The following is an essay by Robert Bragg and Mari Acabal who, in 2018, were graduate students pursuing their MA in Literary Studies at Silliman University. That year, both were in my Emergent Philippine Literature class, and I specifically designed the course to make the students do in-depth research into the literatures of Negros Oriental, and specifically to gather the biographies and literary pieces of folk writers in the margins of local literature—the unsung practitioners of the balak, the balitaw, and other kinds of folk literature that are always ignored in favor of Anglophone or Tagalog literature. Both were assigned to scout the various towns and cities in the second district of Negros Oriental, covering Dumaguete City, Bais City, Tanjay City, Amlan, Mabinay, Pamplona, San Jose, and Sibulan. This essay is a chronicle of their research.

How do you find the literatures of multiple towns you’ve never been to, in a region neglected by the national literary scene and in a language you cannot speak? Simple: Field research. That and the frustrations, pain, danger, and the toll taken on your physical health it. This was what I and my research partner, Mari Acabal, suffered under the sun for one of Prof. Ian Rosales Casocot’s pet literary projects. He wanted us to help him collect a body of the local literature of Negros Oriental.

While most sane people would spend their summer at the beach or relaxing with family, we toured Tanjay in a government vehicle, ploughed through the fields of Amlan, rode 90-degree angles on a habal-habal up Pamplona’s mountains, and battled heat-stroke in Mabinay. Like synchronized hound dogs retrieving their hunter’s catch, we searched high and low throughout the second district of Negros Oriental to uncover unknown literary artists and present them to our professor.

Our search began in Dumaguete. Mari and I both graduated from Silliman University [in 2015 and 2016, respectively], so this was comfortable ground for us to get underway. The obvious place to go was the City Tourism Office. Here we were given a list of local artists and balakeros from various barangay competitions. We interviewed the aging icon Enriquieta Alcaide [or Nanay Ikit] for her balitaw and sat through the occasionally debauched balak of Dions Manaban, a newscaster for DYGB-FM. Eager to share his art, he blurted out poetic fantasies about a nude bathing girl, which was alot. We also managed to interview Nicky Dumapit.

Although the artists in Dumaguete were relevant to our project, we wanted to dig deeper into the community and locate writers who had never before been heard of. In Sibulan, we tried a different approach. Instead of starting with their tourism office, we made our inquiries on the streets—and vendors, habal-habal drivers, and even the occasional homeless, became our targets. This turned out to be a big mistake.

“Naa mo’y nailhan nga mo-balak diri?” Mari innocently asked a habal-habal driver outside the public market. I followed this up with: “Excuse me, good sir. Can you possibly direct us to any local poets?”

Immediately there was chaos. The spectacle of two fair-skinned students in shorts and tank-tops using a combination of Bisaya and the Queen’s English caused a public uproar. It was as if the president had just arrived on his infamous jet-ski. The habal-habal driver called over his friends from across the street; old ladies shopping for their weekly market fare craned their necks to gawp at us; passing tricycles slammed their brakes to join the pandemonium. Suddenly the whole of Sibulan became a town of playwrights, poets, novelists and literary critics. They all wanted to be included in our paper and many of them thought there was a quick buck to be made.

“Kani siya, oh!” bellowed one man from the back.

“Bayran ko ninyo?” demanded another.

“Ako’y pinkaka-maayo mo balak diri!” declared a child in rags and plastic sunshades. 

Enough was enough. We realized there was nothing for us on the street, so we slipped sheepishly away from the scene with our tails between our legs. The Sibulan municipal hall was a much more sensible option.

Our next experience with one habal-habal driver was far more civilized and productive. In San Jose town, he took us from the beach, where we interviewed a Palawan security guard who wrote about the ocean, all the way seven kilometers inland to a man named Pantaleon Taguiam. This was a local clown known to tell hilarious stories in his barangay. This form of storytelling involves several people contributing to the plot as it goes on and on, and is known locally as binutbot. [Other versions of the form can be found in places such as Bayawan.] These tales are both intimate and communal at the same time, and Mr. Taguiam told us he was afraid to share his stories with neighboring barangays in case some offended parties might “cut off his head.”

