Philippine Festival

One fun thing about Washington DC in June are all the festivals. First there was DC Black Pride Memorial Day weekend (read my earlier post about DC Black Pride here), and last weekend I headed into the city for my first ever Philippine Festival. (This coming weekend will be the Capital Pride Festival.)

One reason I made it a point to finally check out the festival this year was because we talked about it so much during dance practices for Pride and Heritage that I just had to see it for myself.

from the Philippine American Foundation for Charities, Inc. (PAFC) website:

The Philippine Festival is organized by the PAFC, a non-profit, non-political, taxexempt organization. PAFC was founded in 1996 by Filipino Americans in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area to improve the quality of life of the Filipino-Americans and the community at large through community-based charitable, educational, and cultural projects.

This year, the 2006 Philippine Festival celebrates the centennial of the first wave of Filipino immigrants to the United States. Festival proceeds will be donated to Gawad Kalinga, a non-profit organization to rebuild homes in Leyte, Philippines that were destroyed in a recent mudslide, and to diabetes research, a common disease among Filipinos.

I didn't make it into the city until the afternoon, so I missed the parade, but there were still folks out and about when I arrived at the festival. I was a little disappointed that the festival site wasn't more jam packed with brown folks, but it was really nice to see so many Filipinos in one place, and to hear tagalog all around me.

A lot of the exhibitor booths were financial related (which makes sense given that SunTrust Bank was a main sponsor of the festival) and/or travel related [which also makes sense if you think of the ways in which, as Yen Le Espiritu argues in her book Homebound, Filipinos are "leading lives stretched across borders" (2)].

Of course, there were lots of food stalls, too. LOTS. In fact, running the entire length of the festival on one side of the street were food vendors. And, most of the people that I saw were congregated around various food stalls. (Some waiting in lines about twenty people long!) I can't say that I was all that surprised by all the emphasis and attention on food. It did, though, make me feel just a little out of place since I'm vegetarian and most of the food wasn't. As I walked through the festival and the smells of cooking meat wafted about, I definitely felt a sense of familiar comfort. But because I don't eat any of it, I also felt like a stranger. I'm living proof that "vegetarian Filipino" isn't an oxymoron, but it is a bit of an outsider status. However, I did get to enjoy some halo-halo (although I was too late to get the "special") and bibingka (minus the garnish of salted egg).

When I first became vegetarian, my family really didn't know what to make of it, and they constantly fed me spaghetti because they couldn't figure out what else to cook for me. They slowly caught on and figured they could make me potato lumpia and eggplant torta (which to this day remain staples of what they prepare when I visit). Or else, lately, my mom just shops at Trader Joe's and buys me frozen vegetarian meals. I love her thoughtfulness, but I wish that I had learned to cook vegetarian Filipino food. (Then again, I guess it's not too late to learn this now. I did find this one site from Vegetarian Journal that offered recipes of vegan Filipino food, but it offered only one main entree! This other site, Filipino Vegetarian Recipe for your Health, seems a little more promising, but heavy on the eggs, mayonnaise, and sugar.)

Besides all the food, the other main draw of the festival was the live music on the main stage. It was really fun to rock out to young, Filipino musicians, many of whom sung in tagalog. I wasn't familiar with any of the bands performing, but I also didn't catch a lot of their names. I really wish I had a line-up of the main stage performers, but in the mean time I did find some through online searches:

Angie Pepa on myspace
Dette Perrin on myspace
First Rays
Ground95
Sad 2 B True

I definitely want to make time to check out some of what the Smithsonian is doing for its year-long Filipino-American Centennial Commemoration celebration, too. (Check out the Smithsonian schedule of events)