We crowd on the balcony overlooking the municipal square and wait as the drums approach. I stand wedged between May-ug (Mai-ohg), the teenage house helper, and May-yu (Mai-yoo), Auntie Lourdes’ daughter, and tower at least a foot over the two. May-yu holds a squirming Tanya in her hands who points at various things down below. We’re waiting for the town parade to culminate in the square, which will mark the beginning of Banaue’s annual cultural festival. Banaue locals love their parades.

May-ug peers over the ledge and searches the growing crowd below. “I don’t see any tourists,” she says, and then looks up at me and winks. “You’re not a tourist anymore.”

I smile a little and look away. May-ug doesn’t speak much and certainly doesn’t often give out compliments. Though she may not know it, her comment means the world to me.

From where we stand, we can hear the drumbeats get louder as the parade weaves its way up the street and towards the municipal square. We can’t see them yet, since the road is behind us and to the right, but we can hear the shouts and yells; we can feel the press of the crowd around us grow more anxious.

It is unusually hot in Banaue today, and my hair sticks to the back of my neck. Fortunately, the festival planners covered a large portion of the normally sun-baked municipal square with a gigantic tarp about fifty feet long and wide. I’ve never seen one so large before.

I can tell that I won’t be able to take good pictures from the second story balcony, so I excuse myself from the girls and head down to the ground. I weave my way through the crowd of people, almost all local Ifugao, who smile at me as I pass. The drumbeats sound like they’re just around the corner, and then I see the first group of people. Marty, my host brother, leads a group of uniformed Taekwando students with a banner introducing the festival and their Taekwondo school. The crowd begins to mill out of the way and many lean against the large market building as the parade approaches. I kneel at the edge of the procession, watching the Taekwondo teenagers smile shyly at the onslaught of photographers.

Teenagers dressed in masks and shredded plastic skirts parade by. The boys and girls move through the crowd, dancing in a style similar to traditional Ifugao dancing, but with a modern twist. Several other groups of young people file by, some more shy and subdued, others dancing and playing the gongs or drums, excited and energized.

A group of men dressed in their traditional Ifugao “g-strings” follow behind, dancing and initiating mock battles. They grimace, lean forward, and knock their swords and shields together, then smile at the crowd and continue parading towards the municipal center. After the parade participants gather in the town center, each individual group does their own dance and performance, at the same time as the others. The elder women in their plastic dresses make small cooking fires and thresh rice, the groups of teens dance, the Taekwondo students kick and turn. The gongs and drums beat louder and louder and the dancers and performers move faster. Finally it reaches an almost unbearable crescendo—and then stops to an ocean of applause.

I snap hundreds of pictures as each group performs throughout the day. The Taekwondo students perform self defense and their black belt students catapulte through the air. The younger students dance in circles, their movements full of laughter and energy.

Later in the day the festival focuses on a faux rice-terrace that has been constructed in the corner. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, they do abbreviated versions of the annual rice rituals (which are, for the most part are no longer practiced). The speaker—who narrates the rituals entirely in Ifugao—summons a local mumbaki, a man so old he needs assistance to stand up and walk to the native hut erected next to the terraces. A group of children and locals crowd near the base of the rock walls to watch.

The narrator’s lame leg hangs like a loose rope at his side, as he walks on a crutch and facilitates the events. He speaks about the three different classes in Ifugao culture, and their roles in Ifugao life. All classes work in the fields, which, the narrator adds, is considered a “noble job.” I find that interesting contrasted with the general disdain and dislike of field work among the Ifugao I have spoke to, as well as the desperation felt by many farmers who would do anything to get out of the fields. Some of them still see rice farming as noble, but it exhausts them as well, and they can’t find community help for it like that had before.

The air is full of jingling bells, as young boys walk around hawking ice cream and pandesal—hot salted bread. Vendors sit and watch from the side selling betel nut and halo-halo, their products covered in plastic and sweating in the heat. I watch the kids’ expressions as they look at the feigned rice rituals. A young girl sits just feet away from me with a beaded necklace in her mouth that she slowly pulls out, each emerged bead now glossy with saliva.

I wonder what she, and the other people watching, thinks about as they watched a façade of their history unfold before them. I especially wonder what the elders think—they who had seen these rituals practiced for real as children and even as adults, they who had lost so much respect in the community as their once important roles and religion are now forgotten.

A man brings out the chicken that the mumbaki carved inside the hut; her body limp in his hands now stripped of feathers and bones. He shows the “good” bile to the crowd and they cheer and clap. Two girls next to me whisper to each other in Hapit (Ifugao) and point at my notebook. One girl looks over my shoulder and tries to read my messy handwriting. I speak to them in Ifugao and they look at each other, shocked, and then back at me with a grin. We chat back and forth for awhile in Ifugao, and they seem to know what I’m saying, which amazes me too.

Watching the parade, I feel as if I am witnessing a great compromise. The elder women sit in their plastic dresses meant to mimic the bark twine dresses their ancestors wore just a generation before. Children watch on their haunches in native dresses and g-strings, sucking on orange drinks in foil pouches. Even the Ifugao men in their g-strings and shields had never fought before, had never used those shields in an actual battle. The entire festival is a performance—a celebration and demonstration of what once was.

A young girl next to me holds a white balloon and tugs on it every few minutes to make in bounce against her hand. Her friends look at me with wary eyes. Someone leads the old mumbaki back to the sitting crowd, his arms and legs trembles as he sits. The crowd laughs as the men in the faux rice terrace quickly plant the rice, the panicles standing out at awkward angles. I remember when I planted with Rita, how she showed me how to plant it straight down, pushing on the roots with my thumb. There was a special way to do it and it took time to learn. The man planting the rice looks at the crowd and laughs a bit, hamming it up for their amusement.
A “Super Crunch Choco-chip” wrapper floats from the sky and lands on the sitting mumbaki’s head. He picks it off his headdress and looks at it, then crumples it in his hand. I can hear the chanting from inside the hut as I stare at the mumbaki’s feet. They are brown and crooked from years perched in the terraces, and his toes stick out at angles like knots on ginger root. His skin hangs loosely on his arms and chest like a thin brown sheet. And I wonder what he sees as he watches this ritual, this piece of his past.

I wonder.

For more pictures of the cultural festival--check out my slide show here: