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Published: August 4th 2008
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Last weekend I went to the 2nd Annual Congress of DKK, the cultural group I hang out with here. This event took up my entire Sunday and was something I technically didn't have to attend, not actually being a member of DKK. I went anyway though, for a few reasons. Firstly, I promised to go to the Congress in order to get out of being in a play with the group a week earlier. Secondly, all of my friends are in the cultural group, and so would be at the Congress, and like a silly 15 year old I go where my friends go here. And finally, and most nobally, because I thought I might actually like to join DKK.
I have spent a lot of time in the DKK office in the last couple of months. It started when the asked me to play the UN representative (read: white person) in their play a few months ago, but now I usually just hang out in their office chatting with friends and watching them practice the cultural presentation of the day. I have become quite fascinated with their work. The mandate of DKK is to preserve the indigenous Cordilleran culture
and to use that culture in the struggle for national change and social justice in the Philippines. And so every song written, every play performed, every sculpture or painting has a purpose. It is all meant to teach about the real situation of the Igorots, or the Filipino people as a whole, and to encourage the audience to get involved in the struggle for change.
The members of DKK run the gauntlet: some flamboyant, some soulful... there are even a few really shy girls and surprisingly macho guys. In a context like home they would probably have found very different outlets for their artistic talents, but here they have all come together in DKK. The atmosphere in the office is just like the atmosphere in every dance studio, art class or university theater troop I have ever been in: silly, playful and overly dramatic. But in the background of the constant singing and the constant music there is a seriousness that seems foreign to me in this context. The members of DKK all take their work very seriously. They view themselves and their work as part of a greater movement, as part of the Filipino struggle for social change.
Sitting around the office the combination of protest and art thrills me and makes my mind race with the possibility of taking this concept home.
I feel like one of the biggest gaps in the North American social movement is our lack of cultural/protest art. There are so few songs about our situation, about our issues and problems. We don't have popularly famous political poets, artists or writers. And we don't seem to be making an effort to popularize the ones that are out there, playing, singing, speaking to the activists and the academics. I have to admit that during the big protests in Manila I am always green with envy at their effigies, placards and cultural presentations. The political and activists artists I have met in Manila and Baguio produce material head and shoulders above what I have seen at protests in Canada. And so I have been spending my time in the DKK office trying to absorb as much of their attitudes and methods as I can.
Unfortunately I hit a road block at the DKK Congress; I learned something important about myself that will hinder my ability to bring cultural work to the movements in
Canada. I am not artists. I am so impressed when I watch my friends do a flag dance, or when they are performing an interpretive dance of the mining struggle, or acting out weeping over the victims of extra judicial killings. Their talent and conviction and objectives are undeniable. But I could not do it. I am positive that I wouldn't be able to keep a strait face through any of it. I think I saw one too many ridiculously artsy student plays in university. The moment anything begins to even seem like it thinks it has meaning my eyes begin to roll automatically. Even now, when the presentations legitimately have meaning, I still wouldn't be able to be involved without scoffing every 7 minutes. It is a personal defect, a learned behavior I suppose, and I realized at the Congress that it will stop me from ever being a cultural worker.
I stayed at the DKK Congress and listened, took notes and thought about what I was seeing and hearing. Just in case I ever find an artist or artists at home who I think I could convey the information to. I even presented myself, singing The Night
that Patty Murphy Died to show off a little of the best Maritime culture. But I left the Congress without officially joining. I still think we need cultural/protest art in our movement(s) in Canada. I just don't think I should ever be the one to do it. I plan to continue hanging out in the DKK office, but I will have to remain an observed. I will be required to fain a lake of talent in order to be given a pass from performing, but having very little artistic talent anyway, I don't expect that will be too hard.
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