We also managed to interview other folk writers from Sibulan, including Nador Ablay, who writes balitaw with his sister Felicidad Parajado; and Anthony Maginsay, who does balak for DYWC, a radio station that has supported many local mambabalak. In San Jose, we found mambabalak Lauro Binagatan and Jose Ybias.

Proud of our findings thus far, we felt like super reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent as we went on to our next stop: Amlan. However, our findings there were far from satisfying, and we spent more time searching through rural areas than collecting data. We had one lead named Milagros Rendal, and the musical tourism office told us she lived somewhere in Barangay Jantianon. There, we asked a disinterested vulcanizer along the main road for directions to her house, and he pointed absentmindedly over some hills and said, “Diha.” Skeptical of his directions, we criss-crossed though a forest until we could look down over barren fields. A nipa house protruded from some shrubbery in the distance.

By this time it was growing late and the sky was getting darker. We trudged through uneven terrain as slowly the wooden hut we saw drew closer. Finally, we ducked under some low-hanging branches and approached the front door. We tapped the door, andMs. Rendal stepped out in a floral shirt with a striking pattern of sky-blue and royal-red. A ribbon dangled down her neck, and when we told her we were interested in her poetry, she welcomed us in and beamed with such pride. It was funny how happy you can make a “hidden” poet when you have travelled far to find them. 

After returning to our lodging house to write up the day’s findings, we set ourselves to go to Tanjay. We quickly learned that this city deserved a comprehensive study of its own. Here, there were writers writing poems about love, about life, and about faith, songs about budbud, and witticisms and anecdotes [often compiled in  newsletters]. Of the literary texts we uncovered there, we could sense a theme of collective pride in being a Tanjayanon.

Once we asked around the Tanjay City Hall, we were ushered into the office of Wilfredo Calumpang. He turned out to be our guardian angel. He knew about all the writers in town, and hired us a government vehicle to bring us to their front doors. We found all kinds of literary artists, both dead and living, both young or old, both local or international. They all had their own story to tell, and literary pieces to share.

 We began with an aging teacher, poet, and historian whose brother was tortured by the Japanese imperialists for his music. Then we found the lyrical renditions of the late Andrews Calumpang which celebrated sticky rice, fiestas, and the townspeople of Tanjay. We were also privileged enough to recover, through Rodolfo “Braddock” Calumpang, the expat-directed newsmagazine full of comedies, tales, and gossip among Tanjayanons working in the U.S. We uncovered lyricist Teresita Pada Limbaga, mambabalak Brendon Torres, the late playwright Olivia Calumpang-Causing, the late essayist Antonio “Dodong” Calumpang, and historiographer and mambabalak Restituta “Tuta” Limbaga. Soon we realized that the sheer quantity of creativity could not be contained with the time allotted to us. For this reason, I call on other researchers to turn their attention to Tanjay. Palanca award-winner David Martinez once called these people “champions of semantics,” and their stories deserve to be heard.

While in Tanjay, the writers practically found us, in Pamplona the search was far more difficult. This was the only place where a recognized poet refused to speak with us and we had our third and final encounter with a habal-habal driver. This one was the worst.

One of the only mambabalaks we heard about in Pamplona was now a gardener. We met [name withheld] in a park where he was trimming a bush shaped like an angry elephant and asked him our questions. Unlike all the writers so far though, he was extremely defensive and refused to see us after his shift. Our persistence only served to irritate him, and we decided to take our leave. But just as we were leaving, his colleague who overheard our conversation stepped in and invited us to interview his aunt. Conveniently, he said she was also a mambabalak. We were not sure whether we could trust him, but we saw no other option. It was either go to his aunt or move to the next town, coming away from Pamplona empty-handed.

