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Pasigarbo Festival from an outsider’s perspective

Posted on August 13, 2008

When I first learned about this event i got really excited. Just another reason for me to explore Cebu. Imagine this, over thirty festivals would perform in one day for a whopping 1 Million pesos pot money. definitely each and every town of Cebu would do their best to grab the top prize and be declared as the province’s best festival. The prize is much bigger than the Sinulog festival. An annual event hosted by Cebu city every third Sunday of January.

Weeks before the event date, I had a hard time scouring for more information about the pasigarbo Festival over the Internet. There was no other online blog or news site that carried the story.

so I took it upon myself to call the Office of the governor of Cebu and asked for details about the event and how can I get the media ID which is a must when covering events. Fortunately the Governor’s Office is kind enough to provide me with all the needs like event info, media ID, list of contingents, prizes, etc. Everything looks perfect until i arrived in Mandaue city hall which was marked as the assembly area of the Pasigarbo streetdance.

I was surprised when the organizers used a taped music for their 1.5 kilometer streetdance. i don’t have any issues with taped music. Masskara is using this format for the last 29 years. the music is just so bad. It is so monotonous that you wont hardly notice the beginning or the end of the song. It was even stitched so that the pasigarbo music would seamlessly loop infinitely.

I was expecting a live drum beat music. because I believe that the contingents joining the Pasigarbo is also using live drum beats as its music.

The pacing of the first five contingents coming from the assembly area is just so fast. for less than one minute they’ve already moved out of your sight.

Another problem that I saw was that while the street dance started promptly at 2PM, the final performance started late at past 7PM.

The scorching heat of the sun is just so unbearable. i have gulped down several liters of cold water just to keep me alive. but yeah, I was hit by a leg cramp due to extreme heat, and water/potassium imbalance.

The final performance was worse than the streetdance. The music is horrible. it simply does not match with their costumes and choreography. Though I must salute several groups for putting up a great show despite the horrible music.

Overall, the Pasigarbo sa sugbo festival is not a total waste of time and effort. I could rate it a 6 out of 10. Not bad for a new festival. There’s still so much room for improvements. I wouldn’t be surprised if 5 or 10 years later pasigarbo would get bigger and bigger and more tourists and journalists would come to Cebu to cover this event.