Bikol Pastores – musical reenactment of the nativity

BIKOL PASTORES

The Festival

Even before Christmas is celebrated by Filipinos today, Bikol Pastores was already a Bikolano’s commemoration of Christmas. A musical reenactment of the nativity, the Pastores, a folk festival held in Legazpi City, in South Luzon’s Albay Province on the 18th of December, is a celebration of Christmas tradition where children clad in colorful costumes sing their own compositions that interpret the shepperds who sang the first carols and rejoice for the birth of the Christ in Betlehem. The group of costumed singers visit from one house to another or establishments rendering songs.
Done with an entourage of traditional musicians, people dance to the tune of Pastores a Belen in the city streets, and Christmas cheers are all over the town.
Highlights of the festival are the Panunuluyan (age-old tradition of reenactment of Mary and Joseph asking every people of Betlehem for a good place to stay for the birth of the infant King on the eve of Chritmas, to which they end up in a manger), Larong Pinoy, Night with the Stars, Open Ballroom Dancing Competition, Search for the Best Christmas Decorated Home, Balikbayan Night, Binibining Pastores Beauty Pageant, Bikol Pastores Dance Competition, Mardi Gras, and the Senior Citizen’s Night.
Also celebrated during the feast is the Kamundagan Festival in this month-long merrymaking celebration.

The Scoop

Pastores

Pastores which is a Spanish word which means shepperds, small groups consisting of four to     twelve children, dominantly young girls occasionally with a young boy of two. The children are     garbed in colorful festive costumes appear on Christmas Day to the Epiphany. Thirteen days they     would sing and dance from a house to another commemorating the shepperds that proclaimed     tidings..
The Pastores is preceeded by the Panunuluyan or the Kagharong. Songs and dances of Pastores     are preserved to inherit by the family and relatives of the trainers or in their dialect, the parabalo.     Young females of good facial features, voice, and acting talent are selected to being marhay mag     compass. To the townspeople of Legazpi City, it is considered an honor to be visited by the     Pastores because they usually visit prominent families of the city.

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