If our confidence in the man’s word was low, the location of the lead he was offering sank it through the ground. It was inaccessible via tricycle or car, so the only option was a habal-habal. I am personally afraid of any vehicle with only two wheels, so when the he told us it was up a ravine, my stomach did cartwheels. On the other hand, Mari was thrilled with the idea. But surely he was exaggerating right? Reluctantly we got on a habal-habal in Balayong, several kilometers from the park in the town proper. The mere sight of the destination over the mountainous horizon that the diver pointed towards made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to show fear in front of Mari though. This and the thought of failing our professor were the only things that got me onto that bike.

Our odyssey started smoothly enough. We sped along the main highway for around fifteen minutes but at some point, we hit a sharp right and bounced through a field with a lot of cows. We struggled up the mountains, and my hands gripped the seat handles like granite. I could hear the motorcycle’s groaning sputters of protest as sweat cascaded down my face and chest. At one point we all dove forward over the handlebars as we took on a 90-degree cliff-edge. We were like a frail banca crashing through a tempest. A thousand heartbeats later, we slowed down and stopped at a wooden shack. We had finally arrived at our destination.

It turned out that the second gardener was telling the truth. His aunt, Bebe Ebero, was a former mambabalak who used to perform her poems over the radio. She stopped doing the balak, however, because of the aforementioned hazardous journey to and from town. At the peak of a nearby hill, she imparted to us her poems from memory. Finally, we managed to bag a literary talent from Pamplona! Ms. Ebero also told us about another local mambabalak named Toni Ruales from Barangay San Isidro, but when we went to his house though, he was unavailable because he was in a fiesta somewhere else. Nonetheless, we felt satisfied with our findings, and the ride back to Pamplona town was leisurely because we knew we had discovered another gem.

Things only got more difficult in Bais. The Planning and Budget Officer at the City Hall gave us two leads. One was a mambabalak who was also tricycle driver [with registration number 013, somewhere on Capinyahan Island], and the other was an old song about local guerrillas during World War II. Both were hard to find.

We hopped on a tricycle and rode up and down the streets of Capinyahan looking for Tricycle No. 013. Our driver said he’d seen it before in these parts but didn’t know who owned it. His assurance that it was in the neighborhood fueled our hunt as we looked into front gardens, down side alleys, and checked every passing pedicabs for the elusive number. Approaching a junction in Lo-oc, we glimpsed a green cab as it crossed around twenty yards ahead. The split second we honed in on its number, we saw the numbers 0 and 1 and 3. But we weren’t sure which order they were in. “That way!” I hollered at our driver and he sprinted into hot pursuit. We closed in on our target, but just as we came close to it, we saw that it Tricyle No. 031, and not the golden 013. So we drifted away to continue our hunt. [At one point, Tricycle No. 014 hobbled past us, as if to mock our search.]

We were getting sick of the chase, and our driver was losing his patience. In resignation, Mari suggested we try to find the people who knew the lyrics of the guerilla song instead, and we agreed that it was the best option. They say the harder you work, the luckier you get; and just as we were heading back to town, we saw our golden number as clear as day hailing towards us. Tricycle No. 013. A blue and white beauty with two young lady passengers inside. The tricycle passed us calmly and headed towards the church. We made an immediate U-turn, and as soon as its passengers disembarked, we hopped out to claim our literary trophy: mambabalak Romeo Flores. A 10-minute side-road interview later, we were finally done, and was ready to set our eyes on that lyricist with the guerilla song.

After a series of disappointments [and a string of dead relatives], we finally tracked down one of the last remaining people who still remembered the song about guerrilla soldiers, which apparently was sung when they were hiding from Japanese soldiers during WWII. The sons of the former guerrilla leader, Juvenal Llera, could not remember the lyrics, and another son of a former soldier knew it but could not speak due to a stroke he suffered from years before. Luckily, Gilberta Ferrer, a former English teacher who lived with her dogs, remembered some of the verses. Her father sang them to her when he was also a soldier during the war. The song was “Cabanlutan Maiden,” and it was composed when the guerrillas escaped to Barangay Kabanlutan after a Japanese attack. It lyrically describes a beautiful maiden adored by the soldiers, and was thought to have inspired them on the battlefield. In Bais, we also managed to locate and interview Balvino Laquinon and Santiago Garcia, who both write balak.

