Bacolod shines with Masskara Festival

By JOJIE ALCANTARAScene Stealer

MANILA, Philippines -- Bacolod City has been dubbed the City of Smiles since the ‘70s for so many reasons.

One, people are often smiling back at you in genuine hospitality and warmth. Two, living in this top tourist destination is something to smile about (cleanest and greenest urban city accolade, city with the most citations for good business investments, inexpensive way of life, clean living, delicious native dishes and sweets, outstanding governance, best peace and order, to name a few).

Bacolod is most remembered and visited for one of the country’s major attractions: The Masskara Festival.

Masskara is coined from two words: Mass, for crowd, and cara, Spanish for face – a double meaning for “mask” and “many faces.” The Masskara Festival was first conceived in 1980 to add color and cheer to Bacolod City’s celebration of its Charter Day anniversary on October 19. The festival symbol is a smiling mask — adopted by the organizers to dramatize the Negrenses’ happy spirit despite the heavy economic crunch that caused a downfall in the sugar industry.  Masskara since then has become symbolic of “a mass of faces.”

Regarded as one of the country’s most colorful celebrations, Masskara has repeatedly represented the country in major festivals in Asia — Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and in Japan where it won first in the foreign category and first runner-up in the local category, as the first foreign participants in the 10-year history of this Japanese festival.

Masskara’s weeklong revelry in October includes band concerts, parties and bars from dusk till dawn, dance competitions, beauty pageant, street events and the Electric Masskara, a night version of the traditional dance parade, where performers wear their most colorful garbs and are adorned with lights all over their bodies.

However, Bacolod offers more scenic spots and activities to tourists than just this celebration. You can visit ancestral houses like the Balay Negrense, still standing in all its preserved glory. You can head straight for neighboring Silay City where time is gloriously at a standstill with its location and atmosphere (like a period piece movie production setup).  Witness how farmers worked in sugar plantations, and be transported back in time.  Because Bacolod still has its rich historic past of sugar barons sitting at the lap of luxury, the other side of life in Bacolod prospers in well-developed roads, highly progressive infrastructures, fast technology and modern establishments, giving tourists a pampering while they bask in the warm reception of the locals.

Today, Bacolod’s cheerful spirit never wavers — the “mass of faces” will always be a “sea of happy faces.”  Rhonson Ng walks around the city documenting the culture and revelry without his heavy DSLRs this time, deciding on the handy new Olympus Pen with the built-in art filters.  Enjoy the images shot unedited and straight from his camera.

Jojie Alcantara and Rhonson Ng are both travel photojournalists based in Davao City, journeying on personal quests to promote the beautiful islands of the Philippines. Visit their websites www.pbase.com/jojie_alcantara andwww.pbase.com/rhonson_ng.