Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

Besides the daily afternoon music on the Luneta, a full-fledged Italian opera troupe has come to town and has begun to give performances in the Teatro Zorilla. “Carmen” and “The Cavalleria Rusticana” are on the bill for this week, and many other of the old standbys are going to have their turn later.

In respect to music, side-tracked though it is, Manila seems to be more favored than her sister capitals in the Far East, and everyone appears to be able to play on something. Such of the native houses as are too frail to support pianos shelter harps, violins, and other stringed instruments, while some of the more expensive structures contain the whole selection. Of an evening—in the suburbs—it is no uncommon thing to hear the strains of a well-played Spanish march issuing from under the thatch of a rickety hut, or to find an impromptu concert going on in the little tram-car which is bringing home a handful of native youth with their guitars or mandolins. Every district has its band, some of the instruments in which are often made out of empty kerosene-cans, and the nights resound with tunes from all quarters. In fact, the Philippine band is one of the chief articles of export from Manila, and groups of natives with their cheap instruments are shipped off to Japan, India, and the Spice Islands, to carry harmony into the midst of communities where music is uncultivated. All in all, it is extremely curious that out of all the peoples of the Far East the Filipinos are the only ones possessing a natural talent for music, and that the islands to-day stand out unique from among all the surrounding territory as being the home of a musical race, who do not make the night as hideous with weird beatings of tom-toms as they do poetic with soft waltzes coaxed from gruff trombones.

January 18th.

Manila is pretty well, thanks. The weather has been cool and comfortable. Showers have come every day or two to lay the dust, and one could not want a more salubrious condition of things. The sunsets from the Luneta have been more than pyrotechnic, and I now believe that nowhere do you see such displays of color as in the Orient, Land of the Sunrise. During these three weeks of my stay, so far there have been five holidays, and we have had ample time to take afternoon walks up the beach, or play tennis at the club, or indulge in moonlight rows on the Pasig.

A Philippine Sleeping-machine.

See page [14].

A week ago on the island just opposite the club, where lies a good-sized village, containing an old church, there was a religious festival, which lasted all the week. This was the Fiesta of Pandacan, and all the natives for miles around came pouring down by our veranda, in bancas and barges, on their way across the river. Every night during the week, bands of music played on one side of the stream and on the other side, and then crossed to their respective opposites, playing in transitu, and then setting up shop on shore again. Then there were fireworks, bombs, and rockets galore, so that the early night was alive with noise and sparks. On the evening of the grand wind-up we crossed over to see the sights, in one of the usual hollowed-out tree-trunk ferryboats. Crowds of gayly dressed natives surged around the plaza, near the old church, while everywhere along the edges squatted old men and women, cooking all sorts of greasy “chow” on those peculiar Philippine stoves described in the last chapter. Everybody smoked, as well as the pots and kettles, and the air was therefore foggy. The little, low-thatched houses were jauntily decorated with lanterns and streamers, and at all the open fronts leaned out rows of grinning natives.

Here and there were small “tiendas,” or little booths, where cheap American toys, collar-buttons, pictures, and little figures of the Saviour were sold, and great was the hubbub. The houses, as well as the people, are very low of stature, and as we walked along the narrow, almost cunning streets, our shoulders level with the eaves of many of the shanties, and above the heads of many of the people, we felt indeed like giants. Many were the pianos in those native huts, and peculiar mixtures of strikingly decent playing fell upon the ear from all sides.

The whole circus wound up with a grand pyrotechnical illumination of the old church from base to tower, and a score of loud explosions, caused by the setting off of many dozen bombs at the same time, made up in noise what the religious celebration lacked in spirituality. Then all the bands came back and played their lungs out as they crossed the river, and all the people rushed for bancas, and came chattering home. Thus did this pretty little religious show consume, in noise and sparks, the contributions of a very long time.