Kadayawan Festival Sa Dabaw
This massive occasion sees ‘business as usual’ suspended as Davao City transforms itself into a playground for a week-long celebration with many faces. The time-honoured rationale is to give thanks for the bountiful harvest provided by the area’s forests, fertile land, rivers and seas, though Kadayawan sa Dabaw itself is of fairly recent origin, created in the 1980s to unite the people after a dark period of dictatorship. As such, it formalized the village ritual of giving thanks to the gods with offerings of food, flowers and farming implements, whilst indulging in feasting, singing, dancing and general merriment.
But Kadayawan sa Dabaw has always included other objectives, notably the preservation of indigenous peoples and their way of life on ancestral lands. As such, the festival also serves as a showcase for the arts, crafts, cuisine and culture of the local tribes, providing visitors with fascinating insight into these traditional communities, how they live and the ways in which they have influenced contemporary life. This is an important multi-faceted strand woven through the entire event.
The end result is a truly spectacular fiesta that keeps Davao rocking for seven days (and nights!). Extensive activities include parades featuring the civic, military and tribal aspects of local life, flower and produce shows, a trade fair, traditional sport, horse races, native rowing races, powerboat races, music and dance contests and a glittering beauty pageant. Highlights are the stunning Flora Float Parade and the constant Indak indak sa Kadalanan-street dancing in breathtaking tribal costumes.
Regada Water Festival
Although the tourist-orientated Regada Water Festival is nominally dedicated to St John the Baptist (traditionally associated with the sprinkling of baptismal water), a more suitable patron might be Neptune. This unusual annual fiesta was only instigated in 1996, but has rapidly become an enduring tradition, whose fame has spread far beyond the Calabarzon Region.
Regada is an anarchic mixture of religious, environmental and cultural themes, but in truth it’s all a great excuse for a week-long knees-up that turns the city of Cavite (itself surrounded by water) into a carnival venue-a pretty wild and wet one. In the run-up to the saint’s day there are numerous entertaining events-a bike rally, water sports, music and dance competitions, concerts, cultural presentations, fashion shows, cookery demonstrations, art exhibitions and a whole variety of colourful themed parades and intriguing processions, including one by youthful eco-warriors dressed in herbage to underline the festival’s ‘green’ credentials.
It all comes to a splashy climax on St John’s Day. In order to maintain Regada’s self-proclaimed status as the world’s largest water festival, the entire main thoroughfare of P Burgos Avenue is equipped with sprinklers and powerful sound systems. It becomes a festival centerpiece with townsfolk, students and adventurous visitors getting soaked as they indulge in the prolonged wet-dancing session. Faint-hearted visitors can watch-and be highly amused-from the safety of the sidelines.
This extraordinary sight is complemented by a reminder of the festival’s more serious aspect-the Caracol, which sees an image of St John paraded through the city streets to reminder the many devout onlookers to give thanks for the year’s blessings. It’s the final piece of a colourful jigsaw and makes a vibrant picture that anyone visiting the Philippines in June should be sure to see.
Santacruzan
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usually agricultural countries have such festivals for better harvest i believe this is one among them and what a colourful festival.
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