Garcia has won several awards for his balak, which are often about love and memories. Born in 1967, he has lived in Barangay Dos in Bais for all of his life and started writing balak in high school because he was the only one among his peers who couldn’t sing. Since then, he has had his balak read on DYWC in Sibulan and Radyo Natin FM in Bais, has performed his work on stage. He has won various local literary contests since 2002 to the present, including one for his balak “Mga Dahon sa Kagahapon”:

Sulayon ‘ta pagkutkot kadtong mga kagahapon,
Mga kaagi nga sa mga mabaga nga abog nitipan 
Sulayon pagbadbad ang nabaliktos nang tanghaga 
Diha sa kinabuhi’ng uhaw, uyamot sa pagpangga. 
Gipakli ko ang mga dahon sa kahoy,
Mga laya matagpakli, dunay kaagi
Nag-suhid mga anino 
Mga gilimin sa gumunha 
Ug sa sanga nakapatuya
Sa kabug-at sa nakamtang sala
Nubugwak ang tuhod gikan sa tuhod sa nagduwang bukid
Kablit sa mga dahon
Sa sanga, naghumbay og tahilid
Muki-ay ang matagmaigo sa apuhap sa amihan
Og ang huyang maipo
Didto sa yuta mangawankawan
Tugpa sa nag-undok daghang mga layang dahon
Nitipon sa hapit nang madugta diha sa yuta
Gilubong sa kalimot tungod sa kapid-ang panahon
Hangtod nawala; ang nakulma sa yuta napapas
Unya pagpanuki-duki mao’y napingwit sa hunahuna 
Bugwalon ang nagpahipi’ng mga ba-at sa tanghaga 
Kini hubo nga lawas, pilit sa yutik mutuna
Og haw-ason ang lawas sa babayeng gipangga
Karon, ani-a ikaw sa duha ko na mga bukton
Nagpa-uraray aning dughan nga gi-ulipon sa gugma
Mga panghayhay og pangagho
Nangutanang maukiton
Kon tinooray ba, putli mo na ang gihigugma.

We had now been on the road for seventeen days straight without rest. From May 7 up to May 24, we had covered Dumaguete, Sibulan, San Jose, Amlan, Tanjay, Pamplona, and Bais. We slept in various hostels, and lived off of fast food and coffee—and now the effects of our field research were starting to kick in. By the time we got to Mabinay, we were cranky, sun-burned, and exhausted. The drive and enthusiasm we’d felt so far was wearing off, and we both just wanted to go home.

I remember calling home to my parents in the United Kingdom to let them know we were still alive. They were the ones supporting my graduate studies at Silliman, but when they heard we were fatigued from our research, they instructed me to halt the effort and get some rest back in Dumaguete. My mother cautioned me about NPA presence in Mabinay and my father cursed our professor for putting us through this over that summer when I was supposed to fly back to England for the holiday. 

On Mari’s side, it was the same story. Her father complained about financing this prolonged project as her mother traced our steps on Google Maps and wailed about the possible dangers of being kidnapped and riding a stranger’s habal-habal.  Again though, neither of us wanted to fail Prof. Casocot. So we pushed on to finish the project.

As always, we visited the Mabinay Tourism Office, but regrettably, their tourism officer was in Iloilo for a seminar. A new employee there directed us to DSWD, and there they gave us one mambabalak who lived in a nearby barangay, Boyno Tubat. Getting to him was not difficult, as we had already gained much experience with locating vague figures, and we managed to interview him without any incident. Satisfied that the period for data gathering was finally complete, we returned to Dumaguete to write everything up.

In research you must fully commit yourself to the goal and immerse yourself with the people you meet. Occasionally your respondents can be abusive or rude, and the conditions can be hazardous. But the pleasure you give those who want to share their work makes it all worthwhile. Especially if they have never had an audience to listen to their literary pieces before. Literary research is not just a quest for knowledge. It can be a two-way process that offers due recognition for those who have been ignored in the chronicle of local literature.