Dandansoy: Singing My Roots....

“Dandansoy, bayaan ta ikaw,
Pauli ako sa Payao...
Ugaling kun ikaw hidlawon,
Ang Payao imo lang lantawon...

Dandansoy, kun imo apason
Bisan tubig di ka magbalon
Ugaling kun ikaw uhawon
Sa dalan magbubon-bubon...

Kumbento, sa diin ang kura
Munisipyo sa diin hustisya
Yari si Dansoy makiha,
Makiha sa paghigugma...

Panyo mo kag ining panyo ko
gisi-gisi-a kay tambihon ko
Ugaling kug magkasilo
Bana ta ikaw, asawa mo ako...”

Bidding goodbye to a husband in times when one needed him most is painful. More so if the husband would cross the seas to look for greener pasture in a faraway island of Mindanao in 1939. This pain had been kept a secret in Fortunata Magsipoc Ledesma’s heart for almost 26 years...until her longing was published nationwide.... as a song Dandansoy in 1965, in a book “Philippine Progressive Music Series Book III!

My grandmother, Fortunata, Lola Forting to us, was a teacher at Culasi Elementary School in Antique when the National Land Settlement Administration under the management of General Paulino Santos opened the gates of Mindanao, then touted as the Land of Promise, to settlers from Luzon and Visayas. Back in the 1930s, Mindanao was opened for settlement for the landless by the Commonwealth Government under President Manuel Luis Quezon.

Invited to explore the promises of the South were Antiqueño educators, one of whom was Lolo Ernesto Arriola Ledesma or Lolo Nesto, her husband and an Industrial Arts-Carpentry teacher, He would belong to the first wave of educators who were tasked to build and run a school in Marbel, then an established settlement area in Koronadal Valley next to Buayan (now General Santos City) and Tupi.

“Hordes of Visayans from Panay and Negros Occidental sailed to Mindanao on board S/S Tablas in the late 1930s, disembarking at Parang, Cotabato, followed by a three-day exodus southward, camping on the sides of the road at night to rest and sleep. Mostly sacadas (sugarcane farmhands) from Antique and Bacolod, the trekkers walked from Dulawan to Buluan in three days, crossed Buluan Lake by wooden boats to the shores of Lutayan to settle finally in Marbel,” my late Aunt Nora, their eldest daughter, would narrate to us, nieces and nephews. She was the historian of the family and from her I was able to trace roots.

Driven by a long and lingering understanding that Lolo Nesto’s family belonged to the landless, I believed that there was a strong motive for him to seek for fortune in Mindanao and that he had to leave his own family in Culasi, Antique to look for greener pastures. My belief had proven me wrong when, after thirty years, I had the occasion to visit Culasi in July of this year.

The journey to my Mom’s birthplace was enriching yet nostalgic. Embarking on a trip with the sole purpose of reestablishing and patching distance-severed ties with relatives because of migration resulted to more realizations than what I had expected. My last mental picture of Culasi was still vivid as how I saw it when I was eighteen years old attending school at UP in Iloilo City in 1978. My summer vacation that year was spent in that quaint little town where everyone seemed to be a relative. Culasi was a picture of simple living, laid back, yes, but happy!

My earliest recall of Culasi was through my mother’s story when, at eight months old, I was brought there for a vacation with my older siblings for the first time. It became very significant for me because I was pursued by a local “aswang” named Carnay. My mom told me that I was wailing that night after Carnay saw me earlier that day and commented how robust I was as a baby. Well. my grandfather’s house, for one, was a corner away from the kamposanto or sementeryo that made the setting ghoulish and Carnay’s house was just in front of Lolo’s house across the street.

