayamanan Ng Lahi. It means "treasures of our people." We are a folk arts organization based on the west side in Culver City, in Los Angeles, and our primary focus area of culture is Philippine folk arts. And for the Philippine-American community, which is one of the largest Asian/Pacific Islander communities in the state and in the nation, Philippine dance and music is really the most widely participated art form.

So that's the organization. What I'm going to talk to you about is a project called the Philippine Dance Gathering and Workshops. Basically our mission is really to do the three "P"s. We all do it: preserve, promote, and present traditional Philippine culture through dance and music. And we try to do this by providing leadership in the field on Philippine dance, by providing educational programs that are relevant and appropriate, and by creating artistic presentations that are representative.

The question came us as in providing leadership to the field, what are we doing? What do we do in the fork arts organization knowing that there are a lot of needs in the community, a lot of other Philippine dance groups who don't have a lot of resources who all say, "We need to learn; we need to know dances." If you take a look at Philippine dance and the context of the culture you know that traditional folk arts is marginalized in contemporary Philippine culture. And so what we decided to do is to really commit ourselves to service to the field. And you know what? I have to tell you, we have received our train of thoughts from our Hawaiian brothers and sisters and our Japanese brothers and sisters. One, the Hawaiian community who has started a kuma-hula association. An association to support a network of hula teachers, gave us the us the idea to do it, as well as the Japan Taiko Conference that is held in Southern California.

We're talking about using culture to bring people together to share, resource sharing. That's what the Philippine Dance Gathering and Workshops is all about. It is basically a five day gathering; it's a project, it's not an organization. Kayamanan Ng Lahi is an organization. PDGW is a project that we have been working on, raising a lot of money, you know, for the last couple of years. It's really intended to develop and enhance Philippine dance in America by resource sharing, by inviting masters and people who can speak with culturally authoritative voices to share the context, the background, the essential character of our traditional folk-art with basically young people, young people - practitioners, who may or may not have grown up in the tradition. So what we are doing is trying to pass it on.

I want to introduce you, to let you know that one of our traditional masters that we will have working with us over this five day gathering at UCLA in August of this year is Danongan Kalanduyan, Danny Kalanduyan [and present at this gathering]. Danny is our only Philippine-American who has won a National Heritage Award from NEA back in 1995. And the prospective of Kulintang music and how groups appropriate traditional arts and how they transform them for stage presentation is very important. I think that's something that connects with all of us. How groups here in America - contemporary - take traditional folk arts and then re-create them for the stage. This is very, very important. That process is what we want to deconstruct.So this gathering is all about that.

We expect to have about 150 dance practitioners from throughout the United States, from Washington, from Hawaii, from Florida, from the state of California in a supporting network where we are learning a repertoire of dance and music, where we are learning about the process from village to stage. We are learning how to understand, how to teach, and how to present Philippine dance in ways that have cultural integrity. I think that as tradition varies that's what we are looking for, right? We are looking to be able to entertain and well as educate our audiences and our own selves. All right? Does that make sense? This is basically what we are trying to do.

And the challenges are, you know, you try to raise money. We're raising, we raised in about a year or a half a year about $40,000 for, not for the organization, but for this project in the field. Let me ask you that you do have to ask yourself, if you do want to be leaders in your own genre or area, you have to figure out what is expected of you. Are you going to commit resources for the greater good? That is something we have to ask ourselves. And so, I think the rewards are going to be, not just for the organization but the entire field so that, who knows what's going to happen of this Philippine Dance Gathering and Workshop after August. When we said we've committed to doing a project that brings the field of Philippine dance together in the United States, get them together, ask them questions, find out what the needs are, to document them and evaluate them very comprehensively so that we can have a collective memory and then we can say to the field, "What next? What is the mandate from you, the artist? Where do you want to go?" Because we can't continue to do these projects that really have an impact and great responsibility on our one single organization. We want to throw it back to the field and to say if you want it you have to build it together. What we want to share with you is a strategy, sort of a, I call it, "Access and Resources for the Field' for turning it back to the field determines the future. So for all of you who are involved in traditional artists where you have many, many art students, you're in the same thing. The essence of coming together to use culture to bring, because I think a lot of times we tend to cultural hoard. "What's mine is mine". "Oh, you can't have that - that's my resources". I think we have to go back to the essence of where we come from and to the cultural issues to bring people together. What can we do together? How do we act as resources? How do we share our ….. or our thoughts, or our ……… so that we can elevate. And what happens then is all the….rise. That, is essence, is what the Philippine Gathering is all about. I want to reiterate that this idea and the concept came from our Hawaiian brothers and sisters and our Japanese brothers and sisters and we would love to share this formula with you. I'd be willing to share just strategies and the rewards are going to come. Because as we share and can serve at the field that we are also going to be enriched as well. Thank you.

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STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINING TRADITIONAL ARTS

Forum sponsored by Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) and California Arts Council - Sacramento, June 7, 2001

Joel Jacinto

Presentation to the Gathering