WHEN we think of French, Russian, German, Japanese or Mexican culture, we automatically associate them with wine, vodka, beer, sake or tequila. There is a sense of identity lacking in our culture in relation to our native wine: Tuba.
This “lack of identity,” the first impression one usually gets of Filipino culture is true. Centuries of colonization, obviously, played a role on it, not to mention the barrage of Western culture through the media.
But it is also not true.
Even culturally conscious Filipinos fall into this dominant misconception on a culture which is, in reality, probably one of the most, if not the most hybrid of cultures. Our adaptation to foreign elements only proves our distinctly open-minded character. An abstract identity called Resilience—our capability to heartily smile in the midst of a disaster, and even drink over it.
Aside from our visible ethnic culture, our instinct to naturally incorporate foreign cultures into our own is a unique creative trait seen from Spanish music fused into Kundiman, improvised American WWII jeeps and localized foreign words, to name a few.
One interesting result of this fusion is Oktubafest. This wordplay of combining our recent adoption of German culture in celebrating our local wine first started in Eastern Visayas in 2008, making it a major festival in Tacloban since then.
Now, Cebu will have its first Oktubafest. Thanks to Tapati who once held a street bar version of it in Manila during her stay there as Joey Ayala’s collaborator, voice coach to known rock singers, and respected organizer. Local musicians, writers and performance artists will gather today to invoke the spirit of our wine, making the highly artistic call of our first Oktubafest a modern reawakening of the poetic Cebuano soul in its rightful elixir.
Oktubafest Cebu 2016 is happening 6 p.m. tonight at Juls Restobar, Nasipit, Talamban, Cebu City. (Contributed by Eric Goden Lomocso)