IP 362 Final Paper

10. Think of a way to use drama as an educative tool for heritage language learning and teaching--and for community involvement and engagement.

What we already do as an Ilokano Program, during our semestral Drama, Movie and Songfest is already a way in which we can help heritage language learners with the Ilokano language. In doing this we reach out to a very small percentage of the Ilokano/ Filipino community. The people that we do attract during these gatherings include the student and maybe one or two of their parents. But this is not enough; we have little involvement with the community that needs to be addressed. I must say though these past two years, with the help of you Dr. Agcaoili, have been more responsive with the “real community”. We have the help of the Philippine Consulate, American Cancer Society, Domestic Violence, and GUMIL Oahu organizations. But you alone cannot carry this big organization to where we can actually say that we help the Filipino community.

What I observed as an outsider/student/officer of Timpuyog is that we try to engage with the community but they just don’t seem to be amused by our thoughtfulness. What I see is only some of GUMIL supporters at our gatherings and only the guest judges at our drama fest. It seems as if the Filipino community does not want anything to do with our cause, “education”. We as students put on good short plays during our drama fest, but our good work doesn’t go beyond that. Our class even went onto the Olelo Program but I’m sure these Filipinos that we hoped would watch were watching TFC or doing other things that seems more important to them.

My proposal is to keep doing what we are doing but instead of trying to attract the adults of the Filipino community, we try to appeal to the younger generation instead. They are more interested and not shame of sticking out like a sore thumb. If you recall, at the last Literary Conference at the Philippine consulate your students including myself joined in the dancing while the elders looked on, we have no shame and we go for it all. Sorry to say, and not to be judgmental but the majority of Filipinos we invite are only concerned about being the best dressed or want to be recognized as being part of our organization, not all but some. We can do better than that, although I say this and probably lose all credibility for being a Timpuyog supporter, I feel that people just don’t care. We try and try but nothing happens.

One of my suggestions would be to either put on some sort of show or send in our music videos to local stations such as OC 16 or radio stations and have them broadcast our productions. What I found popular was that on OC 16, there were young Filipino producers who would make parodies of recent music, either rap or hip-hop and make hilarious music videos. These music videos were very popular with not only Filipinos but also other ethnicities who thought it was great. On the popular 102.7 Da Bomb FM radio station one of the DJs made a parody song “Talk Like a Pinoy”, which gained popularity not only here but around the Filipino world. In fact it has already made its way to youtube.com. Although these are a majority parodies, it appeals to all ages of Filipinos. Some people might say that in doing this we are disrespecting our culture, but the way I see it as the younger generation we are evolving our musical, artistic, imagination to other levels. We are not shame of sticking out, we embrace the culture, and most importantly being Filipino. Many Filipinos are heritage language learners so by doing this we all find our connection as Filipinos. We should stop targeting the elders for support and instead aim for the younger generations who would be more interested in our cause. Although we need to chase the people with money, the elders, but besides that we have to look beyond the people who are here year after year. We need to expand to a wide range of the population.

There are many ways of attracting younger groups of Filipinos to be interested in learning the culture and the language. We could hold talent shows, ranging from music, dance, movies, acting, and music videos. These would all attract younger heritage language learner’s even non-speakers to be more involved. Once we get them attracted, then we try to educate and hopefully they like what they see and are convinced enough to continue their forms of drama. In L.A., you here of big Filipino festivals where the support from the community is very responsive. The youth play a big part in that success, which makes more sense to emulate what they have done there and bring it down to Hawaii. The younger generation Filipinos are extremely talented in the arts. To adults the arts that I refer to deal with DJ-ing, in fact the first real DJ to hit main stream was a Filipino. The dance, such as break dancing, the top b-boy in the state and around the country are young Filipinos. Musical artist and graffiti/ modern street artist are Filipinos, many of their work are based around our culture. There is so much of the youth to offer, but we need to utilize their talents. The younger generation is the answer.

James Funtanilla
December 11, 2007