More than music at Malasimbo in Puerto Galera

Last year, a group of enterprising people threw a bunch of good things together, wrapped it up in leaf and sky, and gifted it to every neo-hippie, backpacker, adventure-seeker, and music lover in search of a Coachella or a Glastonbury or a Woodstock to call their own.   They called it the Malasimbo Music and Arts Festival, after the mountain whose bright green foothills play host to the event. Initially, it had been a two-day affair, but the second Malasimbo festival last March 2-4 was extended by a day, as if to say that a mere weekend is not enough to hold all that the festival has to offer.

 

Malasimbo was organized by Volume Unit Entertainment and the d’Aboville Foundation, and was conceived out of a love for music and for Puerto Galera, where the festival is held.

“I discovered the Philippines as a backpacker in ‘77, and Puerto Galera as a businessman in ‘81. PG has room for both! This is the vision Mayor [Hubbert] Dolor and I share. We want to promote tourism up to the mountains,” shared Hubert d’Aboville, honorary Puerto Galeran and one of the men behind the festival. It’s a vision that’s gradually being realized—Malasimbo’s audience has definitely grown some since its first incarnation last year. According d’Aboville, the crowd was about four times bigger this time around, numbering at more or less 4,000 and including everyone from little kids to men and women in their 70s.

Of that number, most will have undoubtedly gone for the music which is the festival’s main attraction and fittingly so—the festival’s headliners included no less than the legendary Latin Soul pioneer Joe Bataan, iconic folk singer Joey Ayala, the award-winning DJ Kentaro, and broken beat duo Kyoto Jazz Massive.

 

Joining them was a diverse musical army that included local and foreign acts, veterans and newcomers, DJs creating music from laptops and high-tech mixers, instrumentalists beating on gangsas and kulintangs and old, half-full water bottles, spoken-word artists and crooners all contributing to the unique sound that the festival offers.    

“The festival is a mix of traditional and contemporary music. Various genres formed around jazz, soul, world, electronic and reggae music are the main foundation of the festival sound," explained sound engineer Miro Grgic, president of Volume Unit Entertainment and the man in charge of the musical aspect of the festival. The result of the deliberate selection of artists was succession of music you can only get at the foot of a mountain on an island in the Philippines. Joey Ayala’s folk dance version of the “Lupang Hinirang,” for instance, or the neon beats of Similarobjects. Brigada’s high-octane drum symphonies perfect for the wild flailing of dirty hippies. Sinosikat’s silky, seductive set. Radioactive Sago Project’s crazy, cathartic, hilarious take on jazz… Mangyan crafts, public art 

However, d’Aboville insists that “this Malasimbo Festival is so much more than music alone!”

True enough, while people lost themselves in the music, some also trooped to the small Mangyan Village set up near the main stage. There they found a lane of huts and short displays about the culture and history of the different Mangyan tribes. The Mindoro natives were also able to sell their handmade crafts.

 

The festival site was also saturated with creations from various local artists. Art greeted festival-goers as they entered the site, descended to the amphitheater, and even as they roamed the areas surrounding the main stage and the Mangyan Village entrance. Among the works were Billy Bonnevie’s Animist altar called “Malasimbo Dap-ay,” Agnes Arellano’s “Haliya Mantra,” startlingly white on the sprawling green slopes, Karla Cachola’s giant “Pakudos,” a tribute to the Mangyans, and Mindoro native Doring Lalongisip’s quirky carved wood creatures, to name a few.    

With so much to offer and so many people taking up these offers, the Malasimbo festival can only expect to grow even more than it already has. “[The festival] is also arts and culture, with our strong emphasis on the indigenous people of Mindoro, and environment… In one word, it is an adventure,” d’Aboville said. Evidently, it’s an adventure that’s bound to get bigger. D’Aboville shared that they are expecting to reach 5,000 guests for next year’s festival. “The Malasimbo Festival is growing, it will expand internationally. Thousands of domestic and foreign tourists will discover or return to Puerto Galera,” he claimed confidently. —KG, GMA News