Believed to be a neighborly “aswang”, Carnay who was transformed into a winged tik-tik had received invectives from my Lolo Nesto as he brandished his shining bolo pointing it to the roof directly over where I slept. “I know you,” he would say, “ try harming my grandson and you’ll get what you were looking for!” As soon as the scratching on the roof dissipated and flaps of imaginably big wings were heard shooing away, I was told I just stopped wailing and went on to sleep soundly, as if nothing happened! That particular story would prop me to travel back to Culasi and investigate on the veracity of the incident, True to what I’ve discovered, my older relatives confirmed that my mom’s story was never an urban legend! Carnay had long been dead and whoever inherited “that stone” to continue the aswang legacy became immaterial as the story was obliterated by the fast growth of the municipality as it adapted to modernization brought by the changing times.

Culasi has since then grown into an urbanized municipality being one of the major stops for airconditioned buses plying the Manila-Iloilo City route. Gone were the Bukaw wood-bodied buses with horizontal seating arrangement that could accommodate eight passengers per row, passing through the wall-less right side. Imagine how could a passenger taking the leftmost-side seat disembark at his destination with seven passengers blocking his way through? Gone were the days when the bus would negotiate rugged terrain and strong currents of widest rivers, sometimes nervously staying still in the middle of the onrush because the engine was wet and went dead? Gone too were the ambulant vendors of boiled eggs, peanuts, balulo, bande, bukayo, bulad, kalamay-hati, moscovado and sineguwelas, whose chattering would wake you up from a hypnotic trance due to the whirring of the engine and the constant bodyshake at a certain stop? Gone too was the panoramic view of Malalison Island from the backyard of my grandfather’s property as it stretched to the shores or the baybay, as present-day squatters, mostly Maguindanao muslims had swept away the memories of us children basking on the waves of the sea by building their shanties blocking the view? These images were just fragments of fleeting moments now and the shanties never ceased to grow in number.

The old Hispanic St. Michael’s simbahan and parokya then full of life-sized santos gave way to the modern architecture church and had been enclosed inside a perimeter wall, within the St. Michael’s Academy campus. The old plaza is now well-manicured and the town hall had undergone a major face-lift. It maintained the façade; however, the original Capiz-shell windows were painted, coating Culasi’s history with obscurity. Only the second floor lobby that transforms into a trial court and a public conference venue, if need be, housed a parcel of history that gave me the feel that a part of me was at home, at last!

There, hanged along the aged wooden walls were framed portraits of the past leaders called cabo publico del municipio in the 1800’s, municipal presidents in the early 1900’s and municipal mayors in the present. Among the frames were that of Municipal Presidents Fortunato Villaflor Ledesma, 1926-1928 and Guillermo Magsipoc, 1910-1912, my apoy Nato and apoy Imo. Then, an overwhelming realization crept over me. My grandparents’ families would not have been landless! Truth to the matter, I was shown the vast properties both families have - from the Ledesma’s hiraya properties to the Magsipoc’s baybay properties, still kumon! The expanse of properties was insignificant, though - what became a very vital discovery was that, my grandparents Fortunata and Ernesto were not landless. They belonged to the illustrados of Culasi, to prominent political clans that had served the municipality since the early 1900’s. Then what was it that drove my lolo Nesto to explore and to look for greener pastures in Mindanao? In Koronadal Valley per se?

Culasi just ushered me a lot of why’s. Then deductions came like pouring water - was it because of political families in conflict with differing ideologies? Was it because my grandmother’s family disapproved of my grandfather due to political beliefs? Was it because their love would like to stand the test of times in another world and be free without committing the classic Shakespearean Romeo and Juliet ultimate escape? Whatever was the motive then, it had lain covered by the lyrics of Dandansoy,...that glancing, just mere glancing, would establish a pact, a commitment of love that would meet again in another time on a cherished soil!

As I found myself on board a modern Ceres bus enroute to Iloilo for my trip back home to Koronadal, I was silently in pain, seeing the images of Culasi fleet away through the bus’ glass window. The trip had been too nurturing that I silently shed tears, in my heart I was singing, Dandansoy, the song of love, the song of my roots - and if ever I long for Culasi, all I have to do is glance at its direction, then I’ll be at peace, my mind and heart, aligned!