Forgiving and forgetting is the Filipino way, Reverend Father Ted Torralba, a speaker from the Philippines, told audience members during his Wednesday lecture. The lecture was part of a three-day international symposium that focuses on Filipino fine and performing arts that began Wednesday.
"We have a high level of forgiveness in the Philippines which is exponentially related to forgetfulness," he said. "We easily forget and we tend to remember forgetting. We'll give you a slap on the wrist and let you go scot-free."
The symposium, titled "Encuentro Filipino: Rediscovering a Hispanic Nation," is perhaps the first in the United States to focus on Filipino fine and performing arts, according to William Summers, a professor in the music department, which co-sponsored the conference. The event began with a series of lectures by international fine arts researchers and will conclude Friday with a concert in Rollins Chapel by the Loboc Children's Choir, from Loboc, Philippines.
Dartmouth music professor Sally Pinkas, the Hopkins Center's pianist-in-residence, gave a recital of romantic Filipino music on Wednesday afternoon. She explained that the conference aims to guard against the extinction of traditional Spanish-influenced cultural arts. The Philippines had been under Spanish rule for three and a half centuries until the American invasion in 1898, she said.
"The Spanish left a very strong mark that has been forgotten, willfully or not," she said, adding that some Filipinos may have intentionally forgotten their Spanish cultural heritage because of the lingering negative memory of colonialism.
Elena Rivera Mirano, professor of art studies at the University of the Philippines, said retaining that the old culture will help the Philippines move forward.
"You cannot appreciate what you have gained if you cannot appreciate what you have lost," Mirano said. "If you don't even know what you have lost, you don't know who you are."
Filipino culture is distinctive, she said, because the country has been the "meeting point" of many diverse cultures -- including South East Asian, Spanish, American and Chinese -- over a short period of time.
The Catholic Church greatly influences Filipino music and culture, she said, because a large majority of Filipinos are Catholic. Despite the high level of religious devotion, Mirano said, Filipino society is not overly conservative.
"We still have university students with green hair, rings in their noses and their ears," she said. "You [Americans] would feel at home."
Several works of Filipino music were heard for the first time during the symposium. Mirano's lecture detailed the "extremely frustrating" task of searching for lost Filipino music manuscripts and saving them from burning.
"There is not a single critical edition of Filipino piano music, flute music, orchestra music, in the Philippines," she said. "A lot of the traditional people feel that they don't need to write things down."
When children leave their tradition-rich towns and move to cities to attend universities, she said, they abandon the musical forms of their ancestors for contemporary rock and boy bands.
"Once the children leave the towns, they become other, they become different," she said. "They turn their backs on the old cultures."
Audience members at the conference enjoyed the blend of European and Asian styles.
"I grew up [in the Philippines], but I'm a math major," said Upper Valley resident Ed Ramos. "The music reminded me of love songs from when I was growing up."
This lack of Filipino cultural knowledge reflects the level of ignorance in America as a whole, according to Mirano.
"America has very little knowledge of us," she said. "I don't even think they know we exist."
